[A slightly light news week, just as well considering how far behind I am.]
Final chemical release from CRRES lights the sky over the Caribbean Aug 12.
Navstar launches postponed due to problems with reaction wheels: one failed in a ground test in June, and in late July one failed on Navstar 2-7 (which was launched about a year ago). The satellite is still alive thanks to redundancy. It is not clear whether the two failures are related; the USAF is pondering what to do.
Michael D. Griffin, currently head of technology at SDIO, to move over to head Moon/Mars exploration at NASA.
Pictures of the Cyclone launch that carried a NASA ozone mapper up on a Soviet metsat.
Soviet aerospace R&D looks increasingly like it is going to stall for a while, maybe quite a while, thanks to political chaos. The big question for would-be international customers is not so much the failed coup, but the issue of who's in charge of negotiating space deals. Within the Soviet program, work on a Soyuz replacement (basically a scaled-up Soyuz meant for launch on a Zenit) has been shelved after mockup construction, Buran may be scrapped outright, little work is being done on Buran/Energia payloads, and of course Mir 2 is already defunct. (Work has just started on building a modernized copy of the existing Mir core, with hopes that it will go up to replace the existing one in 1994-5. Leonov says the current Mir core is holding up very well but showing its age.)
Deal between Almaz Corp and Eosat collapses due to the coup; Eosat withdrew citing too much uncertainty. Spot Image quickly moved in to fill the gap, although the Soviets clearly considered this second choice because the Spot Image deal covers just the US and Canada whereas Eosat would have marketed Almaz radarsat data worldwide.
NASP looks like it's in line for a stretchout and a less optimistic basic design. In particular, it looks like NASP will use an existing rocket engine for final boost rather than designing its own, and will fly its early test flights with liquid (rather than slush) hydrogen and a conventional (heavy, temperature-limited) hydraulic system. NASP design is to be frozen this fall, slush-hydrogen development is going well at Lewis, materials are starting to be tested in large-scale realistic structures, and low-speed flight tests of scramjet-related hardware have started on an F-18 at Patuxent.
USAF plans to scale back Titan IV production and launches, reflecting the diminished military threat. The current order of 41, meant to last until 1995, will now do until 1997 or so, and the launch rate will peak at 8/yr (6 at the Cape, 2 at Vandenberg). The next launch or two will slip some because of various complications, including a lot of first-time use of new hardware and considerable customization of the launcher needed for existing payloads. The first 15 launches will all be somewhat custom; at #16 the mechanical attachments will become standard, and at #24 the electronics will settle down. Operational status for the uprated SRB will slip about 15 months due to the failure last spring.
USAF is warning that any substantial budget cuts in Titan facilities will endanger having Complex 40 at the Cape ready for the Commercial Titan launch of Mars Observer a year from now. With full funding there is maybe a month of slack, and the USAF is fighting a 33% cut in its Titan budget.
BS-3B launched successfully on H-1 from Tanegashima Aug 25, to the relief of Japan's satellite broadcasters, who have been chewing their nails ever since they lost two satellites in a row to launch failures (Ariane and Atlas-Centaur) with a replacement bird increasingly badly needed.
SVR4: the first system so open that | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology everyone dumps their garbage there. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry