a quick look at AW&ST 4 May - 13 July 1992

Henry Spencer summaries

[Finishing up the real quick look at last year's AW&ST-summary gap, since there is little chance I will ever get to filling it in with full summaries.]

May 11:
  • Congress considers decommercializing Landsat.
  • Goldin unhappy about what he sees within NASA, vows reform.
  • Bad year for ex-NASA Administrators: Thomas Paine (1968-70) dies.
  • Thiokol fires Castor 120 for the first time, successfully.
  • Lockheed shows its Leak Source Adviser to NASA: a software system that displays the shuttle pad+orbiter fuel system graphically (as against the current system that displays a screenful of numbers). [As best I can tell, it doesn't actually "advise", it's just a civilized display for the fuel system status.]
  • JPL shows equatorial view of Venus, generated from Magellan data.
  • Spacehab rolls out its first middeck-expander module for the shuttle.
    May 18:
  • Sanctions imposed against Glavkosmos and Indian Space Research Organization in response to the sale of so-called "missile technology" by G. to ISRO.
  • Endeavour crew breaks records with first three-man EVA and longest (8h29m) EVA in history, successfully grabbing Intelsat by hand after the allegedly perfect hardware failed repeatedly.
  • Arianespace order book passes the 100 mark.
    May 25:
  • India successfully launches scientific satellite [a badly-needed success after several failures].
  • NASA investigating problems with rendezvous software and deployment checklists that interfered with the Intelsat repair.
  • France and Germany agree to help finance Russia's 1994 and 1996 Mars probes.
  • Russian Mars-rover team, testing in Death Valley, says flying to the US is better than testing in Russia, because back home they spend half their time trying to get parts, while in the US they can work without interruption.
  • ESA studies building station lifeboat, among several alternatives to the ailing Hermes program.
  • Bush plans to talk to Yeltsin about joint antimissile defences.
    June 1:
  • Cover photo is two astronauts holding Intelsat while a third attaches the misbehaving capture bar to it. Major color-photo section on the mission.
  • Goldin announces red/blue team concept to overhaul NASA's major plans.
  • Goldin also kills the "worm", reinstating NASA's old "meatball" logo.
  • Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer being prepared for launch.
  • ESA preparing revised master plan, scaling Hermes down to unmanned demo and postponing any action on the Columbus man-tended free-flier.
  • JPL trims Cassini, against the possibility that the Titan IV SRB upgrade ("SRMU") will not be available, and also to keep costs under control. The turntable is gone, mission plans are simplified, and the fuel load has been reduced (which could be reversed if the SRMU Titan is available).
    June 8:
  • ESA tells Ariane 5 contractors that develoment costs must not rise much further (already 9% overrun) and production costs must be lowered.
  • Japan rolls out the ground-test H-2 to the pad for fit tests.
  • NASA's worries about the orbital-debris hazard to the station grow.
    June 15:
  • US/German Sampex spacecraft, first of the Small Explorer series, readied for Scout launch (later S.E. birds will use Pegasus). Sampex's mission is cosmic-ray studies, especially "anomalous" cosmic rays that are thought to be only partially ionized.
  • OSC's Tristar goes to Marshall of Cambridge for Pegasus-carrier conversion.
  • Spot Image decides that Spot 5 (launch 1999 or so) will have 5m resolution and the ability to do stereo pairs on a single pass (current Spot stereo is done with two passes, which can be awkward in areas with lots of cloud). Spots 1 and 2 are in orbit, 3 will launch in 1993, 4 is in the works.
  • EUVE launched June 7, checkout underway.
    June 22:
  • EUVE's doors open, science-payload checkout started.
  • Bush and Yeltsin make favorable noises about joint antimissile systems.
  • Bush-Yeltsin accord okays various joint projects and easing of restrictions, including a Russian cosmonaut on the shuttle, a US astronaut on Mir, a shuttle-Mir docking, and US consent to Inmarsat considering launch of one comsat on Proton.
  • DOE puts out study contracts for a US thermionic space reactor, based on Russian Topaz technology.
  • US Microgravity Lab shuttle mission about to launch, planned for 13 days as the first extended-duration-orbiter flight.
  • Hercules's SRMU (upgraded Titan IV SRB) fired successfully.
  • NASA scrambling to understand and cope with problems in UARS's solar-array drive system. UARS is largely powered down, with only two instruments functioning (CLAES is running because its cryogenic coolant supply will keep on boiling away whether it runs or not, and MLS is running because its observations of the Antarctic stratosphere are considered extremely important). UARS is a high-profile good-PR mission, and if worst comes to worst, a shuttle repair mission may be requested.
    June 29:
  • >Giotto reactivated by ESA, using NASA's DSN, in preparation for its second comet flyby July 10.
  • Another LE-7 engine fire.
  • Alpha Lyracom signs with Arianespace for three launches, saying that A. was very helpful and US launch suppliers "never returned the phone calls".
  • Arianespace develops new procedure, Perigee Velocity Augmentation, in which a satellite can be loaded with more fuel in exchange for accepting a lower transfer orbit; depending on details, this can be a net win for satellites with liquid-fuel engines that can fire multiple times.
  • Galileo engineers plan "hammering" attempts... and also data compression, antenna arraying, better error correction, and receiver improvements in case the antenna doesn't open.
  • Approval for Galileo Ida encounter imminent. Navigation has been very precise and fuel reserves are ample, despite all the cooling/warming turns.
  • NASA to seek FY94 approval to start work on MESUR Pathfinder, an initial engineering-test mission for the MESUR multiple-small-landers project to study Mars's atmosphere and soil.
  • Russians plan to change Glonass's military-only precision-navigation code after Leeds University professor cracks it. On the other hand, they say they have no plans to deliberately degrade accuracy of the non-precision code, unlike the US with GPS.
  • SDIO plans Topaz 2 orbital mission, testing nuclear-electric propulsion and carrying science instruments, as early as 1995. Russian involvement is possible. Topaz 2 would have to be tested with live fuel first; this might be done in Russia to reduce environmental hassles.
  • Senate balks at plan to slowly raise NASP funding over next few years; project thought to be endangered.
  • Energia Design Bureau proposes creation of a stockholding company to finance remaining develoment of its mini-Energia launcher, Energia M.
  • Titan IV on pad at Cape to be rolled back and dismantled, after rust was discovered in its SRB joints. Its launch had already slipped due to various problems with payloads, the Centaur upper stage, and the pad.
    July 6:
  • Stanford-Russia joint study proposes a 2009 $70G Mars mission, using off- the-shelf technology and Energia launches.
  • US Microgravity Lab mission going well, despite various minor equipment problems (including an astronaut repair of the new regenerative CO2 removal system).
    July 13:
  • ISAS may postpone first M-5 launch due to first-stage engine problems.
  • Sampex launched July 3, instruments being activated.
  • Atlantis launch slips to avoid interference with the Geotail launch, which has a very short launch window due to an unusual orbit.
  • USML mission lands successfully, a day late due to weather.
  • Endeavour crew briefing various groups on experiences in the Intelsat-rescue EVAs, including the need for a bigger water-tank simulator (in which crew trainees could ride a functional shuttle arm).
  • H-2 launch schedule slips a year due to LE-7 design changes. Concern about Japanese weather-satellite coverage: the third H-2 is to launch the next Japanese Clarke-orbit weather satellite, and the slip puts that launch past the nominal end of life for the existing satellite. Current view is that the existing bird will last longer than its nominal life.
  • Chicago buys Spot Image pictures of the downtown area affected by flooding, used not directly but to clarify existing maps.
  • USAF recommends that Spot Image data be an integral part of US military planning in future. It's already seen extensive ad-hoc use, in the Gulf War and elsewhere.
  • ESA debates how to handle POEM, the followon to ERS, and in particular whether to split POEM-1 into two spacecraft. Final schedule for ERS-2 launch will not be set until this is sorted out. 
    SVR4 resembles a high-speed collision   | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
between SVR3 and SunOS.    - Dick Dunn  |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry