Congressional battle over the space station rages, but key committees agree to permit NASA and contractor work to continue until the dust settles. Truly notes that nobody has found specific fault with the current design. Japan joins ESA in expressing alarm that the US would cancel a major international project after specifically inviting other nations to join in it, hinting that if the US reneges on the station agreement, Japan will have to re-think participation in projects like the supercollider and the human genome effort. Japan's representative at station HQ is blunter: "It's crazy." He says Japan would probably start talking to ESA about going ahead without the US. Truly observes that the Japanese in particular have reason to be upset: "They were planning a manned space program in the 1980s, and at our urging put that aside."
Synthesis Group to recommend more aggressive pace for the return to the Moon than NASA has been suggesting. Controversy is expected over the group's views on the space station. Stafford is reportedly furious over attempts to turn the report into an argument against the station, saying that although the group will not recommend use as an assembly base (preferring a heavylift booster to minimize in-orbit operations), it will cite an absolute need for space-station life-sciences work to reduce uncertainties about biological effects of long-duration spaceflight, saying that alternative approaches could cause major delays in Moon/Mars efforts.
NASA finds another cracked temperature probe in Columbia. The three most crucial probes have been replaced with blank plugs, and Columbia has been cleared for launch.
ERS-1 launch slips further, as Arianespace decides to make changes to Ariane V44 on the pad to eliminate a pressure dip during third-stage ignition. The dip has been seen in several recent launches, and there is concern that although those launches were unaffected, a worst-case dip might possibly disrupt ignition. A change in manufacturing process for some key parts is believed to be the reason why the problem has shown up only recently. A July launch of ERS-1 would keep Ariane on track for eight launches this year. The original plan was nine, but delays in payload availabilty had already reduced that by one.
First rocket launch by the Spaceport Florida Authority will be from Tuxpan, Mexico [!], a sounding rocket to study the total eclipse on July 11. The payload, at least, comes from Florida. They had hoped to use Cape San Blas in the Florida panhandle, but environmental-impact paperwork has delayed availability of that site several months.
Motorola pushes a new use for its Iridium comsat network: air-to-ground telephone service, in competition with schemes to provide such service via Clarke-orbit satellites. Iridium could be substantially cheaper in terms of the aircraft equipment, and would provide service in polar regions where the geostationary birds can't. Yet to be resolved is whether Iridium will get the spectrum allocation Motorola wants, in a band currently set aside for navsats. (Mind you, Iridium *does* have a navsat component, sort of, because the network has to keep track of the whereabouts of its handsets to route calls to them.) Various further details on Iridium. Although there will be redundancy at latitudes above about 40 degrees due to the convergence of the planes of the polar orbits, at the equator the coverage only barely overlaps, and a satellite failure would produce an 8-10 min. hole about every twelve hours. Motorola is projecting a six-year satellite lifetime and planning a continuous manufacturing operation, estimating that launches of replacements will be needed every few weeks once the system is operational.
Lightweight protocols? TCP/IP *is* | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology lightweight already; just look at OSI. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry