[A heavy news week, with some particularly interesting items.]
First attempt to launch STEP-1, by Pegasus XL dropped from OSC's Tristar, scrubbed June 23 when a stabilizer locking pin fails to retract during the final countdown.
NASA names "Hoot" Gibson, its head astronaut, to command the first Mir-docking shuttle mission in mid-1995.
Development of the new lighter external tank hits snags: two review panels report weight growth, problems with aluminum-lithium alloy production, and difficulties with the new structural design, and also raise questions about the decision not to reserve the first new tank as a structural-test article. Martin Marietta says the situation is under control and the project's goals can still be met; others are less sure. JSC says the 12klb payload boost -- to be done with the new tank, filament-wound SRB casings, and clearing the SSMEs to run at 106% of their nominal power rather than 104% -- can still be achieved, but much of the weight reserve is gone and it's still early.
A related headache is that the shuttle airlock has gained weight, partly due to Russian avionics and partly due to "structures miscalculation". Shuttle managers wanted to charge the 1200lb weight overrun against the space-station weight reserve, but the reserve is only 1800lb and the station managers don't want to see 2/3 of their reserve eaten up when much of their own hardware isn't built yet.
There are things NASA could do to boost performance further if the reserves aren't enough: authorize use of the main engines at 110% [before Challenger, there was talk of doing 120% eventually], delete the recovery systems on the SRBs, or tighten shuttle launch windows to minimize propellant reserves. All of these have their own problems.
US and Russia sign interim agreement on station cooperation, plus that $400M contract for shuttle-Mir operations in the next four years. Russia still says it is firmly committed to the program, and will go it alone if the US decides "to abandon us".
NASA thinks it has backup plans in place in case Russia does fail to deliver. Of note is a decision to buy, rather than lease, the Salyut FGB tugs; the Lockheed Bus-1 would also be available as a backup (although it's hard to sort out the cost, because the hardware already exists and NASA isn't sure how much it would have to pay the unnamed government agency that owns it).
Congressional station battle looms. [As usual, I'll skip details of stuff like this that is already history by the time I write the summary.]
Both NASA and RKA are concerned about details of station cooperation. NASA is uneasy about the friction between RKA and NPO Energia (which will be doing much of the work), and is worried about signs of poor coordination within Russian space operations. RKA, in return, is concerned about whether US technology-transfer paranoia, left over from the Cold War, will drown the station in paperwork (with accompanying delays), and about how to maintain effective international cooperation if the US reneges on its commitments to the station program.
NPO Energia receives Russian government approval for privatization (over RKA's protests), with the Russian government retaining a controlling interest for three years.
NASA starts technology work for a next-generation reusable launcher -- nominally, but not necessarily, an SSTO -- with a shower of small study contracts undertaken on a non-profit basis. The program will be run by a new Office of Space Access and Technology, aka Code X, being formed within NASA. It will try to emphasize flight demonstrations, including flights on DC-XA (DC-X after NASA takes it over). Of note:
And speaking of DC-X... it's flying again. Fourth flight on 20 June, fully fuelled for the first time, reaching higher altitude and doing some maneuvering to test high angles of attack. No problems. Four more flights are planned, two closely spaced for a rapid-turnaround demo followed by two more to try the flip maneuver (including the first use of the RCS). After this, DC-X will go back to McDD for NASA-funded changes, with static test late next year and further flights (at White Sands) in spring 1996. [Well, this may change a bit after what happened on the fifth flight.]
Ukrainian space agency pursues international cooperation on various projects, notably ocean-sensing radar satellites and the Zenit launcher. They plan to offer Zenit commercial launch services (13t to LEO, 2t to GEO) and are pursuing air launch [!] of a modified Zenit [with a shortened first stage, by the looks of it] that could put 9t into LEO or 1t into GEO without relying on use of Baikonur. Also under consideration is sea launch of a three-stage Zenit, perhaps in cooperation with Boeing; a Norwegian firm specializing in oil platforms is studying the details of a floating pad. Finally, conversion of some ballistic missiles into small launchers is being pursued; a demonstration launch of a launcher-configured SS-18 is planned for later this year.
DARA funds a feasibility study of the Russian-proposed Burlak small air-launched launcher, nominally capable of 1100kg into LEO. Burlak would be dropped at supersonic speed from a Blackjack bomber. OHB System GmbH, which has been working with the Russians on various things for years, is doing the study. Development cost est. $29M, launch cost $5M. OHB has in fact been studying air-launch systems in a small way for some time, including a system dubbed Diana that would use a Concorde as a carrier.
Separately, OHB and Polyot have signed a deal for OHB to market the Cosmos launcher (1500kg into LEO) in the West. OHB will also use Cosmos to launch some of its own Safir mini-comsats. The first Safir has been awaiting piggyback launch on a Resurs satellite for some time, and delays with the Zenit booster and the Resurs main payload are becoming a concern: OHB could accommodate some delays because the ground stations were not ready anyway, but now everything is waiting for the satellite to fly.
Aerojet completes tests of a small Russian rocket thruster, intended mostly as a pathfinder for further cooperation. R&DIME's LTRE 400N thruster is noteworthy in one minor respect: it uses a film of oxidizer, rather than the film of fuel more usual in the West, for chamber/nozzle cooling.
NASA about to take delivery on a Carnegie-Mellon-built robot to do automated inspection and maintenance of shuttle tiles. Tessellator should do a better job of inspection than humans, because it compares the appearance of each tile to an image from the previous inspection. It does only one maintenance job -- injection of waterproofing compound -- but that is itself significant because the compound is a hazardous chemical that requires protective gear for human maintenance workers.
Successful Ariane launch June 17, carrying an Intelsat 7 and a pair of small British military-research piggyback payloads. Arianespace is planning three more launches before the end of July, to start catching up on backlog. This launch slipped from June 4 due to problems with the LH2 arm on the pad. The January failure has been traced to inadequate bearing cooling in the third-stage LOX turbopump, and has been cured by adding a purge line and a lubricating coating.
Third Ariane 5 SRB firing successful June 20.
Inmarsat selects intermediate-altitude orbits for its Iridium competitor, with exact constellation layout still being examined.
ISAS officially admits that the M-5 launcher is two years behind schedule and launch of its early payloads will be delayed. Little has been revealed about why, although it is known that the program has had trouble with the telescoping nozzles for its second and third stages. Muses-B (VLBI radio astronomy) will fly in 1996, Lunar-A (three penetrators to the lunar surface) in 1997, and Planet-B (small Mars orbiter) in 1998.
Japan has also approved three new satellite projects: ALOS (nee HIROS, an advanced remote-sensing satellite with 2.5m imaging and a radar), DRTS (an experimental Clarke-orbit data-relay satellite, to fly before ALOS), and Astro-E (an "advanced environmental observation" satellite).
"It was blasphemy that made us free." | Henry Spencer -- Leon Wieseltler | henry@zoo.toronto.edu