[Aviation Week & Space Technology subscription address is 1221 Ave. of the Americas, New York NY 10020 USA. Rates depend on whether you're "qualified" or not, which basically means whether you look at the ads for cruise missiles out of curiosity, or out of genuine commercial or military interest. Best write for a "qualification card" and try to get the cheap rate. US rate is $72 qualified, higher for unqualified. It's weekly, it's thicker than Time or Newsweek, and most of it has nothing to do with space, so consider whether the price is worth it to you.]
USAF Academy cadets build and fly a small hybrid rocket.
Soviet navsat specialists collaborate with Northwest Airlines and Honeywell to build joint Navstar/Glonass receiver. Northwest plans in-flight antenna tests this autumn and full receiver tests by the end of the year, using a 747 freighter currently flying route-proving flights between Anchorage and Tokyo via Soviet airspace.
Astronomers studying IRAS results detect a new object, possibly either a massive galaxy forming or a quasar in a dust cloud, which appears to be the most luminous single object ever seen.
General Dynamics investigation concludes that the recent Centaur failure was due to foreign object damage, with some sort of solid -- possibly ice or frozen nitrogen -- in the failing turbopump.
Canada's Telesat Mobile signs with Arianespace for the 1994 launch of the MSAT 1 mobile-communications satellite.
Crippen decides that KSC will now have equal status with Edwards for shuttle landings, given the excellent performance of the carbon brakes tested on recent flights.
NASDA opens competition for two new Japanese astronauts.
AW&ST notes that when Landsat images of secret Soviet facilities were first published seventeen years ago, the USSR and even some NASA officials objected. Now, the Soviets are studying building a commercial Mediasat to take high-resolution pics for subscribing news agencies.
US Defense Mapping Agency buys six test images from the Soviet Almaz radarsat to assess their usefulness.
US prepares proposal for Bush-Gorbachev summit covering launch of two or more Soviet cosmonauts on shuttle missions in exchange for long-duration flights of US astronauts on Mir. Missions would start circa 1993.
NASA is also studying conversion of one orbiter for a nine-month [!!] flight capability.
Also in the news in current US-USSR cooperation is the first visit of US personnel to the secret military Plesetsk Cosmodrome, a team from Goddard preparing for the launch of a NASA ozone mapper on a Soviet weather satellite. The only mapper currently aloft is on the aging Nimbus 7, and continuous coverage is considered important. NASA will launch a third mapper on a dedicated small satellite in 1993; the Soviet weather satellites have a design lifetime of only two years.
Even though the ozone mapper is fifteen years old -- in fact, the one that will fly on the Soviet satellite *is* fifteen years old, it being the original engineering test model -- both State and DoD balked at approving the transfer of the equipment to the USSR until the White House snarled at them. Various precautions were agreed on for ground handling. Commands to the instrument will go via Soviet ground stations, and all data from it will go to both US and Soviet ground stations.
Mir cosmonauts to perform a spacewalk this week to place a UC Berkeley cosmic-ray detector on the outside of Mir. It will stay there for two years and be returned for analysis.
Mir cosmonauts replace damaged docking-system antenna in spacewalk June 26.
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers comes out against the space station, saying that it costs too much for its mission. "We don't propose abandoning the space station; we propose a different space station. We don't propose abandoning manned space; we propose doing it a different way." IEEE wants to see a dedicated life-sciences station using Spacelab hardware and possibly the interior of an external tank, and suggests this could be done for $10G. Their main concern is that the high cost of the station will drain funds from technology development efforts that have greater relevance to the US economy.
Stanford/Soviet study suggests that use of Energia boosters in an international Mars mission could make it possible for 1/3 the cost of an all-US effort. The study proposes pre-launching surface equipment and an orbiting fuel module to Mars in advance, fueling Energia-launched spacecraft in a highly elliptical Earth orbit, and using aerobraking at both ends.
Defense Intelligence Agency official testifies to extensive use of Spot photos during USAF planning for strikes against Iraq. The USAF is not happy about being dependent on foreign commercial satellites, and would like to see an upgraded Landsat system providing such imagery under US control.
SDIO ground tests demonstrate operation of the Alpha laser at megawatt power levels, clearing the way for integration with the LAMP advanced mirror system, and a possible space test in 1996-8. This test, named Star Lite, would be a scaled-down version of the Zenith Star proposal of a few years ago (which was inconveniently heavy for existing launchers). Star Lite's objective is to fit on a Titan IV.
Paris Air Show news from Antonov includes wind-tunnel tests of a modified Mriya carrying Hotol. The major modification is that the inboard engine position on each wing now carries a two-engine pod rather than a single engine.
Cape engineers undertake major repairs on the Delta launch complex there, after a USAF civil-engineering task-force report finds corrosion serious enough to threaten collapse of the gantries in severe weather. The Delta launch hiatus due to problems with the latest Navstar satellite proved convenient for this. The task force found various other less severe problems at the Cape, including a long history of erratic facilities maintenance (due to erratic funding). Of particular note is a lack of emergency power systems for various critical launch facilities, various electrical and ventilation systems so old that spare parts are no longer available, and severe deterioration of facilities at important downrange sites on Antigua and Ascension.
Arthritic bureaucracies don't tame new | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology frontiers. -Paul A. Gigot, WSJ, on NASA | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry