{
  "bibcode": "2001GCN...931....1H",
  "body": "As many of you are no doubt aware, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous\nmission executed a controlled descent to the surface of the asteroid\nEros on February 12, bringing the mission to a successful end.\nHowever, this has also deprived the 3rd Interplanetary Network of the\nsecond distant point which is required to produce small error boxes.\nThe network now consists of Ulysses, in heliocentric orbit, BeppoSAX\n(GRBM), HETE-II, and RXTE, in low earth orbit, and Konus-Wind, at the\nL1 Lagrange point.  In this configuration, the IPN can produce (as it\ndid prior to NEAR),\n\na) single annuli (using Ulysses and one other spacecraft), which will\nhelp reduce the sizes of the error boxes derived from HETE-II, RXTE, and\nthe BeppoSAX WFC and NFI, and\n\nb) long, narrow error boxes (using Ulysses, Konus, and a near-Earth\nspacecraft).\n\nIn general, our policy will be NOT to issue GCN notices for the bursts\ndetected by the IPN in this mode unless \n\n1) they are imaged by BeppoSAX, HETE-II, or RXTE, \n\n2) they are very unusual in some sense, \n\n3) they are suspected to originate from known or new soft gamma\nrepeaters, or\n\n4) potential users of such notices notify us of their\nrequirements.\n\n(We do, however, intend to triangulate these events\nand produce a catalog of them eventually.  We will also begin\nwork immediately on a catalog of NEAR bursts.)\n\nThe Mars Odyssey '01 mission, to be launched in April, has two\nindependent gamma-ray burst detection systems.  Because the mission\ngoes farther from Earth than NEAR, and because the detection systems\nhave better time resolution, this rejuvenated network promises to\nperform better than the old one.  Due to financial constraints, there\nis still some uncertainty about the duty cycles of these systems during\nthe 9 month cruise phase to Mars.  (Although once they are in orbit,\nthey are expected to operate continuously for one Mars year, i.e.\nthrough 2003.)  We look forward to continuing to issue small error box\nnotices, perhaps as soon as a few months from now.\n\n\nKevin Hurley (on behalf of the Ulysses GRB team)\nThomas Cline (on behalf of the NEAR GRB team)\nScott Barthelmy (on behalf of the GCN)",
  "circularId": 931,
  "createdOn": 982091433000,
  "email": "khurley@sunspot.ssl.berkeley.edu",
  "subject": "IPN Status Report",
  "submitter": "Kevin Hurley at UCBerkeley/SSL  <khurley@sunspot.ssl.berkeley.edu>"
}