Japan rethinking its views on North Korea [and probably on missile defence] following NK's firing of at least one Nodong-1 1000km-range Scud derivative, capable of reaching Japan with a nuclear warhead.
Soyuz TM-17, carrying the Mir relief crew (Vasili Tsiblyev and Alexander Serebrov) plus French cosmonaut Jean-Pierre Haignere (who will spend three weeks on Mir) launched July 1.
South Africa cancels development of its orbital launcher, citing poor commercial prospects and the politics of ballistic missiles.
Space station survives the House 220-196 June 28, thanks partly to strong lobbying by Goldin. Next is the Senate, historically friendlier but by no means to be taken for granted.
Goldin (in a Senate subcommittee hearing): "NASA ought to get back to building X-planes".
In the same hearing, Goldin more or less said what some other station supporters have said: without the station, much of the rationale for continuing the shuttle program goes away.
Low/Wisoff spacewalk successfully tucks Eureca's antennas in, after some difficulty in getting the latches to engage. The remainder of the spacewalk was used for testing Hubble-repair tools and doing some "generic spacewalk" experiments.
Spacehab first flight deemed a complete success. Of particular note is that its power consumption was lower than expected.
Endeavour lands at KSC July 1, after two extra days in orbit due to bad weather at the Cape. (NASA is concerned about maintaining the schedule for the Hubble repair -- Endeavour's next mission -- and did not want to lose a week by landing at Edwards.) Both wave-offs were on sufficiently short notice that the cargo-bay doors had to be re-opened after being closed for reentry.
Rep. George Brown, as expected, introduces bill calling for bringing the X-30 program back to its original goal of building a manned SSTO demonstrator without unmanned preliminaries. The NASP contractors and others involved side with the Defense Science Board report saying that technical uncertainties should be resolved first. Brown's bill does call for a smaller and lower-cost X-30, more like what was envisioned in the early days of the program; this is considered riskier than the larger design favored recently.
Lockheed has requested US government permission to talk to Australia about becoming an "anchor customer" for Lockheed's proposed 1m-resolution commercial remote-sensing satellite. The Australians are known to be interested. Lockheed is looking for other anchor tenants, in preparation for a decision this autumn on whether to proceed with development. It is thought that Lockheed will use experience gained in spysat programs for the project; a first guess at costs is $400M for two satellites (one a ground spare) and four years of operation.
Lockheed CEO tells Senate hearing that it is in the US's best interest to build and operate the satellites for such systems, rather than handing the market over to foreign competitors. Lockheed is pushing its current plan, in which foreign customers would receive data and perhaps build their own ground stations, but US companies would control the satellites. "...control of the satellite itself is not essential for most commercial and foreign government users if there is a reasonable assurance of uninterrupted access to data".
Arianespace scores a minor coup, as Indonesia's Satelindo company picks Ariane launches for the third generation of Palapa comsats. Satelindo has already signed with Hughes for two satellites, an option on a third, and upgrading of the Daan Mogot control station. Arianespace is believed to have bid somewhat higher than General Dynamics, although the difference narrowed somewhat during negotiations, but GD lost out because of the combination of recent Atlas failures and the extra on-orbit life possible with Ariane [probably due to Ariane's near-equatorial launch site]. The Palapa network is prosperous, as the lowest-cost comsat operator in the growing Far East market.
"Every time I inspect the mechanism | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology closely, more pieces fall off." | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry