Sep 15 1992
From The Space Library
The Magellan spacecraft fired its four thrusters to swoop with-in 113 miles of the surface of Venus for study of the planet's gravity and prominent surface details. Since its deployment in 1989, the Venus probe has used radar to map 99 percent of the planet, exceeding its goal of 70-90 percent. With its mission completed beyond expectations, NASA scientists expected to shut down Magellan in May 1993 as a cost-cutting measure. (NASA Release 92-148; USA Today, Sept 15/92; LA Times, Sept 15/92)
A NASA Ames Research ER-2 aircraft was scheduled to take high altitude aerial images of the Hawaiian Islands to help officials determine the full extent of the damage caused by Hurricane Iniki. (NASA Release 92-149)
Weather satellite officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expressed concern about the heightened danger from hurricanes because of delays in modernizing the U.S. weather satellite system. The delays forced the use of antiquated and poorly positioned satellites that raised the risk of forecasting errors. Two hurricanes, Andrew and Iniki, showed the limits of the antiquated satellites. Replacement satellites were stymied by a series of technical failures, delaying the first launching from 1989 to 1994. In the meantime, the United States was borrowing surplus satellites from Europe. (NY Times, Sept 15/92; W Times, Nov 15/92)
NASA managers said last week that they would refashion the way the Space Agency conducts its programs, drawing on the results of internal NASA studies now under way and the advice of outside groups. The proposed reforms would serve as a test of whether Administrator Daniel S. Goldin's vision of faster and cheaper space projects could work in practice. (NASA Release 92-154; Space News, Sept 14-20/92)
Dr. David M. Rust, chief scientist for the Flare Genesis project, a powerful solar telescope project developed by a team at Johns Hopkins University, said the telescope could be launched as early as December 1993. Rather than be launched on a NASA rocket or from a Space Shuttle, which might take a decade of planning and cost hundreds of millions of dollars, the telescope was to be dragged 19 miles above Antarctica by a balloon. The project would be another in a series of long-duration research flights using large balloons. Project scientists hoped to use the telescope to explore the precise cause of solar flares. (The Sun, Sept 15/92)
NASA scientists announced that they would use "telepresence" technology in the Antarctic this fall to see if life that existed millions of years ago on Earth could provide clues about organisms that once may have lived on Mars. A team was scheduled to travel to Antarctica in October to study sediment on the bottom of ice-covered Lake Hoare on Ross Island. (NASA Release 92-147)
An editorial in Aviation Week & Space Technology lamented the lack of priorities in developing more new space launch and propulsion systems than the United States could possibly use. It stated that the White House, Congress, NASA, the Defense Department, and other agencies involved in space transportation are the bodies that should lay out a realistic national plan to develop new launch systems and technologies. (Av Wk, Sept 14/92)
The European Space Agency (ESA) reported last week that Hermes, the ESA's spaceplane program, already scaled back to an unmanned demonstrator, would have to be downgraded to a technology development program because of budgetary constraints. On another project, ESA's scientists were evaluating data from a test of inter-satellite communications conducted by Eureca, ESA's large, retrievable satellite. (Av Wk, Sept 14/92)
The National Center for Advanced Technologies received a two-year, $200,000 grant from NASA and the Aerospace Industries Association to study civil space technology needs and technology transfer mechanisms. (Av Wk, Sept 14/92)
According to a report in Aviation Week & Space Technology, wind tunnel facilities at Russia's Sibnia Research and Development Center were being made available to Western companies. (Av Wk, Sept 14/92)
NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin appeared ready to abandon the X-30 National Aerospace Plane program with its goal of constructing and flying a single-stage-to-orbit air-breathing vehicle in favor of a hypersonic research effort. The latter, the NASA Ames-Dryden Flight Research Facility effort, centers on a manned, Mach 10-class reusable test aircraft launched from the back of a NASA/Lockheed SR-71A, and on an unmanned platform launched atop a rocket to explore physical phenomena at speeds approaching Mach 25. (Av Wk, Sept 14/92)
NASA acknowledged that it could not keep the Space Station project on schedule even with the most optimistic current funding projections. The projected level of congressional appropriations for the next few years meant certain delays in development and launch schedules of anything up to 12 or 18 months. Such delays would mean that the station would miss the official December 1999 target for being able to support a crew on a permanent basis. (Av Wk, Sept 14/92)
The National Aerospace Plane program applied a battery of optical instrumentation to the problem of measuring the chemistry and aerodynamics of a hypersonic combustor during 0.002-second shock tunnel test runs. The NASP test environment has the unique challenge of a high Mach number, short run time, and a flow so energetic that measurements were obscured by the brightly glowing air. (Av Wk, Sept 14/92)
Space magazine carried an assessment of NASA's new Administrator, Daniel S. Goldin, five months after his confirmation as NASA's chief. Goldin's task was to drag NASA out of its doldrums by sheer force of will. In his first five months, Goldin had already shaken up the U.S. space agency by applying business and management practices honed at the helm of some of TRW Corporations most significant space projects, such as total quality management. The Huntsville News viewed Goldin as an agent of change, determined to revamp NASA from within. (Space, Aug-Sept 92; Htsvl Tms, Sept 3/92)
Shuttle Endeavour's astronauts reported abnormal behavior for tadpoles hatched aboard the shuttle. Oriental hornets similarly displayed confused, disoriented behavior, seemingly unable to build nests in a weightless environment. The tadpoles and hornets were part of 43 experiments in weightless conditions being carried out on the Shuttle. (UPI, Sept 15/92; W Times, Sept 16/92; UPI, Sept 16/92; AP, Sept 16/92)
Two Russian cosmonauts on Tuesday completed a series of spacewalks to install an engine and move an antenna on the Mir Space Station, partly in preparation for docking with a U.S. Space Shuttle in 1994. (AP, Sept 15/92)
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