Apr 27 1991
From The Space Library
Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed by the California Institute of Technology for NASA, feared it might be necessary to send a communications satellite to Jupiter to relay Galileo's discoveries to Earth. It would take three years for such a satellite to reach Jupiter, assuming funding were available. However, the engineers still hoped to resolve the problem of the failure of Galileo's high-gain antenna to open properly. Six nearly identical antennas were used on NASA's primary communications satellites without encountering problems. (LA Times, Apr 27/91; B Sun, Apr 28/91; W Post, Apr 30/91; NY Times, Apr 30/91)
The California Institute of Technology and the University of California, with funding from the W.M. Keck Foundation, were preparing to build a new $93.3 million Keck II telescope in 1992 on top of Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano, adjacent to the Keck I being completed. Foundation chairman Howard B. Keck announced that the foundation would pay $74.6 million for the second telescope. Edward C. Stone, Director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said scientists were sure NASA would get congressional approval to finance the remainder. The linked telescopes, according to Stone, "can explore the origin of the visible universe by peering back to the first 1 billion to 2 billion years after the Big Bang, when we believe that galaxies began to form out of the residue of the Big Bang." (C Trib, Apr 27/91; B Sun, Apr 27/91; NY Times, Apr 27/91; LA Times, Apr 27/91; W Post, Apr 27/91; CSM, Apr 29/91)
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