1.
NSROC
The Sounding Rocket Working Group (SRWG) appreciates the
difficult job that the NASA Sounding Rocket Operatons Contract (NSROC)
committee has undertaken. We are pleased that they have been able to
maintain several key features of the sounding rocket program as part of
the new proposed arrangement. The SRWG looks forward to working with
Wallops during the transition period to help facilitate the successful
enactment of the new program guidelines.
From our perspective, the NSROC committee has averted a
disaster while being responsive to the user community. To their
efforts, we extend our sincere congratulations and thanks.
2.
Flight Rates and Competition for Resources
The SRWG is alarmed by the prospects of reduced flight rates
under the new NSROC arrangement. The switch to a contractor with no
compensation to replace the loss of civil servant support will likely
result in a lower flight rate.
Although we are painfully aware that finances are scarce and
that all areas of NASA are asked to tighten belts, a healthy sounding
rocket program is vital to the nation's space research program, as
concluded by numerous recent blue ribbon review panels, both within and
outside of NASA. In our view, a new target average rate of only 20
flights/year not only undermines the advantages that the program
accrues from "economies of scale" but also would starve the technology
development opportunities that rockets provide, particularly to support
future orbital missions. We urge NASA to maintain a robust, healthy
baseline of sounding rocket support that the scientific community can
continue to count on when planning research programs.
3.
Poker Flat
The SRWG appreciates the presentation by Wallops personnel on
the current NASA arrangement with the Poker Flat Research Range, and
the elucidation (at least at the highest level) of the rough financial
exchanges between Wallops and the University of Alaska, which owns the
rocket range.
The current arrangement between NASA and the Poker Flat range
allows sounding rocket launch opportunities only in alternate years.
The cost to NASA in non-flight years is roughly half (about $700K) the
cost during flight years ($1.5M). Although the SRWG understands that
the decision for Wallops to launch rockets at Poker every other year is
based both on cost savings and the decline in the numbers of
Poker-launched sounding rockets, we are both startled and perplexed by
the high cost (borne by the Sounding Rocket Project Office) of
maintaining the Poker range during off years. Besides this drain in
resources, the alternate year arrangement means that delays in launch
schedules caused by weather or other uncontrollable factors creates
scheduling slips of up to two years as well as the delay of priority
science and technology development. Such two-year delays are not
commensurate with NASA's emphasis on faster turn-around projects.
The SRWG notes that new activities at Poker Flat have been
developing rapidly in many ways in recent years. For example, new
ground-based scientific research initiatives are being instigated and
run by the University of Alaska and other groups, and NASA continues to
invest and expand in its orbital tracking stations that operate there
continuously. Furthermore, other countries and agencies (e.g., Japan,
DoD) are investing heavily in the scientific and operational
infrastructure at Poker.
Since the new NSROC contract will soon be in place, and since
one of the goals of this contract is to encourage better utilization of
the facilities associated with NASA/Wallops, it seems logical that the
alternate year arrangement at Poker Flat be revisited with the winning
contractor under the NSROC arrangement. For example, non-NASA projects
may be interested in exploring research opportunities that are afforded
by the NSROC provider. In this manner, the NASA-owned Poker Flat
facilities could become a source of income under NSROC (e.g., they
could be leased in support of non-NASA programs), and help facilitate
new arrangements whereby sounding rocket launches might be scheduled
with more flexibility.
Community support for including the possibility of rocket
launches from Poker every year is strong. In view of the new NSROC
contract and the numerous changes now going on at Poker, the SRWG urges
NASA/Wallops to search for creative, new scenarios with which to enable
launch opportunities at Poker Flat every year, particularly if such
activities can be carried out for the same total amount of funding
presently allocated for Poker Flat support.
4.
New Technology Presentations
The SRWG appreciates the presentations by the Wallops
engineering staff concerning the new technologies being developed under
the auspices of the NASA/Wallops Sounding Rocket Project Office. We are
quite impressed with the developments concerning GPS, PCM CD-ROM
storage, and the new ground systems at White Sands and at Wallops. The
fact that Wallops is responsive to the user needs, which themselves are
driven by new science requirements and emerging technologies, is indeed
a hallmark of the sounding rocket program which can not be
overemphasized. In our view, this an excellent example of why NASA's
Sounding Rocket program enjoys such a first-rate reputation within the
international space science community.
With regard to specific new technologies, the SRWG has
comments at this time on three areas:
(a.)
Future Startrackers
At the January 21, 1998 meeting, the committee heard a report
from Dr. Clarence Korendyke (NRL) showing some beautiful solar data
gathered with the current version of the SPARCS pointing system that
achieved almost 0.1 arc-second pointing stability over 10-30 seconds on
a recent NASA sounding rocket solar physics mission. In contrast,
fine-pointed astronomy sounding rocket payloads are using 20 year old
technology that provide at best several arc-second stability. Moreover,
the Ball startracker currently used with the sounding rocket Mark VI
guidance system has some serious limitations; notably its inability to
guide on targets fainter than 4th magnitude and the need to have ONLY
one bright object in its 4 or 2 degree field-of-view.
One area of new technology that the NASA suborbital program
is well suited to develop is a "smart" startracker -- one that can
track on crowded star fields as faint as 8th magnitude without becoming
lost. The development of this technology would significantly enhance
the current capability of fine pointed sounding rockets by eliminating
the need for guide star acquisitions that use targets far from the
intended target. Additionally, this will provide a means of testing a
guidance system critical to the development of future low cost NASA
orbital astronomy missions. The SRWG requests that Wallops consider the
development of such new startrackers for astronomy payloads, and that
the requirements and possibilities be discussed at a future meeting.
(b.)
Telemetry Simulator Cards.
Now that the new Wallops telemetry system (WFF93) is
standard, including the provision for up to 10Mbps per link, the SRWG
suggests that WFF develop and provide a standard simulator card for
this telemetry system that would permit investigators to test their
instruments for compatibility before traveling to integration and into
the field. This would save much time and resources, both for the
scientists and for Wallops. Indeed, in one case involving a recent
sounding rocket launched from Spitzbergen, a team at Goddard (Pfaff
group) fabricated such boards and distrib uted them to 3
co-investigators (U. Md, SwRI, Norway) prior to integration, which
resulted in substantial time and cost savings, as well as a more
realistic instrument calibration in several cases. The SRWG suggests
that Wallops explore providing (i.e., loaning) such simulator cards to
all investigators early in the mission development phase.
In addition to the telemetry simulator card, we also suggest
that Wallops consider a PCMCIA interface for the TM stack emulator, as
this would allow both IBM/PC and Macintosh notebook computers to be
used by the experimenters during checkout. Notebooks are much more
practical for bench checkout as they allow users to have the exact same
hardware to check their instruments during integration as was used for
testing and calibration in their laboratories.
(c.)
Future Data Formats
With today's complex payloads, analog recorders, while
valuable for quicklook purposes, are often incapable of providing
critical diagnostics for instruments involving large quantities of
complex digital data (such as images). Investigators currently have to
wait for long periods, often days, to get digital data from integration
tests and flights from the WFF T/M section, thereby seriously
compromising the utility of integration test sequences. (It is not
uncommon, for example, for T&E to be completed before receiving
digital data from the pre-T&E horizontal tests.) Data at some
facilities (notably White Sands) are available on much shorter times
(hours), but in formats incompatible with the formats used by WFF.
The SRWG applauds NASA's current plans to install CD-ROM
writers in F-10 ground stations and remote field ground stations as a
first step in the direction of remedying the situation. We find that
the WFF T/M section should move as quickly as possible to insure the
capability of providing the experimenter with rapid access (less than 1
hour from time of test) to the entire T/M stream of digital data at all
ground stations (both at WFF and remote sites), using a common, well
documented data format and readily available transfer media such as FTP
file transfers across the Internet and CD-ROMs for permanent records.
NASA
Sounding Rocket Working Group
Dr.
Robert F. Pfaff, Jr. (Chair)
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Prof.
Dave Burrows
The Pennsylvania State University
Prof.
Greg Earle
University of Texas at Dallas
Prof.
Paul D. Feldman
Johns Hopkins University
Dr.
Mark Hurwitz
University of California, Berkeley
Prof.
Timothy J. Kane
The Pennsylvania State University
Prof.
Craig Kletzing
University of Iowa
Dr.
Clarence Korendyke
Naval Research Laboratory
Dr.
Fletcher Miller
NASA/Lewis Research Center
Dr.
Alan Stern
Southwest Research Institute
Dean
and Prof. Roy B. Torbert
University of New Hampshire
Prof.
Edward C. Zipf
University of Pittsburgh
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