Progress M-25 docks with Mir 13 Nov.
Jed Pearson suddenly resigns as NASA shuttle/station head, allegedly because of pressure for cuts in operations costs. Wayne Littles appointed as his replacement.
TRW and Canada's Teleglobe announce intent to form Odyssey Worldwide Services to operate and market TRW's medium-orbit Odyssey cellular-comsat system. Odyssey first launch is set for 1998, FCC licensing permitting. The full constellation will be four satellites in each of three 50deg 5591nmi orbits, to be launched two at a time by Atlas 2AS class launchers. Connections will go via one satellite to one of 10-11 ground stations, where they will be routed into the normal phone system; there will be no intersatellite links.
DBTM, the Design Bureau of Transport Machinery, which does the Russian launch-pad systems, is talking to US companies and the USAF about applying Russian pad technology to US launchers. Said a USAF officer who watched a Zenit launch at Baikonur: "we were in awe at the simplicity and operability of the Zenit prelaunch process... there is no need for human presence on the launch pad..." Baikonur can launch a second Zenit from the same pad five hours after the first. Martin Marietta is having DTBM evaluate the Atlas launch process.
DTBM and MM both say that reports of deterioration at Baikonur are exaggerated. "Some people may look at weeds growing around some of these pads and conclude this reflects a state of disrepair, but the Russians aren't worried about these kinds of things."
New Hubble images largely discredit the simplest explanation for the "missing mass" problem: large numbers of small, dim red-dwarf stars. One group used WFPC2 star images taken at random points in the sky while Hubble was using other instruments, the other looked at a dense cluster of galaxies where the proposed red dwarfs should be thickly packed. Both found few small stars in general, and essentially none below 0.2 solar masses.
DoD looking at applications of GPS to survival radios for use by downed fliers. They want to combine satellite data link, line-of-sight voice, and GPS position determination. The Aerospace Corporation is proposing what they call "inverse GPS" [which sounds a whole lot like Geostar to me], using satellite timing of a digital burst transmitted by the radio; this would simplify and shrink the radio, at the cost of needing changes to satellites. The military is interested in the idea of using civilian comsat systems for the communications part, saving the costs of military satellites, but it means a delay in availability and [they say] higher service fees.
Atlantis retrieves Crista-Spas, verifying the approach-from-below rendezvous technique which largely eliminates firing of braking jets toward the target and provides a fail-safe rendezvous where systems failure cannot produce a collision. The last braking-jet firing was at 2kft (twice the objective), and timing and fuel use matched predictions.
Atlantis lands at Edwards 14 Nov, after diversion from KSC by bad weather.
US-Russian negotiations hit a snag on the Salyut FGB space tug: technical progress is adequate, but there is disagreement over price (Khrunichev wants $245M, Boeing says "no way") and over who will pay for the launch (RKA wants NASA to pay, NASA says it should be part of RKA's contribution). Goldin thinks things are under control and expects to sign a detailed tug contract by March.
One as-yet-unresolved problem is Russian customs regulations. They've already stalled delivery of NASA equipment for Thagard's Mir flight badly enough that he will get to Mir before his gear does.
USAF sets Titan IV warning-satellite launch from the Cape for 16 Dec after the payload was cleaned of two batches of on-pad contamination. The investigating team found no single source, and determined that the second batch was probably residue from the first one. They recommended tighter procedures, less work within the payload fairing, better protective covers, and alterations to the fairing air-conditioning system.
Rockwell about to ship the Mir docking unit to NASA, with the pyro situation still not entirely satisfactory -- the Russian supplier is still balking at supplying detailed information due to military security. The current Rockwell position is that the emergency-EVA procedure -- removing 96 bolts to separate the docking unit from the shuttle airlock -- is an adequate third-string procedure, backing up the pyros which back up the mechanical separation system.
Specification documents for the 747: 1 | Henry Spencer Ditto for Air Force One (a 747): 14000 | henry@zoo.toronto.edu