[Yes, this is a two-week combined issue. Furthermore, the 26 Dec issue was their annual photo issue, which had no text and little space-related material. (It always amazes me that the AW&ST photo issues are so drab and boring.) So the next summary will be for 2 Jan 1995.]
Standard Space Platforms Corp sues BMDO and others for alleged patent infringement on the MSTI satellite series.
19 new NASA astronauts, including two female military pilots.
ALARM is dead, long live SBIR, as the USAF again revises and renames its new-missile-warning-sat program.
FAA approves use of GPS for navigation over water and in remote land areas lacking conventional navigation aids.
Classified conference about to convene to figure out coordination of space-support teams for military operations. A regional military commander facing a crisis -- for example, in South Korea recently -- can find himself inundated with as many as 22 teams offering specialized space-based help. They're useful but it's too confusing.
Telemetry from the failed Ariane says that problems started immediately at third-stage ignition: gas-generator chamber pressure was only about 60% of normal, due to some sort of blockage of LOX flow, and this hurt pump performance badly enough that main chamber pressure likewise suffered. The net result was about 30% thrust loss. The engine ran for 740s of the planned 780s burn, and then the onboard computer shut it down. [I still haven't seen a clear explanation of why the engine was shut down then; seems like a longer burn might have rescued the mission, but maybe the software just wasn't up to it.] This is the first such failure. Arianespace's planned brisk launch pace to recover from the last failure is obviously in trouble.
PanAmSat is not too pleased either. Ironically, the day before, it had signed on to be the first commercial customer for Ariane 5 in 1996. A replacement satellite is already in the works, and should be ready to fly in about a year.
Ariane's insurance rates will rise. So will rates industry-wide, because it's been an expensive year for the insurers -- the worst ever, in fact. With two Ariane failures, the post-launch failure of Telstar 402, and the usual background of smaller claims, payouts are up and the money has to come from somewhere.
NASA issues RFP for Med-Lite launch services, specified to launch half a Delta payload at similar cost per pound. The contract would start with the FUSE launch in late 1998, and continue with four more launches including two small Mars missions, plus options on nine more, details ill-defined. Only US companies need apply, and over 50% of component cost must be US parts. There are penalty clauses for schedule slips, and hints of reward clauses for making the tight Mars launch windows.
NASA expects 4-6 bids. The only openly announced one, so far, is a team of OSC and McDonnell Douglas; they're not talking about what they will propose, but OSC has proposed a souped-up Taurus for such work in the past.
The RFP allows use of the USAF's surplus Titan 2s, but warns interested bidders that the Titans would be supplied "as is" with no promises about condition, and urges companies to inspect them before relying on them.
Sievers Instruments, a small company that did work for NASA on water-quality analyzers for the space station, is about to see one of its analyzers fly... on Mir.
Phillips Lab achieves successful Topaz 2 rapid startup in simulated space conditions (with a non-nuclear heat source).
Raytheon wins contract for Iridium antennas and transceivers.
Asteroid named after Frank Zappa.
Hubble is doing well, with only minor failures and degradation since the repair mission. The latest surprise is from a survey of faint, distant galaxies, intended to look at very early galaxies: lots of well-formed, mature-looking elliptical galaxies, lots of strange, ragged ones, but no well-formed spirals. Nobody knows what it means.
There is a difference between | Henry Spencer cynicism and skepticism. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu