WRITING TREATIES AND SPACE

Is it a coincidence that on the 2^nd January 2012, Melvyn Bragg launches an audio essay on the history of the written word whilst I am in the middle of an MA course on performance writing? Or is this just something in the air? It is being broadcast over the next 5 days from 9:00AM.

It was also on the 2^nd January 1900, one hundred and twelve years ago today, that the United States Secretary of State John Milton Hay announced the adoption of an Open Door Policy in China, a policy that was probably instrumental in creating the Boxer Rebellion. Despite this rather dubious legacy, John Hay was involved in a number of treaties that bore his name. He negotiated the Hay-Paunceforte Treaty (1901), the Hay-Herrán Treaty (1903), and the Hay-Bunau Varilla Treaty (1903), all of which were instrumental in clearing the way for the construction and use of the Panama Canal. In all, he brought about more than 50 treaties, including the settlement of the Samoan dispute, as a result of which the United States secured Tutuila, with a harbour in the Pacific; a definitive Alaskan boundary treaty in 1903; the negotiation of reciprocity treaties with Argentina, France, Germany, Cuba, and the British West Indies; the negotiation of new treaties with Spain; and the negotiation of a treaty with Denmark for the cession of the Danish West India Islands.

All of which involved a considerable amount of negotiation and writing. He was one of the first seven chosen for membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. This Academy was created in 1904 by the membership of the National Institute of Arts and Letters styling itself after the French Academy. The first seven academicians were elected from ballots cast by the entire membership. They were William Dean Howells, Samuel L. Clemens, Edmund Clarence Stedman, and John Hay, representing literature; Augustus Saint-Gaudens and John La Farge, representing art; and Edward MacDowell, representing music.

Apart from his work as Secretary of State under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, he was private secretary and assistant to Abraham Lincoln. He died three months short of his 67^th birthday on 1^st July 1905.

Of scientific interest, on 2^nd January 2004, at 19:21:28 UTC,  Stardust (a 300-kilogram robotic space probe launched by NASA to study the asteroid 5535 Annefrank and collect samples from the coma of comet Wild 2) encountered Comet Wild 2 on the sunward side with a relative velocity of 6.1 km/s at a distance of 237 km (147 mi). The original encounter distance was planned to be 150 km (93 mi), but this was changed after a safety review board increased the closest approach distance to minimize the potential for catastrophic dust collisions.

Comet Wild 2 as seen from Stardust on January 2, 2004.

Comet Wild 2 as seen from Stardust on January 2, 2004. 

The relative velocity between the comet and the spacecraft was such that the comet actually overtook the spacecraft from behind as they traveled around the Sun. During the encounter, the spacecraft was on the sun-lit side of the nucleus, approaching at a solar phase angle of 70 degrees, reaching a minimum angle of 3 degrees near closest approach and departing at a phase angle of 110 degrees.

During the flyby the spacecraft deployed the Sample Collection plate to collect dust grain samples from the coma, and took detailed pictures of the icy nucleus.