Data and Resources for Space Research

The Space Aviary is a series of tab delimited, machine readable, technical databases of space infrastructure including proposed, obsolete, active and proposed launchers, remote sensing including spysats & metsats, comsat constellations, and all military, civil and commercial spaceports. Beta versions on 3-1/2 inch (90 mm) diskette have been available since September 1998 free of charge to new buyers of the English language or Russian language "Russians in Space" CD-ROMs. Also available by mail order for US$2.50 each, or US$9.95 for all five, which includes shipping. Please specify Windows or Macintosh (Linux coming soon). To order, call (800) ULTIMAX in the USA or Canada, (865) 483-7097 from all other countries; or fax your order at any time to (865) 483-6317; or email your order to pub@ultimax.com.

Click here for a directory of Ultimax White Papers

Astronomy Resources
Generally in order of distance from our sun, Sol:

Click here to see a list of the 67 exploration missions to study our star, the Sun, their objectives and results. Solar mission success = 91%. Nearly complete. We need help defining some obscure Soviet Kosmos missions, so give it a look and drop us a line.
Click here for an atlas of the planet Mercury with scientific commentary and discussion which will be coming soon. Contains the Mariner 10 deep space exploration mission (all of one!) to Mercury, its objectives and results. Mercurian mission success = 100%.
Click here to see a topographic map of Venus and a color image of the hellish surface sent back by a Soviet lander. Note: The map is a large image (30 Kbytes compressed). Surface map was generated by radar from NASA's Magellan spacecraft. Complete with scientific commentary, discussion, and interactive icons indicating the landing sites (the few that are known with any precision) of American and Soviet probes. CLICK HERE for a review of Venusian topography, or CLICK HERE for the complete list of the 38 interplanetary missions to Venus so far, and their objectives and results. Veneran mission success = 61%.
Click here to see an interactive atlas of our Moon. Note: This is a very large image (105 Kbytes compressed). As promised, superimposed on the map are icons showing the landing sites of American and Soviet automated probes and manned missions. Also contains a complete list of the 120 Lunar exploration missions and their objectives and results. False color map of polar elemental distribution coming soon. Lunar mission success = 53%.
Click here to see a list of the geoscience missions to study our home, the pale blue dot called Earth, the mission objectives and results. This list is far from complete still (only 23 out of 100s so far) so the success rate isn't posted. We need help defining some obscure Soviet Kosmos missions, so give it a look and drop us a line.
Click here to see a complete list of the 27 exploration missions to the inner solar system, including the missions to intercept asteroids and comets (including Halley's), their objectives and results. Inner system mission success = 94%. Not complete yet, but plenty to see, including some pix of satellites. We need help defining some obscure Soviet Kosmos missions, so give it a look and drop us a line.
Click here to see a list (not complete yet) of the 68 missions for gazing out into the universe, some still in earth or solar orbit, including their capabilities, objectives and results. Overall success for this class of mission = 93%.
Click here to see a topographic map of Mars from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft complete with scientific commentary and discussion. Note: This is a large image (38 Kbytes compressed). As promised, the crosshairs indicating landing sites of American and Soviet probes are now interactive. Furthermore, prominent surface features are now interactive as well. CLICK HERE for a review of Martian topography, or CLICK HERE for the complete list of the 32 interplanetary missions to Mars and their objectives and results including the late Mars Polar Lander and Mars Climate Observer. Martian mission success = 34%. Why is Mars so tough?
Click here to see a complete list of the 7 deep space exploration missions to the outer planets, including Pioneers, Voyagers, Galileo and Cassini, their objectives and results. Outer system mission success = 100%. Where are they now?
Click here to see a new catalogue of all the known outer moons (currently 87 of them, not counting Pluto/Charon; Jupiter has 28, Saturn has 30, Uranus has 21, Neptune has 8).
Click here to see a list of the most promising destinations for interstellar missions.

Directory of Space Related Resources on the Web

Listservers

Friends & Partners in Space is a daily digest focussing on Soviet space history and Russian-American relations in space; lots of other real-time space news, such as the very first public announcement of the test of China's Project 921 spacecraft. To subscribe to FPSpace, send email to listproc@friends-partners.org; then in the body (not subject) of the message, type subscribe fpspace yourname, where yourname = your natural name or preferred nickname, not email address. As with any listserver, to get help about the mechanics of your subscription, send email to listproc@friends-partners.org , then in the body of the message, not subject line, type help.

e-Periodicals

This list is unranked, but if an e-zine is listed here, it's good.
Jonathan's Space Report is a brief weekly summary of space launch activity in standardized format including some orbital elements, with an occasional detailed technical discussion of scientific missions and hardware.
SpaceViews is a weekly e-zine originally produced by the Boston chapter of the National Space Society under the capable hands of editor Jeff Foust. The consolidation in this genre goes on - Spaceviews was purchased by space.com in summer 2000, so these links may change. SpaceViews covers all space activity - launch, commerce, manned space, civil science, and military - with heavy editorial content, trip reports, book reviews, op-ed pieces, and online reviews. To subscribe to SpaceViews, send email to majordomo@spaceviews.com; in the body (not subject) of the message, type subscribe spaceviews.
Dale Gray's Space Frontier Status Report is a weekly e-zine covering all aspects of space activity - launch, commerce, manned space, civil science, and military - with some editorial content. To subscribe, send your request via email to Frontier-list-request@i55mall.com.

Space Interest Organizations

The Planetary Society, based in Pasadena, California, was founded by Carl Sagan and James Murray, has over 100,000 members around the world, publishes a bimonthly slick The Planetary Report, and sponsors a number of innovative space experiments, such as SETI@Home and Mars Microphone, and organizes major public events like Planetfest '99 in conjunction with important milestones in planetary exploration (e.g. Voyager's flyby Neptune in 1989, Mars Pathfinder landing). No chapters or regular meetings. Dedicated to planetary science.
The National Space Society based in Washington, DC, currently has about 25,000 members, publishes a slick bimonthly Ad Astra (Latin for "to the stars"), organizes a large annual meeting (the International Space Development Conference, or ISDC) over Memorial Day Weekend as well as a number of regional meetings, and actively lobbies Congress on Capitol Hill. Organized into 100+ chapters, it was formed by the merger of the L-5 Society and von Braun's National Space Institute. Dedicated to "the creation of a spacefaring civilization".
ORION was founded in 1974 by a group of scientists and engineers from the Department of Energy's facilities in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Holds monthly lectures on the first Wednesday evening of every month in the Oak Ridge Civic Center Club Room, hosts Star Parties several times a year, and an annual Christmas Party. Has built and launched a radiosonde on a very high altitude (~43 km!) balloon, Project Parakeet. Co-founder of the Oak Ridge Stone Soup Society. Dedicated to amateur stargazing, ham radio, interesting technical topics and public outreach.

Amateur Space Sleuths Historically, so called "amateurs" (e.g. James Oberg, author of “Red Star in Orbit”, and Dennis Newkirk, author of “Almanac of Soviet Manned Space Flight”) have often been the first to break the news of important developments in space, especially during the Bad Old Days of the Cold War. Having much in common with professional "Sovietologists" they are often far more informative than the official sources, even to this day. Send suggestions for links to other good space resources to robot-at-ultimax-dot-com

Mark Wade's remarkable Encyclopedia Astronautica an online reference that boggles the mind with its breadth of information.
From the best historian writing about Soviet space programs today, there is Soviet Web Space dedicated to historical "raw" data on various Soviet-era space and missile programs. It includes short program summaries of various projects. Actually, it would be unfair to consider Asif Siddiqi cliched-at-earthlink-dot-net a mere amateur.
For one of the best-connected remaining inside views of the Russian space program today, see Anatoliy Zak's Russian Space Web.
Another remarkable compendium of space history, Sven Grahn's Space Place was, among other claims to fame, the first to publicly notify the world that China had launched their man-rated space capsule (aka Project 921) on 19Nov99. The old URL, http://www.users.wineasy.se/svengrahn, will only be active until September 2002.
The Kettering Group's most famous coup was the discovery and announcement of the Soviet's secret military launch facility at Plesetsk, utilizing amazingly basic instruments such as binoculars, stopwatches, and ham radios to perform the radio dopplerimetry.
See Dennis Newkirk's new site for a comprehensive guide to the International Space Station.
Alan Pickup's SeeSat (Satellite Observers) is for those who get a charge out of tracking supersecret birds with just binoculars and a stopwatch, and knowing which satellite generated that bright meteor they just saw.
Another excellent sky tracker is Jay Respler's SKY VIEWS, with many useful links, including satellite elements, and the current month's worth of evening forecast for stargazers.
"Go Taikonauts!" by Chen Lan, an unofficial website tracking the Chinese space program, was among its other claims to fame, the first to post pictures of China's Project 921 facilities six months ago, which turned out to be accurate. (Project 921-2 is to be China's home grown space station.)
DSFPortree's Romance to Reality site, an annotated bibliography, contains summaries and descriptions of over 230 moon & Mars expedition & settlement documents published since 1950.
Jens Lerch's Home Page is a ?
Ed Cameron's N-1 page focusses on the Soviet Union's ill-fated moon rocket, the N-1.
Mike Mackowski's Space in Miniatures site is reference information for scale model builders that focuses on the technological and configuration history of manned spacecraft. There is particuarly a lot of info on the Mercury program, as that was the subject of his latest book. Follow the links to Modelers References to Mercury.
See Tom Riley's jriley@charm.net "The Gagaringrad Tales" "hard" science fiction stories about settling space by people alive today! Don't miss his "Huge Surprising Project".
Michael Boschat of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada has prepared a fast loading, useful timeline about Soviet/Russian space achievements on his Soviet Space Program Page as well as links to an enormous number of other space resources.

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These pages last updated April 1, 2002