Letter from Karl Henize of JSC, commenting on an AW&ST report of Neil Armstrong's Gemini glove still being in orbit and still being tracked. Wrong in three ways. First, the lost glove happened on Gemini 4, while Armstrong flew on Gemini 8. Second, such a relatively large and light object, in the fairly low orbit the Geminis used, would have reentered within a year. And third, the Gemini 4 glove was never tracked well enough to appear in the tracking catalog.
House Defense Appropriations funds NASP at $80M (twice DoD request) and orders Pentagon to choose between Patriot upgrades and the Erint missile interceptor.
Intelsat signs for three more Intelsat 8s from Martin Marietta (on fairly favorable terms, settling the last litigation from the Titan-Intelsat failure), and leases one Express satellite from Informkosmos.
[Not really space-related except that it indicates the sort of money that private industry can throw around when the profits look good...] Boeing rolls out the 1000th 747. 747 deliveries to date, adjusted for inflation, total $148G [yes, 148 *billion* dollars]. The order backlog currently stands at another 177 [!].
Discovery launched 12 Sept, finally. ACTS deployed successfully, its TOS fired fine, its kick motor likewise, and it is now in Clarke orbit and being moved to its operational position. [Note for the Martin Marietta bashers: ACTS was an MM bird, and MM is also OSC's subcontractor for most of TOS.] ACTS deployment was delayed briefly due to problems with communications. One problem occurred: both primary and backup deployment charges appear to have fired, shattering part of the metal retaining band. Walz and Newman inspected the cradle during their later EVA, specifically to confirm that debris would not interfere with closing the payload-bay doors or come loose during reentry.
On Discovery's second day, the Orfeus-Spas free-flyer was released for its program of ultraviolet observations. Also aboard Orfeus-Spas is an Imax camera to film the orbiter from outside! Discovery maneuvered briefly after Orfeus-Spas release, to give the camera a good view.
The third major activity of the mission was a seven-hour spacewalk, mostly testing tools and procedures for the Hubble repair. After the inspection of the ACTS/TOS cradle, Newman tested a new arm-mounted foot cradle, this one moved by foot pedals to leave hands free. Both astronauts tested a system for warming their gloved hands by holding them against a lamp; they report that it works, but only for one hand at a time, because they needed the other to help hold their position. (There is concern about the astronauts' hands getting cold during the repair mission, because while EVAs are usually done with the payload bay facing sunward, Hubble will be kept in shadow to protect it from overheating. The bay will get pretty cold, even though it will be turned toward Earth to prevent it from chilling down too far. Story Musgrave got frostbitten fingers during vacuum-chamber tests of the tools, as a result of which the Hubble repair crew will have insulating overgloves.) Walz and Newman were unable to close the payload-bay toolbox at the end of the EVA, and it took them an extra 45 minutes to sort it out. ("Some guys will do anything to extend their EVA.")
DC-X flies again 11 Sept [already a record compared to the typical shuttle turnaround!]. The flight was delayed briefly by various glitches, but looked flawless once it started. The touchdown was done faster this time, to minimize charring from recirculating exhaust. Ground crews were working on the vehicle 5 minutes after touchdown.
The next phase of this program would be construction of the SX-2, a somewhat larger demonstrator capable of functioning as a reusable sounding rocket -- taking 2000lb payloads to 100nmi -- and also demonstrating orbit-capable mass ratios and thermal protection. The SX-2 program would cost a few hundred million dollars over about three years, to fly two competing designs. The House is in favor; the Senate is not so sure.
Assorted stories on GPS and satcom systems from the National Business Aviation Association conference. Honeywell proposes using radar reflectors on airfields to lock GPS-based computer-generated runway images to the real thing, as a blind-landing aid... especially promising because the FAA is talking about adding radar reflectors to runway lights to help tracking of surface traffic. There is interest in using GPS in surface vehicles for surveying. NAVSYS proposes a motor-vehicle emergency signalling system using its TIDGET GPS sensor -- developed for "military applications" -- which does not process the GPS signals at all, but just relays them to a receiver elsewhere for processing there, reducing per-vehicle cost. Pilots of large aircraft reportedly are already using handheld GPS receivers -- meant for light aircraft -- as a backup navigation aid and a check on the aircraft systems. New light-aircraft GPS receivers, designed to mount on the control yoke, are starting to come with built-in databases of airport information. AlliedSignal is building a new combined package, a GPS receiver plus a VHF radio, intended to be the only electronics a light aircraft needs for fair-weather operation.
NASA Langley completes a series of tests aimed to determining whether differential GPS plus pseudolites -- GPS-type beacons at airports -- could meet requirements for blind landings. The answer is yes: "we could theoretically achieve an accuracy of 10 centimeters...". Also under test is an interferometric GPS system developed at Ohio University, which is demonstrating similar accuracies but has a number of technical challenges left to be sorted out.
University of Leeds reports that three Glonass satellites have had their frequency channels changed, apparently to minimize interference with radio astronomers. The Russians have also now assigned the same channels to a couple of satellites on opposite sides of the Earth, which might permit halving the number of channels used.
Trimble will be the first licensee of Differential Corrections Inc's technology for transmitting DGPS corrections on subcarriers of FM radio stations. DCI will offer licences for 1m, 2-5m, or 5-10m accuracy once service is in place (planned for late this year in major US centers, with full coverage of the US next year, and tests underway in several other nations).
Khrunichev and other Russian groups sign agreement with Space Transporation Systems of Australia to provide commercial Proton service from a launch site in Papua New Guinea. STS has not yet pinned down a specific site; it says that negotiations with landowners in the Admiralty Islands and New Britain area are "well underway". The PNG government likes the idea, and its Prime Minister has pledged support. The agreement gives STS a 20-year monopoly on Western commercial Proton services. Funding, estimated at $750M including two test launches (set for 1997-8), is STS's problem and nothing specific has been said about the matter. The agreement has a clause stipulating adherence to MTCR rules limiting spread of missile technology.
This agreement signals final abandonment by STS of the Cape York concept. The Zenit booster chosen for Cape York is a joint Ukrainian-Russian bird, which has made for endless political complications since the breakup of the USSR. The political process in Australia wasn't going terribly well. And PNG is technically a better site, closer to the equator (Khrunichev estimates Proton payload to Clarke orbit at 4 tons from PNG, versus 2.4 from Baikonur) and capable of a wide range of launch azimuths (including launch to polar orbit) over ocean.
Loral books the first firm commercial order for Proton with Lockheed- Khrunichev-Energia International: one launch in 4Q1995, with options on four more in 1996-8, all from Baikonur. LKEI is optimistic that most of the options will turn into orders.
LKEI in fact thinks that it is likely to have more customers than it can handle under the current restraint-of-trade agreement limiting it to eight major Clarke-orbit payloads this decade. LKEI wants to sign up customers as quickly as possible, to lock up those quota slots before other Russian launch suppliers get their act together. It says that once it has eight firm customers, "we'll be back in Washington working the issue" of loosening the quota.
LKEI says that the Proton launch failure last May was due to contaminated propellant, and steps will be taken to prevent a repetition. No details.
Titan IV project office thinks the Aug failure was due to a casing burn-through in SRB #1 in the third segment from the bottom, possibly due to a fuel flaw. (The project office is running its own accident investigation in parallel with the official one, in hopes of starting work on a fix sooner.) Existing testing procedures would not have found a fuel crack in areas where the fuel was under compression, keeping the crack closed. General belief has been that such cracks normally would stay under compression during operation, and hence would not provide a flame path to the casing... but there is now suspicion that complications of some kind, perhaps transient forces during ascent, could change that. The USAF would still like to recover some of the debris for further information; USN robot vehicles have supplied photographs but have not yet brought anything back.
Meanwhile, those two forlorn Titans that have been sitting on the pads at the Cape endlessly are still grounded, although there is hope that new testing procedures might permit certification of SRB segments in time to get one of them up this year. With the general consensus that the failure was in an SRB, the Titan II launch of Landsat 6 is back on schedule for 28 Sept (no SRBs on a II), and the payload has been stacked.
And speaking of Titan SRBs... Hercules's SRMU upgraded Titan SRB passes its final test firing at Edwards 12 Sept. Preliminary data indicates that motor performance was exactly on predictions, although data analysis and casing inspection will delay a final decision on production of the first flight motor until late Oct. Nominal first flight is mid-1995. The USAF is starting to talk about maybe moving this up some, given the problems with the existing SRBs, although late 1994 would be about the earliest date -- processing facilities and handling equipment are still being modified to cope with the larger and heavier Hercules segments.
Full-page ad from LKEI: "The world's most reliable rocket is now available in the West." They claim a 96% success rate in 200+ launches.
Editorial urging Goldin to officially declare that there will be two Hubble repair missions, with an eye on cancelling the second mission if the first really does complete its long list of jobs. This would minimize the public-relations damage if the first mission does hit snags and a second is needed.
Editorial urging Congress to order the Pentagon to return to the old system in which classified documents go public after 30 years unless specific justification is offered for keeping them secret. Why? Because the current system makes it easier to destroy records than to release them to historians... and substantial chunks of US aerospace history are being destroyed for that reason.
Study it forever and you'll still | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology wonder. Fly it once and you'll know. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry