Jan 28 1998
From The Space Library
The crew closed the hatches used to transfer equipment between Endeavour and Mir at 5:34 p.m. (EST) in preparation for Endeavour's return flight to Earth. The closure of the hatches concluded five days of Endeavour's continuous link-up with Mir, during which time the astronauts and cosmonauts had transferred 9,600 pounds (4,350 kilograms) of materials. In addition to equipment exchanges, the crew exchanged American astronaut David A. Wolf for Andrew S. W. Thomas, a U.S. astronaut born in Australia, who was to remain aboard Mir for a planned four-and-one-half-month mission.
NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration awarded a US$423 million contract to Hughes Space and Communications of El Segundo, California, to manufacture and launch up to four weather-monitoring Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES). The basic contract covered the manufacture and launch of two spacecraft. Separate fixed-price options for two additional spacecraft would cost US$190 million and US$185 million. The spacecraft would carry instruments to provide regular measurements of the Earth's atmosphere, cloud cover, and land surfaces. Two spacecraft would also carry the Solar X-ray Imager and Space Environment Monitor instruments. These four spacecraft, known as GOES-N, -O, -P, and -Q were to continue, enhancing the services of the current GOES-1 through -M series, a "mainstay of modern weather forecasting." The GOES series provided meteorologists and hydrologists with "visible and infrared images of weather systems, and precise atmospheric soundings." The positions of the spacecraft in orbit would allow scientists to monitor storms when they were first forming in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
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