[Okay, so I'm behind again...]
Payload fairing for the Ariane launch that orbited ERS-1 was painted with a new "Earth flag" selected in a French competition: a central blue circle on a white, red, yellow, and black background. French Space Minister Paul Quilles urges that the new flag be painted on all spacecraft and launchers. [Talk about politically-correct posturing.] [Speaking as a person with pinkish-tan skin, I object to the blatant discrimination against my ethnic group and skin color. :-)]
ESA regains control over Olympus; the bird is stabilized again and it's on its way back to its orbital slot. Recommissioning of the communications payload will start by mid-Aug. [Successful.]
First radar images from ERS-1, of "superb" quality.
[Marginally space-relevant.] Expect DoD's budget to be in big trouble a year from now, when 1994-5 budget proposals start circulating, because in FY94 the military budget is no longer protected (by the budget summit agreement) from diversion to nonmilitary programs.
HST engineers face decision on whether to request a late-1992 emergency repair mission to replace HST's gyros, with two dead and one ailing out of a total of six (with a minimum of three required). The corrective- optics package meant for the currently-planned repair mission will not be ready until late 1993. The big question is whether the gyros will last until then. (There is a backup gyro pack for emergency use, but it is intended solely to stabilize HST to permit repairs, and is not up to observing work.)
US-Soviet space agreement signed by Bush and Gorbachev invites USSR to join Mission To Planet Earth, calls for US astronaut to fly a long-stay Mir mission and a Soviet astronaut to fly on shuttle/Spacelab (the second Spacelab Life Sciences mission, set for late 1993, is a good bet), and generally improves bureaucratic connections. Gorbachev asked for, and got, agreement by the US to study relaxing some of the harsher export- control rules that limit Soviet participation in commercial spaceflight. Reportedly, Soviet space officials would have liked a much more ambitious agreement, and think this one a bunch of trivia. Proposals included a shuttle-Mir rendezvous and docking of a US-built module to Mir. NASA liked some of the more ambitious ideas, but couldn't sell the notion to the White House, DoD, and State.
Anatoly Artsebarsky has to be "talked down" from a 14m tower erected on Mir after his visor fogs from excess exertion. Sergei Krikalev, the other Mir cosmonaut, guides him down and back to the airlock. (A somewhat similar problem occurred to Eugene Cernan on Gemini 9 25 years ago.) This was near the end of a 7-hour EVA, the sixth for this crew since their arrival at Mir May 18.
Gamma Ray Observatory fingers Variable Quasar 3C279 as the most distant and by far most luminous gamma-ray source yet seen. Noteworthy is that it was not seen by previous gamma-ray telescopes in the 70s and early 80s; evidently this source is quite variable.
Senate approves new SDI plan, pushing for limited-strike protection relatively soon, fighting off numerous attempts by opponents to kill it.
Story on the four microsatellites that rode up with ERS-1. UoSat-5, the latest from the University of Surrey, carrying a store-and-forward digital communications system for use by remote-area medical teams and scientists, various small radiation-effects experiments, and a CCD imager that has already returned clear images of the Earth. Orbcomm-X, a demonstration satellite for Orbital Communications Corp (an OSC subsidiary)'s small-digital-comsat-network project. Tubsat, another digital-relay satellite, this one from Berlin Technical University. And SARA, a French radio-astronomy satellite aimed mostly at studies of Jupiter's radio emissions.
Eumetsat's Meteosat 3 is moved west to a location over Brazil to help fill in for the US's dying Clarke-orbit weather satellites. M3 had been moved west in 1989 for the same reason, but had to be moved back when M4 began ailing. M4's problems are now understood to be transient and manageable, and M5 has since been launched as an in-orbit spare, so M3 is available again. This is costing Eumetsat some money, but since the US loaned them GOES-4 for three years after M2 failed some years back, they're not going to be fussy about it. M3 is expected to last to about the end of 1993. M6 is scheduled for launch in late 1993, and negotiations are underway to build M7 with an option on M8. The US is talking to Eumetsat about the possibility of buying or borrowing M6 when M3 dies.
Programming graphics in X is like | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology finding sqrt(pi) using Roman numerals. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry