Letter from David Armbruster, observing that while US heavy launchers cost hundreds of millions per flight, Zenit is a Titan-IV-class rocket that is launched in two hours by ten men. "US industry and government leaders should realize Russian rocket technology is not going to go away because the Cold War is over and the Americans do not have their act together enough to invest in it..."
Letter from Mark Toft, commenting that the ARPA/Pentagon plan to develop a standard bus/payload interface for satellites is reinventing NASA's Multimission Modular Spacecraft, flown successfully on Landsats 4 and 5, Solar Max, UARS, EUVE, and Topex/Poseidon.
Japan to form special committee to examine the question of what their next major space goal should be, now that the H-2 seems about finished.
Five-frame mosaic of Ida from Galileo. Lots of craters, some larger than those seen on Gaspra (which is about a third the size of Ida). The surface appears to be old, judging by the cratering etc.
Orbital Sciences buys Perkin-Elmer's Applied Science Operation branch, a major builder of scientific sensors and life-support monitoring gear.
India's PSLV launched 20 Sept from Sriharikota... unsuccessfully. A "disturbance" during the second/third stage separation resulted in a suborbital trajectory only.
OSTP begins Yet Another Review Of US Space Policy.
Astronaut William McArthur writes to the NRC, questioning the "improved safety" rationale for ASRM. "This program is viewed warily by the Astronaut Office... we are concerned about the number of technological 'firsts'..."
Senate rejects another attempt to kill the station. Noteworthy is that Sen. Tom Harkin, long-time station foe, has switched sides in the wake of the US-Russia deal. Meanwhile, major House committee leaders write to Gore expressing concerns about Russian reliability, reluctance to fund a vaguely-defined project, dislike for an assembly sequence that starts with Russian components, and a preference for a "compromise" orbital inclination less than 51.6. Meanwhile, the Senate fenced off about half of next year's station budget until it sees the Fredovitch plan.
Goldin reports to Gibbons on Alpha costs: using the Russian tug but no other major Russian elements, it's $19.4G, first launch in 1998, and occupation by a crew in 2003, if annual spending is capped at $2.1G. However, the timing could accelerate with greater Russian involvement. No firm numbers on costs that way, yet.
Meanwhile, ASRM is on the block again, with supporters pointing to the need for higher lift capabilities now that the station is going to go into a higher-inclination orbit, and opponents pointing to high costs and potential risks.
Unexpectedly, given Russian financial problems and lack of activity by the Russian navy, Russia launches the first of what seems to be a new constellation of ocean-surveillance satellites.
Russians report continuing problems at Baikonur: more unrest among the troops last June (only just being admitted), many staff vacancies, and problems with pad maintenance and theft. However, the pads now considered most important are being adequately taken care of and protected.
Discovery makes the first night landing at KSC, a day late due to weather. The Orfeus/Spas scientists say they got all they wanted, including a "target of opportunity" when amateur astronomers alerted them to the occurrence of a dwarf nova. The retrieval rendezvous used less fuel than expected, and retrieval included waving Orfeus/Spas around on the arm, giving its Imax camera a view from various angles. (Photo of the shuttle nose from the side, taken from a TV camera used to help aim the Imax camera.) Some more waving was done to gather calibration data for the Wake Shield Facility deployment. Various other bits of equipment testing were done, including turning off and restarting one of the orbiter's fuel cells, and testing both a laser rangefinder (intended for the Mir rendezvous next summer) and GPS receivers (on both the orbiter and Orfeus/Spas) for navigation. What looked like flames, seen near Discovery's tail via IR cameras after landing, were vent plumes from the APUs -- although JSC controllers thought they looked odd enough to ask the crew to shut down two of the APUs early.
Postmortem on the Eureca retrieval indicates that an electrical connector on Endeavour's arm was misassembled at Spar Aerospace, making it impossible for Eureca to draw power from the orbiter while on the end of the arm. This complicated retrieval, because when Eureca's antennas failed to stow fully, a snap decision had to be made before Eureca's batteries got too low: unfold its solar arrays (folded for retrieval), or waive the usual rule against berthing a spacecraft with unsecured appendages and get it berthed and connected to orbiter power. Since it was the end of the work day for the crew, and JSC prefers not to leave a payload on the arm with nobody awake to keep an eye on it, the rule was waived. In retrospect, it is likely that the rule would have been waived anyway, since the EVA work on the antennas would have been rather more difficult at the end of the arm. However, management is unhappy that the problem was not caught before launch: tests checked the connector's electrical properties, but not whether it was in the right *location*. A suitable test fixture is being designed to check placement of future arm-attached hardware, and procedures are being reviewed.
FAA decides that the "TCAS-3" upgrade to airliner collision-avoidance systems will have to use GPS. The original TCAS-3 plan called for use of a directional antenna to determine the bearings of nearby aircraft, but it turns out that reflections off the aircraft skin and other antennas degrade the accuracy of such systems to the point where the bearing information is of minimal value. Having the other aircraft transmitting their GPS positions and velocities should work much better.
Japan's transport ministry seeks major startup funding for a ten-year project to switch to a satellite-based air-traffic-control system, with a goal of reducing flight spacings from 15min to 5min on busy routes.
Pictures from the Moscow aviation show, including an engineering-test Glonass and the recovered Cosmos 2207 optical spysat.
Story on Orbital Science's Orbcomm data-messaging satellites. The first two are in final assembly. They have an odd configuration: a thin flat disk, with the two flat faces hinging out as solar arrays and an antenna assembly extending in the plane of the disk, with just a ring of electronics left of the original disk. They are designed to be launched in a stack of eight (!) on a Pegasus XL. With everything retracted, the disks are 41in in diameter and 6.5in thick. "It's quite unlike any satellite you may have seen before." They will be separated, one a time, from the Pegasus third stage by springs, and then maneuvered into their operational slots by nitrogen-gas thrusters. OSC says the solar arrays are the thinnest rigid arrays ever built, 0.5in thick. The VHF antenna assembly is 104in long, with two hinges for deployment. Each satellite includes 17 "data processors" and seven separate VHF antenna elements. The whole system (26 satellites) is estimated to have a capacity of five million digital messages per day. The first two satellites are set for launch early next year, with three full stacks following later in the year to give near-continuous mid-latitude coverage from 45deg orbits. OSC is considering adding one more stack to improve coverage in low latitudes. The nominal 26-bird constellation will have a total of 6kW of power in about 1000kg of hardware -- twice the power and under 25% the weight of an Intelsat 6. The Orbcomm bus will also be available for other applications, under the name Microstar.
Meanwhile, OSC signs up its first customer for Microlab, a 150lb remote-sensing satellite design: NASA Marshall. OSC will build, test, launch, and operate (for 2 years) Microlab 1, carrying NASA's Orbital Transient Detector for studying the world distribution of lightning. Also aboard will be a UCAR/NSF payload to study the effect of atmospheric occultation on GPS signals -- all the Orbcomms will carry GPS receivers, and there is hope that measuring atmospheric effects with them might be useful to weather forecasting. Microlab 1 will fly early next year; total fee payable to OSC will be under $7M.
Details of a robot arm planned for the Spektr add-on for Mir. The novel part of this one is that it will be able to move experiment packages between external mounting points and a small airlock. Spektr will have 11 external mounting points for these "Pelican" packages, which can be about 330x330x500mm and can have power and data links via the mounting points. The arm itself will be almost entirely mechanical, with the outside segments moved by manipulating similar but smaller segments inside. Spektr managers say they are expecting the module to be launched to Mir next year.
JET-X, the Joint European X-ray Telescope, passes preliminary testing in preparation for its flight on a Russian Spectrum satellite in 1995. The telescope is a joint UK/Italy/Russia project.
Russian space companies and government groups growing concerned about personnel losses due to poor pay. For example, the Space Data Research Center at the Ministry of Fisheries has only a small group of people left, and research has essentially ceased. Things are looking a bit different at NPO Energia: "It is amazing to come to work on certain days and find 40-50 Americans in our facility. Who could have imagined this...?"
Clementine 1 passes its major readiness review in preparation for its January launch (22 months after development go-ahead). The project is within budget ($75M, including $20M for the Titan IIG launcher).
NASA is pondering what to do about a Mars Observer replacement, and in particular whether anything can be done in time for a 1994 launch. Goldin says he will not be hurried into a decision, and it is more important to get it right than to make a particular launch window. Ideas include building a second MO from spares (although not all the instruments have full spares, the failure mode of the original is still not understood, and choice of launcher is not at all clear), putting MO instruments on an MSTI bus (MSTI-1, built by JPL for BMDO in under a year, was launched last Nov; a problem with this is that MSTI would need modifications and might not be ready for 1994), sending Clementine 2 to Mars with its original instruments (not as good for the mission as the MO instruments, but still respectable, and *this* one could be ready for 1994 launch), and putting MO instruments on TRW's Eagle bus, specifically the version developed for Goddard's TOMS ozone mapper (again requiring mods for an interplanetary mission). There has been some criticism of the JPL assessment process, characterized by some as a "kangaroo court" obviously stacked in favor of MO 2: all non-JPL ideas were presented by JPL people rather than the managers of the original projects, JPL was allegedly heavy-handed in details of scheduling and presentation, and MO people were heavily represented in the audience.
Meanwhile, the MO controllers are still pursuing faint hopes. The latest effort has had JPL sending commands to turn on the low-power beacon of the "balloon relay" package meant to relay data from Russian Mars landers and balloons, with Jodrell Bank listening for the signal (from both Mars orbit and the no-insertion-burn solar orbit). [This would work even if MO's main transmitters are dead. Unfortunately, nothing was heard.]
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