Apr 25 1994
From The Space Library
Jack Anderson's column indicated that the ties of Isadore Hyde, convicted in 1993 of defrauding the Federal government, to Senator Trent Lott, Democrat from Mississippi, were investigated by NASA officials among others. Hyde's company received a contract in 1984 to provide security services at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, and diverted more than $186,000 for personal use. Former Hyde employees alleged that Hyde used NASA resources to do political favors for Lott and put Lott's mother, who was 71 at the time, on the company's payroll. (W Post, Apr 25/94)
Some 20 students in the Student Rocket Program at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, built a rocket from scratch over the preceding year and a half. The rocket was to be launched when NASA radar technicians came to Poker Flat for other planned launches. NASA and other U.S. government agencies invested millions of dollars to upgrade 25-year-old Poker Flat, the world's only university-owned rocket range, which had an excellent far northern location. The objective of the rocket flight was technical performance: to get the $20,000 rocket into the Earth's stratosphere and to keep in contact with it during its brief flight by satellite-relayed signals. (AP, Apr 25/94)
NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin spoke to workers at Martin Marietta Manned Space Systems in eastern New Orleans, praising the company's new contract with NASA to make lightweight Space Shuttle external fuel tanks, calling the tanks an essential part of the Space Station. (Times-Picayune, Apr 26/94)
NASA was to award a Program Information System Mission Services (PrISMS) contract worth up to $800 million by May 1. Three companies were seeking to win the eight-year Marshall Space Flight Center contract: Computer Sciences Corporation, Harris Corporation, and incumbent Boeing Computer Services, Inc. The winning PrISMS vendor was to manage NASA-wide communications, provide some NASA-wide information management services, and run extensive computational services at Marshall. PrISMS had a two-year base with six one-year options; 10 percent of the work was to be set aside for small, disadvantaged businesses. (Federal Computer Week, Apr 25/94)
The launching of GOES-1 on April 13 opened a new era for the National Weather Service's (NWS) Modernization Program. GOES was not the only NWS program to experience trouble because the Next-Generation Weather Radar (Nexrad) also had technical problems but according to Randolph Hite, assistant director in the General Accounting Office's Accounting and Information Management Division, was now working well. More accurate fore-casts could now be made further in advance. (Federal Computer Week, Apr 25/94)
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