Photos from the Discovery military shuttle mission, including a gorgeous one of the aurora australis over Antarctica. Also of note was an in-flight repair done to bypass failed tape recorders.
Discovery lands at KSC after being waved off from Edwards due to high winds there. KSC people, who are pushing to be considered a normal landing site, were happy. They were less happy after the landing, since Discovery's right outboard tire was in shreds by the time the orbiter stopped. (Heavy tire wear was not entirely unexpected, given a planned test of heavy braking on a hard-surface runway, but this is a bit beyond what was planned for.)
Endeavour arrives at KSC.
Decision imminent on what is to be done about Hubble. The Costar proposal, to replace the high-speed photometer with a device to move corrective mirrors into the optical path to the other axial instruments, is over budget but otherwise looks so promising that it is virtually sure to be approved. Work is now underway to determine whether a photometer could be included in it (!) to replace the lost one. The repair mission is starting to look crowded. NASA is willing to budget for four 6-hour spacewalks, but would like to hold one of those in reserve. The current work list -- new WFPC, new solar arrays, Costar, and replacing one [now two!] gyros -- already pretty well fills three.
Meanwhile, the more pessimistic predictions about Hubble are generally turning out false. Longer exposures and sophisticated image processing have things under control except for the faintest objects, and surprises are already showing up a lot. "Everywhere we point it we see something bizarre."
Military tactical satellite business is bullish after the Gulf War. GPS's stock in particular is booming, USAF commanders having discovered that maps of obscure areas like Iraq are often wrong or nonexistent. The USAF has put a very high priority on a followon to the DSP missile-warning satellites. Various comsat systems got stressed well beyond expectations. The military weather satellites were used both for their normal purpose and, via their microwave imagers, for assessing soil characteristics for troop movements. DoD bought a lot of pictures from Spot Image, and is pushing for a better followon to the current Landsats so the US will have its own system.
Lightweight protocols? TCP/IP *is* | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology lightweight already; just look at OSI. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry