[I sent this one in a while ago -- or at least I thought I did -- but it doesn't seem to have appeared in the newsgroup, so I'm re-sending.]
First image from Goes 8 (sent May 9).
NASA orders work on Polar suspended until Wind is completed, launched, and operating satisfactorily, and the agency re-evaluates costs.
MSTI-2 launched May 8 on NASA's last Scout.
STEP-2 launch aborted May 12 due to a battery problem in its Pegasus launcher, found 45s before drop.
House funding situation for NASA looks cautiously favorable: the relevant subcommittee got a reasonably generous total allocation to divide up.
CIA, faced with steep budget and staff cuts, decides that assessment of the space capabilities of other nations will henceforth be DoD's job.
NASA internal assessment of the agency's technology transfer efforts concludes:
USAF to start field trials, at Ramstein AFB in Germany, of the Eagle Vision system that will receive and process Spot imagery directly, without the three-week delay in the Pentagon. France and other nations are interested. Spot Image is also interested, because it could use a portable ground station to receive from Spot 1, whose tape recorders are dead. Eagle Vision funding originally hit delays within DoD, but its proponents pointed out that during that three-week lead time, there were nine Spot passes over Sarajevo, data from which could have been available to aircrews had E.V. been available; the funding was released quickly.
NASA says that payload accomodations aboard the space station will not be greatly affected by the merger with Mir 2. Resupply/reboost will dictate a 92-day cycle, currently planned to incorporate two 30-day quiet periods for microgravity work, separated by a 10-day maintenance period and ended by rendezvous/resupply/reboost operations. It will probably be possible to rearrange the schedule to get a 60-day quiet run at least occasionally.
NASA is scrambling to sift through its current microgravity experiment plans to identify experiments that could benefit from going aboard Mir during the station-preparation phase. "...we found that we have experiments already under development which might benefit by being up there longer..." [Mind you, when Space Industries was pushing ISF, NASA's official verdict was "nobody needs longer times than the shuttle can provide".]
Malfunction, details as yet undetermined, causes computer foulup that locks four of Clementine's attitude-control thrusters on... during a period in which it was out of communication with the ground. It is spinning at high speed and its attitude-control fuel is gone. (There is still plenty of maneuvering fuel, but it's pretty useless with no attitude control.) Whether it was hardware or software is not yet known. The problem was in the rad-hardened flight-proven space-qualified processor, not one of the experimental new-technology systems. Clementine is currently in a highly-elliptical Earth orbit, waiting for the right moment to boost towards Geographos. The Geographos encounter is pretty definitely out of the question, although there is hope of regaining enough control -- using the maneuvering engine and Clementine's little reaction wheels -- to do some more technology work in Earth orbit, by lowering the perigee enough to make regular passes through the Van Allen belts for radiation-effect tests.
Patriot shipment to Korea tests use of GPS/Inmarsat combination to track high-priority shipments. (Such shipments, particularly in wartime, often get done in haste and the paperwork isn't complete -- in Desert Storm, 2/3 of the containers shipped to Saudi Arabia had to be opened to confirm what was in them.)
Clinton orders merger of the military and civilian weather-satellite systems, with the goal of eventually having a single three-satellite system instead of a pair of two-satellite systems. It will probably be ten years or so before satellites meeting joint requirements are launched, because there is a considerable inventory of the old birds built or under contract. ESA and Eumetsat have been officially invited to explore the possibility of a wider merger including the European weather satellites. All data collected will be released openly, although in times of military crisis some of it may be delayed.
White House also orders a change of plans for Landsat: DoD is no longer involved, and NASA is now fully in charge.
Editorial suggesting past experience as a guide to NASA's role: in the 1930s, in the wake of a war and in a time of indecision and tight budgets, the government did not fund large aeronautical projects, but concentrated on basic research... which built up knowledge that later proved crucial when major advances were needed. Citing DC-X, AW&ST urges an emphasis on flying demonstrators, to keep people honest and preserve practical skills at relatively low cost. "Large projects are not appropriate in times of indecision. They become sinkholes, absorbing money and producing paper. Basic research and funding X-plane, 'Skunk Works' types of programs are keys..."
SMASH! "Sayy... I *liked* that window."| Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology "I enjoyed it too!" "Hmph! Some hero!"| henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry