Station Crew Sees Scope of NYC Tragedy….By Todd Halvorson and Jim Banke

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The skipper of the International Space Station beamed back new video Wednesday of a devastated New York City while sending a heartfelt message to a nation still reeling from the most audacious terrorist attack in world history.  A day after hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, U.S. astronaut Frank Culbertson and two Russian cosmonauts made a predawn pass over the northeastern U.S. and saw the glow from lights from the New York City disaster site.

"I know it's a very difficult day for everybody in America right now, and I know folks are struggling very hard to deal with this and recover from it," Culbertson told flight engineers in NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston.  "But the country still looks good," he said, "and I just wanted the folks in New York to know that their city still looks very beautiful from space."

Taped with a camcorder, the new video showed familiar geographical landmarks lit up a few hours before sunrise and a bright white light - presumably from the area where emergency workers were searching for survivors and clearing up debris.  The billowing plume created by the terrorist attack at the twin 110-story towers, meanwhile, could be seen in video beamed back by Culbertson Tuesday and then broadcast for the first time on NASA TV Wednesday.

A Lighter Point to Ponder….Danny Arthur

NASA Notes …. Jim Timmons

TWO GUYS & FOUR TONS (Space Station) - Another segment was recently added to the International Space Station. Frank, Vladimer and Mikhail of the Expedition three crew have been unloading equipment and cargo from the airlock and docking port known as Pirs. The 16-foot Pirs provides an airlock for use with Russian space suits. Three space walks are scheduled for hooking up and activation of Pirs.  At an altitude of about 214 miles, the station will be swapping out Soyuz spacecraft in about three weeks.

THE BONUS ROUND (Deep Space 1) - After a launch in Oct. '98 and a mission to test advanced technologies and ion propulsion, the Deep Space 1 spacecraft has had a successful encounter with comet Borrelly.  The spacecraft came within 1,400 miles and was able to obtain black and white pictures, infrared spectrometer measurements and ion and electron data.

BIG RED (Mars Odyssey) - The Mars bound spacecraft has made its third trajectory correction maneuver in preparation for its arrival at Mars in October.  All telecommunications subsystems performed normally during a recent checkout.  A new orientation of the spacecraft will permit a fewer number of small thruster firings. 

Maybe I just have too much time on my hands, but I was pondering the fact that Earth orbits the Sun at about 1000 times the speed that we propel ourselves down the freeways going to and fro.  Rounding numbers off to keep it simple, that would be about 67,000 MPH.

My rough guess is that it would take about 300 feet of braking that car to get it stopped from 67 MPH.  Just a guess, but I'm going to assume I'm within 50 feet.  If I'm wrong, we can make an adjustment at the other end of this exercise in trivia.

If that car were doing 67,000 MPH, and all else were equal, it would take one million times farther for it to stop than when it was doing 67 MPH. That would be 57,000 miles.

Now if we were to put that same braking system on the Earth and somehow make it work, it would take 1.5 X 10 EE 18 orbits of the Sun to stop the Earth. That would be 1.5 million, trillion orbits.  I will leave the engineering to somebody with even more time on their hands than myself.

For a copy of the Math on this trivia, just send a self addressed stamped envelope to

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