Lockheed complains to Congress that Ariane is more heavily subsidized than Proton, but the US has never thought of imposing launch quotas on Ariane. Also noted was that LKE has been winning Proton business away from Arianespace, not US launchers, so far.
Aerojet signs deal with the Chemiautomatics Design-Development Bureau (CADB) to offer CADB's RD-0120, the Energia core engine, in the US. Aerojet says the RD-0120 has specific impulse and chamber pressure comparable to the SSME, at 1/4 of the cost. There is a good supply of them in storage, and low-rate production is continuing. The RD-0120 is a single-shaft, single-preburner LH2/LO2 engine with 440klb thrust, long life, and deep-throttling capability. Aerojet thinks it has potential for conversion to a tripropellant engine.
Aerojet is also offering engines from Trud (the NK-33 LOX/kerosene engine built for the N1, and the smaller NK-31/NK-39 upper-stage LOX/kerosene engines) and Lyulka (the D-57 89klb LOX/LH2 upper-stage engine).
Joint defence appropriations bill transfers $60M from DoD to NASA, $25M of it for Landsat 7 and $35M for SSTO R&D.
Story on China's efforts to develop its own comsat industry, which has led to some of its recent partnerships.
NASDA is now estimating ETS-6 lifetime at perhaps a year, after the on-board propulsion failure that stranded it in transfer orbit. The failure is attributed to a faulty valve that largely blocked fuel flow, holding thrust to about 10% of the design value. Repeated attempts at engine firings showed no improvement, and the oxidizer supply ran out on the fifth try. NASDA hopes to salvage some of the mission of the experimental comsat, but deterioration of the solar arrays in the Van Allen belts will limit things: array output was 5800W when the arrays were opened on 3 Sept, but only 5300W on 13 Sept. Projections say that power will be 4700W by the end of Sept, and will fall to 2000W (too low for useful operation) within a year.
Eosat, scrambling to salvage something from the wreckage of the Landsat program, is now in the black based on sales of data from non-US satellites. They are distributing data from IRS-1B (India) and JERS-1 (Japan), are working on agreements with ESA and Canada for (respectively) ERS-1 and Radarsat data, and are investigating whether old Russian spysat images can be digitized and sold profitably. They are about to offer network access to sample data, and electronic-mail access to their staff.
Color pictures of the SAFER test runs on Discovery.
Story on coordinated lidar experiments flown towards the end of the Discovery mission, with Langley ground and airborne lasers examining the same regions of the atmosphere as the LITE experiment on Discovery. This was considered an important part of the mission, because LITE was being flown primarily for technology testing, not for the observations themselves. Airborne lidars have higher resolution and lower noise, but are inadequate for many scientific purposes because they give only a local view of global phenomena. Atmospheric scientists would like a continuously-operating lidar in orbit; one was planned for EOS, but lost in budget cuts, and Langley is now considering whether to propose one as a small satellite or a station payload.
Little minds have only room for thoughts | Henry Spencer of bread and butter. --Amundsen | henry@zoo.toronto.edu