Ariane 5 first-stage test article to ship to Kourou mid-August for facility and fueling tests.
ESA pledges $1.8M/year to operations of the International Space University's permanent campus in Strasbourg.
Major General Malcolm O'Neill, current deputy head of BMDO and acting head, will be promoted to Lt. Gen. and made head.
The idea of bringing the Russians into Space Station Whatever, in lieu of Mir 2, is being seriously explored. One complication is orbital inclination: Moscow would prefer an orbit they can reach from Plesetsk, while the other nations would reluctantly agree to 51.6 degrees -- okay for Baikonur but not Plesetsk -- and don't want to go further. Either of these orbits will raise pressure to do ASRM or the lightweight ET, or both, to improve shuttle payload.
Well, the USAF boys at the Cape thought they finally had two Titan-IV-Centaurs cleared for launch, two years late... The hardware was ready and the paperwork was clear...
Expensive Fireworks Dept: Titan IV goes boom off Vandenberg Aug 2. Billed as the most expensive space accident since Challenger. The payload is thought to have been an advanced naval ship-tracking satellite [AW&ST mentions other possibilities, but I believe this has since been narrowed down]. The cost of the lost hardware is pegged at close to $1G, but the impact on programs could easily equal that; "it comes at a terrible time... we're still trying to work off the queue". And it could hardly have come at a worse time for the Titan IV program, which is already in trouble over the upgraded-SRB cost overruns.
The cause of the failure is not known. This Titan did not have an upper stage. At the time of failure, only the SRBs were burning. The failure happened at 101s, 90mi downrange at high altitude, a few seconds before the core stage would have ignited (the SRBs start to burn out circa 115s and separate at about 130s). There is quite a bit of telemetry data on hand -- they're still instrumenting the T-IVs quite heavily -- but a quick look says that everything was normal until telemetry stopped. A destruct command was transmitted a few seconds after the explosion, just in case.
Video images show a normal ascent until a light-colored smoke ring puffs outward, quickly followed by a large fireball, clouds of dark smoke, and debris streaming downrange. An aircraft dispatched to the impact area found no floating debris; attempts will be made to recover wreckage from the ocean bottom, several thousand feet deep in that area.
The Cape crews have been told to continue processing their birds, but the preliminary results of the investigation -- expected in a few weeks -- will determine whether there is only a slight delay or an extended hiatus.
USAF decides to halve the size of the Follow-on Early Warning System satellites, making it possible to launch them on Atlas rather than Titan. Also, FEWS is the early-warning system that will get major attention in the immediate future, beating out Brilliant Eyes and Upgraded DSP. Brilliant Eyes is thought to be a long-term effort -- and will be continued as an R&D program -- and there were doubts about its treaty-compliance status, given its origins in SDI. The proposals to upgrade the DSP birds were seen as inadequate, given technical limitations of the system and the growing threat from short-range missiles with short flight times and mobile launchers. (In particular, a substantial number of SS-21s seem to be missing from the old Warsaw Pact nations -- either there were fewer of them than NATO thought, or some have new owners. The Serbians are on everyone's mind, although there is no firm evidence pointing their way at the moment.)
FEWS's design objective is detecting and tracking targets like IRBMs and afterburning aircraft engines, using an infrared sensor that has demonstrated a 20x improvement over the DSP sensor (this is twice the previously-acknowledged figure). Work is underway to trim the satellite mass to about 5klbs, to get it off Titan IV, which alone will cut program costs an estimated $2G. Several auxiliary payloads are being deleted, including a nuclear-explosion detector (considered redundant since the GPS birds carry them). The satellites will not have quite as much on-board intelligence as originally planned, and will be in inclined circular orbits instead of the elliptical ones originally planned (which maximized northern-hemisphere coverage at the cost of a fair bit of fuel).
It is possible that the tail end of the DSP program may be curtailed if FEWS runs on schedule. The old plan of having FEWS fully deployed before starting to close down DSP has been abandoned as too costly.
Pentagon under pressure to cut satellite costs... Suggestions include smaller satellites (i.e., ones that don't need Titan IV launches), a pair of standard spacecraft buses (the Pentagon says a standard payload interface is a high-risk item; GAO and ARPA disagree, citing existing industry standards as workable starting points), and less duplication of civilian programs (the USAF is under pressure to get together with NOAA on a single polar-orbit weather-satellite system, in particular).
Story on the Makeyev "Surf" launcher. Payload 2400kg to 200km LEO, 1840kg to 200km polar. Sea Launch Services plans to offer the plain old SS-N-23 for smaller payloads, and one of those will fly the demo flight in June, using Russian support ships. Russian payloads are available for the demo flight, but SLS would prefer a US customer and is working on it. The deactivated SLBMs will be acquired by SLS on a firm fixed-price basis under a long-term contract. The main business will be low-orbit launches, which are not limited by the US-Russian restraint-of-trade agreement, and SLS plans to keep its prices within the "7.5% below lowest Western bidder" rule that avoids "special consultations" at the governmental level. Given this, they do not expect export-licence problems, and they think short lead time and proven reliability should attract customers even at the artificially high price. Land-based launches will be available at customer request, and one option will be airlifting the launcher in an An-225 to a customer-provided launch site.
Makeyev is also offering microgravity missions using reentry capsules derived from Russian military warheads.
Story on Loral's recent entry into the broadcastsat market, with a contract from two birds for Tempo (a part of the US's biggest cable company). This is Loral's first real sale to the US commercial satellite market; historically they have emphasized foreign and government customers. Loral's birds will fly later than two that Hughes is putting together, but will have greater capacity. The Loral birds are based on its FS 1300 platform, used for Superbird, N-Star, and Intelsat 7, but with more powerful transmitters. It will be compatible with all major launch vehicles bigger than Delta.
Motorola completes the first stage ($800M) of Iridium financing [more than somewhat behind schedule]. Investors include Great Wall and Khrunichev. Great Wall will launch 20 of the 66 satellites from 1996 through 2002; the contract was signed in April, apparently. Khrunichev will share the rest with McDonnell Douglas. Iridium has assorted competitors, but being first is considered likely to be a huge advantage, both for signing up impatient early customers and for securing financing for later operations.
"Every time I inspect the mechanism | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology closely, more pieces fall off." | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry