Atlas launches first UHF FollowOn comsat for USN... unsuccessfully. This time the Atlas fouled up, and the Centaur worked perfectly but didn't have enough fuel to make up the shortfall, leaving the satellite in an orbit rather lower than intended.
Station redesign underway, sorting through a barrage of suggestions. Maxime Faget leaves redesign team to preclude conflict of interest.
Colonel-General of Aviation Anatoliy Malyukov, head of the Russian air forces, says that before Glonass can be maintained, "it must first be created". He says it's not going to become suitable as an operational partner to GPS unless more money is found; Glonass is currently on hold for lack of funding.
ESA is most unhappy about the latest round of station turmoil, with the European political consensus starting to unravel in the face of yet another shakeup. "We are ready to take our program East immediately if the US redesign forces us." [He means "to Russia".] ESA has put work on Columbus on hold until they find out whether it will have a space station to connect to.
NASA and Rocketdyne puzzling over Columbia launch abort March 22, caused by a valve sticking open. A check valve that prevents backflow in a line used to purge parts of engine #3 with helium before startup failed to close during engine start. This engine has had a long history of successful firings. NASA is in a fix: it will be hard to rearrange the launch schedule to work around this. Columbia's payload is Spacelab D2, and the Germans are already impatient. But the next launch is Discovery carrying Atlas 2, whose ozone observations require launch by mid-April to catch the Arctic ozone hole before it starts to break up. And after that is Endeavour going up to retrieve Eureca, a mission that cannot be postponed too long without risking having Eureca reenter. And NASA would really prefer not to try to launch either without being sure that *their* valves won't stick. "...we sure enough plopped right down in the middle of the tough scenario..."
British Aerospace and ESA reveal details of the Envisat-1 polar platform mission, including a full-scale model. Launch is set for mid-1998 on Ariane 5. Followons will be Metop-1 in 2000, Envisat-2 in 2003, and Metop-2 in 2006, all probably using the same platform design.
SDIO exploits slip in Comet launch schedule to book a piggyback payload: a package of coated materials to be exposed to space. The launch has slipped from March 31, probably by two months, due to electrical problems in Comet's service module (tentatively blamed on somewhat disorderly shuffling of avionics functions back and forth between the Comet SM and the Conestoga launcher).
DC-X rollout imminent. [I'm following my usual policy of skipping the details on major stories already adequately covered elsewhere.] DC officials say that the blowing gypsum dust at White Sands is not thought to be a problem -- the engine gimbals are sealed, and the mobile rollback hangar that will be used for preflight work is pressurized against dust infiltration. The launch crew -- five men, two of them basically spectators -- is getting ready.
Inmarsat approaching decision on the orbit configuration for its new satellite mobile telephone system: low, medium, or Clarke orbit. Low orbit minimizes propagation delays and power requirements, but limits the coverage area of each satellite and their ability to back each other up in case of heavy load. If it's a close race, Inmarsat may award technology-study contracts to the two best contenders.
One side issue weighing in Inmarsat's decision is that a medium-orbit system could carry GPS-type navsat transmitters. A lot of Inmarsat customers are interested in having a navigation system that isn't controlled by the Pentagon, and Inmarsat is interested in giving it to them. The mobile-phone satellites won't be numerous enough to do the job alone, but they could help, and Inmarsat is studying small supplementary satellites dedicated to the navsat mission. The tricky part of all this will be cost recovery, a hard problem in a decentralized system like GPS. [The late lamented Geostar did this one right...] Inmarsat gambled that it could somehow recover the costs of putting navsat transmitters on its Inmarsat-3 series of Clarke-orbit comsats, but so far hasn't found a way.
Altruism is a fine motive, but if you | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology want results, greed works much better. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry