[This is the last summary for 1992; this issue covers two weeks, and the Dec 28 issue was a photography issue with no news content.]
[Aviation Week & Space Technology subscription address is 1221 Ave. of the Americas, New York NY 10020 USA. Subscriber service (800)525-5003, International (609)426-7070. Rates depend on whether you're "qualified" or not, which basically means whether you look at the ads for cruise missiles out of curiosity, or out of genuine commercial or military interest. Best write for a "qualification card" and try to get the cheap rate. US rate is $82 qualified, higher for unqualified. It's weekly, it's thicker than Time or Newsweek, and most of it has nothing to do with space, so consider whether the price is worth it to you.]
NASA adds an EVA to STS-54, set for January, and plans to add more to future missions where they do not interfere with primary objectives. The purpose is refinement of space-station construction techniques. [This policy reversal appears to have been caused mostly by the unpleasant surprises during the Intelsat salvage mission, which woke NASA up to the need for more EVA experience.]
NASA names David Leestma as JSC director of flight-crew operations (the man who picks crews), Bob Gibson as chief astronaut, and Loren Shriver as deputy. Leestma succeeds Don Puddy, who is moving to US/Russian manned operations; Gibson succeeds Dan Brandenstein, who left NASA recently.
General Dynamics has sorted out what it wants to do about Centaur, and has scheduled the next launch (a USN comsat) for March.
McDonnell Douglas's shuttle-payload-processing contract at KSC extended three years.
FAA issues specs for GPS use for aircraft navigation and position reporting.
Scheduled for Plesetsk launch Dec 29 is a Biocosmos mission using a Vostok capsule, carrying (notably) ESA's "Biobox" experiment.
NASDA conducts a 50s firing test on the LE-7 engine for the H-2, successful on the third try.
Intelsat 502's antenna platform was rotated to provide direct Somalia-US links for the USMC arrival, although in fact there wasn't much news (and the Pentagon is annoyed about the extent to which the media got in the way).
ERS-1 radar imaging test demonstrates the ability to detect movements of prepositioned radar reflectors by as little as 1cm. Interferometry using multiple orbital passes demonstrated this precision in "blind" tests by a German/Italian team. Assuming further testing works out, the geologists are very interested in using this to track Earth movements. Similar interferometric methods are also being used to do precision 3-D terrain mapping with ERS-1.
Other phenomena being examined using ERS-1 include oil slicks (even small amounts of oil released from ships create enough of a wake to be visible in the radar images), internal waves between water layers in the Straits of Gibraltar (previously seen by astronauts, but there was uncertainty whether ERS-1's radar could detect them), and small- scale ocean topography (which appears to correlate well with temperature).
There may be modest increases in the Russian civil space budget in the next year or two, although much of it will be eaten up by infrastructure rebuilding and maintaining facilities previously funded by the military. The Russian Space Agency is pursuing cooperative agreements with other countries in search of support, including a nearly-complete agreement with Japan and the beginnings of negotiations with Italy and Canada. There is a tentative 10-year plan for the RSA, prominently including improvement of launch systems (including heavylift), but decisions on which projects to pursue have not yet been made.
Currently... Buran is essentially mothballed, with the second orbiter about 75% complete. Energia is considered a separate issue, and hopes for it are stronger. Plans for the 1994 and 1996 Mars probes remain in place, as well as plans for three astronomy missions, with the 1994 Mars mission currently getting most of the funding.
USAF laboratories are starting to look at flight demonstrations for various electric-propulsion techniques, notably arcjets. Nuclear power sources may be needed in the long term, but large solar arrays appear to be adequate for now. TRW is under contract to USAF Phillips Labs to develop an arcjet test experiment (using a 26kW arcjet already under test at Phillips) to fly on the P91-1 spacecraft, slated for Delta launch in 1995.
Pictures and details of the French/Russian scramjet test in November. Negotiations are underway for more ambitious joint work. French participation so far has been in funding and data analysis only; the main objective was to assess Russian technology and get some experience of working with them. The US is interested in doing likewise, but is still mired in bureaucracy. Almost everyone except the White House has written off the X-30 program in its current form, but the White House is balking at anything that might hint of scaling it back.
Goldin outlines plans to get aeronautics research going again at NASA, notably including hypersonic research (largely defunct in the US, apart from possible highly-secret military efforts, since the X-15 program was terminated).
Galileo's fuel reserves jump 4-5kg because the second Earth encounter was more accurate than expected. Tracking geometry was better than for the first Earth encounter, and the techniques have gotten more sophisticated as well. The encounter was a great success, the only significant problem being a bit of data loss due to unfavorable antenna angles during the flyby. The atmosphere probe was given a full checkout (which requires high-speed communications), various instrument calibrations (likewise needing high data rates) were done, visible and IR images of the lunar north pole were taken, an attempt was made to look for lunar outgassing visible in the ultraviolet, various Earth-imaging work was done, and a set of experiments using Galileo's cameras to look for laser beams sent from Earth worked.
Discovery's military mission concludes, with all experiments successful except the deployment of metal spheres for radar calibration (which was cancelled after problems with its electronics). The mission was waved off from KSC due to clouds, and after the Edwards landing the crew was kept inside for two hours due to a nitrogen-tetroxide leak from a thruster.
C++ is the best example of second-system| Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology effect since OS/360. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry