More letters on DC-X/SSTO. [I'm not going into details because most of the points raised should be familiar by now...]
Delta launch of a comsat aborted 9 Feb at the Cape, during main engine ignition. No details yet, and no firm date for another attempt.
First Long March 3A, capable of about 5klbs to GTO, launched successfully 8 Feb, carrying a research satellite and a dummy second payload.
Loral buys an Atlas 2AS launch for a direct-broadcast satellite for Tempo.
White House says that a policy on loosening controls on high-resolution remote sensing will be out Real Soon Now, in response to sharp criticism from House panels for lack of progress.
As predicted, the FY95 budget kills FEWS, although it starts funding for a lower-cost missile-warning system.
The NASA FY95 budget situation is not a happy one: an actual reduction in overall spending (made worse, of course, by inflation), and threats of more to come for the next five years. Dire predictions that the shuttle and Fredovitch would eat the entire science budget have not come true, however. Cassini and AXAF both survived, and there is a little bit of money to start Mars Surveyor, an MO replacement: two small orbiters, one for 1996 launch and one for 1998. The long-duration orbiter program will be closed down [mistake] as will procurement of orbiter structural spares [big mistake]. Manned spaceflight will generally be squeezed; overall expenditures on it through the 1990s will be 30% lower than last year's budget envisioned.
The Wake Shield Facility is working... sort of. Communications problems and an attitude-control-sensor failure scuttled repeated attempts to deploy it as a free-flyer, so it will do the best it can on the end of the arm. It looks like the bottom line will be proving the concept, but with a vacuum not much better than can be achieved on Earth. The next flight, about a year from now, should do better.
The Oderacs radar-calibration spheres have been deployed, as has U of Bremen's Bremsat. There have been minor temperature-control problems due to holding a gravity-gradient attitude for WSF.
New Hubble images of Shoemaker-Levy 9. The 11 largest pieces are now estimated at 2-4km diameter.
Titan IV returned to flight status 7 Feb, launching the first Milstar.
NASDA declares the first H-2 launch a "100% success". Orbits were as planned.
NASDA says that it does not consider the H-2's main engine to be reliable enough for man-rating the H-2. They would want to redesign it with computerized engine controls, at the very least.
Intelsat confirms orders for two Ariane launches for Intelsat 8s (a vote of confidence in Ariane, currently grounded for investigation of the latest failure).
NASA Lewis orders two Atlas launches (the second subject to need) and puts options on seven more. The firm payload is launch of the first EOS bird from Vandenberg; a strong candidate for the second launch is the next GOES (after the one that's now on the pad).
The UK's Institute of Satellite Navigation says that a switch to redundant systems on GPS satellite PRN19 appears to have cleared up the anomalies in its signals.
"...the Russians are coming, and the | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology launch cartel is worried." - P.Fuhrman | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry