[Addendum to the Oct 17 summary: the times in the piece on Magellan's death plunge are PDT, zone -0700.]
Cover picture is a topographic map of the Greenland icecap from ERS-1 data.
Topex/Poseidon team gets the CNES medal.
FAA Administrator formally offers the world GPS at no charge for 10 years. (This is written confirmation of a verbal offer made several years ago.)
FCC licenses Orbcomm for its full 36-satellite constellation for data relay and position determination.
US Army admits deployment of JTAGS (Joint Tactical Ground Station) units in the Persian Gulf, giving direct reception and rapid processing of missile-warning-satellite data. Similar equipment is/was in Korea.
India's PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) flies successfully, for the first time, 15 Oct. The Indians are overjoyed; their recent launch record has been spotty. PSLV payload capability is comparable to an Atlas E. There are plans to upgrade it into GSLV, for 5500lb to GTO. The PSLV's first stage is a large segmented solid motor with six smaller strap-ons. The second stage uses storable liquids, the third is another solid, and the small apogee stage uses storable liquids again. Next launch will be in about a year, after which PSLV will be considered to be operational.
The PSLV launch involved a dogleg maneuver, a 55deg turn just before first-stage burnout, because range-safety limits at Sriharikota constrain polar launches to start out heading SE rather than due S. The payload was the 1770lb IRS-P2 remote-sensing spacecraft, and it was placed in its desired 825km Sun-synchronous orbit. It carries a CCD pushbroom imager with about 40m resolution in four spectral bands. It's similar to the one lost in the unsuccessful PSLV launch last Sept, and to two others that have been launched by the Russians for India. More advanced satellites with higher imaging resolution are planned.
Aerojet seeks DoD approval and partial funding for testing the NK-33 engine, possibly at Phillips Labs or Aerojet's Sacramento test site. The objective is to demonstrate feasibility of using existing NK-33s on US launchers. Over 90 are in storage, and about 70 of those are nominally cleared for flight. Aerojet thinks it has the lead over its competition: P&W/Energomash's RD-180 is a paper engine (although based on the RD-170), and so is Rocketdyne's proposed upgraded MA-5. The NK-33 is rated at 338klb thrust, and minor upgrades could give 440-450klb. Aerojet is prepared to put the engine into production in the US when Russian stocks run out.
Mir hits some problems in mid-Oct, with temporary loss of automatic attitude control (apparently due to power shortages plus a computer malfunction) for a couple of days, and some life-support difficulties with a six-man crew aboard. The problems were severe enough for ground controllers to consider bringing the crew down, and some of the EuroMir experiments were disrupted.
ERS-1 radar-altimeter map of the world's oceans, showing substantial differences in surface height.
Story on the British National Remote Sensing Center, which started out as a government agency but was privatized a few years ago, and has been growing quite rapidly as a commercial venture, with government support gradually being phased out. It specializes in working with customers to do in-depth analysis, especially combining data from multiple satellites, rather than just providing raw data. For example, it is now doing analysis of images of British croplands, using Spot and Landsat images and digitized boundary maps, to verify farmers' claims for crop subsidies.
Bureaucratic snag on Cassini/Huygens... Goldin has told the Cassini people, in no uncertain terms, that they are responsible for the success of the mission, including the Titan IV launch and the Huygens probe. So they are asking for direct access to ESA's contractors and labs to do their own quality-control reviews. ESA does *not* approve, citing the US-European Memorandum Of Understanding which defines the roles of the participants. Goldin has offered to open US contractors and labs to ESA quality control in return; however, ESA has no particular interest in this.
David Dale, head of science projects for ESA, says it's fine with him if NASA just wants to add people to ESA's existing review boards and such. It's not so fine if they want to do their own reviews. He's concerned that such independent reviewers will want to demonstrate their diligence by complaining about every i that isn't dotted and every t that isn't crossed, without regard for whether it affects the spacecraft or not... and he hasn't got the manpower to deal with such nitpicking and still meet the C/H launch schedule. He also notes that anything which goes beyond the existing MOU instantly becomes political, and he's got 14 governments which have to sign off on it.
There is one precedent for such review: Dale "turned a blind eye" to such independent review when British Aerospace was building the replacement solar arrays for Hubble. He considers that a special case, however. For Huygens, "unless I am confronted with something the system has missed or where the system has broken down, I would see no reason to change it".
Many NASA managers think worrying about ESA quality control on Huygens should have very low priority compared to worrying about Russian quality control on the space station.
Brazil reports successful tests of automatic dependent surveillance (in which aircraft automatically report GPS-computed positions via satellite data links) over the Amazon, where ground radar coverage is sparse.
There is more to life than getting a job | Henry Spencer and making a living. --Barbara Morgan | henry@zoo.toronto.edu