Ariane 5 User's Manual published.
Anik E2's C-band antenna deploys successfully July 3, three months after launch, after lengthy efforts to get it unstuck.
Canadian Space Agency awards the main contract for Radarsat [finally!].
Locstar, the European company formed to exploit Geostar technology, folds. The shareholders voted to shut it down due to persistent funding problems.
IEEE's criticism of the space station angers the Council of Engineers and Scientists Organizations, a trade-union consortium that represents many aerospace engineers and technicians. CESO criticizes a "deliberate campaign of misinformation" directed at creating the impression that the entire US engineering community opposes the station.
NOAA -- and Congress -- are wondering what to do about GOES-Next. NOAA is down to one Clarke-orbit weather satellite, Goes-7, which is expected to start deteriorating next year. The GOES-Next program, intended to produce the next generation, is badly behind schedule and cannot launch its first bird before Dec 1992 at the earliest. The choice is between crossing fingers that the timing will work out, and doing something difficult and expensive to bridge the gap. The risk is that the US will be left without a Clarke-orbit weather satellite, which will badly hurt weather forecasting and will be a disaster for severe-storm tracking.
Senate subcommittee inserts $110M into the NOAA budget for an attempt to buy a satellite now under construction that is similar to the older Goes birds. The trouble is that the satellite belongs to Japan, which may not want to sell. Other options being studied are asking Europe or Japan to move a spare on-orbit satellite to cover the US, ordering one more old Goes (delivery time 3 years), or trying to accelerate the first GOES-Next delivery even if this compromises satellite performance.
NASA, which oversees GOES-Next development, accepts the blame. (They prefer pushing ahead with GOES-Next, unsurprisingly.) The latest problems are infrared-imager detectors that have unexpectedly deteriorated in storage and an unauthorized change from copper to nickel wiring that has made some of the detectors temperature-sensitive. G-N is also roughly 100% over budget. The contract, which went to Ford Aerospace rather than to Hughes (which built the earlier Goes series), took some shortcuts for the sake of speed -- a disastrous mistake, with an inexperienced contractor at the center of an effort to advance instrument technology rather than just building a new spacecraft. Commerce Secretary Mosbacher [NOAA is part of DOC] tells Senate panel that putting one group (NASA) in charge, telling another (NOAA) to pay for it, and then handing a third (F.A.) a cost-plus contract is a recipe for trouble. Revisions to the contract are being studied.
Senate Appropriations votes pretty much full funding for Fred, but not for other NASA missions. In particular, it kills CRAF and slips Cassini one year, saying that it regrets the fate of CRAF but greatly doubts that the next few years' budgets could provide the expansion of funding necessary as both CRAF and Cassini go into high gear. AXAF takes a one-year slip, EOS takes a 50% cut plus a request for a more realistic long-term plan, and NASA is asked to devise a strategic plan based on rather smaller annual funding growth than the White House wants. Committee chairman Mikulski, commenting on charges that science is being sacrificed to protect the space station, observes that science got a 10% increase while Fred only got 6%.
Navstar launches resume July 3, with an SDI multispectral-sensor payload, Losat-X, piggybacked on the Delta second stage. (Losat-X was meant to fly on the LACE/RME launch last year, but wasn't ready.) The solar-array control problem discovered in the previous Navstar is believed to have been fixed by small design changes.
Arianespace announces a new satellite-deployment system to put three birds on an Ariane 5, with a new small third payload atop an Ariane-4-sized middle payload and a heavy bottom one.
Langley continues refinement on the HL-20 lifting-body design concept, proposed as a manned spacecraft to fly atop a Titan IV or future launcher. Various small changes have been made to improve aerodynamics. Wind-tunnel tests of a full-scale model are being considered. Langley's involvement is likely to end soon, since it's not in the manned-spacecraft business.
NASA Marshall volunteers begin taste tests of water recycled from sweat, urine, and wash water. Water-quality standards are tougher than those for normal municipal water supplies; taste is the only remaining question, and preliminary results say there's no strong difference between this stuff and tap water. Various problems are still being looked at, notably finding a soap that won't contribute too much organic carbon content. (Some, notably Stafford, have criticized the specs as too stringent, but Marshall managers point out that they are still in the experimental stage and would like to meet the medical people's targets if possible. They also say that people who criticize the system goal of 50 pounds of water per day per person have not examined the costs of the alternatives, e.g. the weight of clothes that would have to be hauled up and down to maintain crew comfort without on-board laundry.) Marshall is working towards a 90-day live-in test in 1997.
ESA starts long-duration near-full-power tests of the Ariane 5 engine. Also, the first batch of fuel for Ariane 5 SRBs is ready, with first test firing at Kourou now set for March 15.
Photos of the Buran cockpit area, from training mockups at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.
Any program that calls itself an OS | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology (e.g. "MSDOS") isn't one. -Geoff Collyer| henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry