Indians happy: Intelsat to sign long-term lease for communications capacity on Insat 2E, and Eosat enters ten-year pact for sale of data from Indian remote-sensing satellites.
Hughes contracts with Afro-Asian Satellite Communications for two satellites, enhanced HS 601s with very large antennas, to provide direct links with handheld radios from Clarke orbit. One will cover Africa, the other central Asia from Moscow to Singapore. Gallium-arsenide solar cells and Hughes xenon-ion stationkeeping engines will be used.
Long March 2E, carrying Apstar 2, explodes about a minute after launch 26 Jan. No details yet.
NASA preparing for the shuttle-Mir rendezvous mission, a late add-on to a flight originally mainly dedicated to Spartan and Spacehab operations. This will be the first flight into the space-station orbital inclination, and the first test of launching a shuttle into the resulting very narrow launch window. NASA is not too worried about this -- historically, if the shuttle launches on a particular day at all, it usually goes up right at the beginning of the window. Extra precautions are being taken even so.
The crew for this one includes the first flight of a female shuttle pilot, Eileen Collins, and the second flight of a Russian cosmonaut on the shuttle, Vladimir Titov this time.
Spacehab, in addition to its usual batch of experiments, will carry a small experimental robot, and has been fitted with a window in exactly the same position as the camera on the shuttle/Mir docking module.
Extensive precautions will be taken during the rendezvous; the Russians are very concerned to avoid damage to their space station. For example, when the Russians said they wanted minimum distance to be 10m, the NASA people wrote down 30ft, but the Russians really meant 10m, so the NASA rules now say 35ft.
MM Astro Space gets NASA contract to build two more NOAA polar-orbit metsats, with the same basic design as the three now under contract.
MM Astronautics move of the Atlas program from San Diego to Denver well under way, with building construction well advanced and control of the program now in Denver.
Russia launches its first US satellite, Faisat 1, a small store-and-forward comsat for Final Analysis Inc. It went up on a Cosmos launcher 23 Jan, piggyback on a Tsikada naval-navsat launch (which also carried the Astrid satellite for Swedish Space Corp.). FAI plans to launch a constellation of 26 such satellites -- four planes of six each at 66deg, plus two birds in individual 83deg orbits for polar coverage -- to build a complete low-data-rate LEO comsat system; Russian launchers will be used throughout. Faisat 1, an experimental prototype, also carries a small thermal-control experiment for USAF Phillips Lab.
[That's it, a light week. Just as well, considering how far behind I am...]
There is a difference between | Henry Spencer cynicism and skepticism. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu