CNES engineers visit JSC to compare predictions of Ariane 5 third-stage reentry with NASA data on external-tank reentry. CNES is concerned that debris from the A5 third stage might reach the west coast of South America.
NASP supporters pressure Quayle to get the administration behind it and end the bickering between DoD, the USAF, NASA, and the Space Council.
Space Transportation Systems Ltd gets contract to develop Cape York spaceport, in the wake of the bankruptcy of its main competitor. STS has until the end of the year to prove that it can find the necessary money. First launch of a Zenit 3 could take place in 1996 if nothing goes wrong.
First picture of an asteroid, as one image of Gaspra trickles in at 40bps via Galileo's low-gain antenna. Gaspra is slightly larger than expected, irregular in shape, and smooth enough to suggest a substantial layer of regolith despite its feeble gravitational field.
Ariane V46 launch carrying Telecom 2A and Inmarsat 2F3 is postponed indefinitely because of electrical problems in both satellites.
US Army Space Command to brief interested parties on the possibilities of a low-cost logistics tracking system. A recent test used small solar-powered systems comprising Navstar receivers and Inmarsat communications transmitters to track shiploads of material returning from the Gulf. Every four hours, the system automatically transmitted the position of the ships to Army logistics people, precisely enough that they could determine which pier a ship had docked at. This may sound trivial, but a significant amount of equipment was *lost* during the Gulf War buildup because it simply got mislaid.
SDIO reveals an unexpected phenomenon discovered by the SDI shuttle mission last May: when even small rocket engines fire in space, they ignite with a brilliant flash covering a large area, highly visible in ultraviolet, visible, and infrared wavelengths. The flash is much bigger and brighter than the plume produced during sustained firing; the shuttle's modest OMS engines produce, for about the first second of a firing, a fireball hundreds of feet across that partly engulfs the orbiter. It is so prominent that it was originally thought to be sensor error, but it was confirmed by multiple sensors and was seen in RCS firings too. The tentative guess is that it's an artifact of inefficient burning during the ignition sequence.
Second Titan IV launch from Vandenberg Nov 7, carrying classified payload thought to be either an advanced KH-11 or a Lacrosse.
Atlantis launch imminent, the main payload being a missile-warning satellite, with a major secondary mission to test astronaut observations of the Earth for military purposes. (Soviet cosmonauts in orbit during the Gulf War reported seeing quite a bit, including individual bomb explosions in Iraq.) Pictures of the warning satellite [noteworthy because these birds used to be pretty secret].
The X Window system is not layered, and | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology it was not designed. -Shane P. McCarron | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry