[If you're already seen this one, my apologies: it doesn't seem to have ever reached my own system, so I'm re-sending it on the assumption that it may have gotten lost altogether.]
Bob Farquhar of JHU-APL questions the origin of Clementine's Moon-asteroid flight profile, citing his proposal early in 1991 that was adopted by the project.
Next H-2 flight postponed again because of delays in repairs to the Space Flyer Unit payload. Negotiations with the fishermen's union will be required, since the winter launch window officially closes 28 Feb.
USAF plans five Titan IV launches this year, four from the Cape (all with Centaurs) and one from Vandenberg (no upper stage). This is considered an ambitious schedule [!].
Great Wall Industries publicly denounces Chinese press allegations that the Long March failure was due to the payload, saying that the truth will be known only after the investigation. Hughes is sending three (!) investigation teams: the obvious one, including senior personnel with experience from the Optus B-2 loss investigation; a second Hughes internal team without such experience, as "a fresh pair of eyes"; and an external team of outside experts "to make sure we're doing everything we can". One headache for the investigators will be that certain parts of the satellite are considered "sensitive" under US technology-transfer paranoia.
White House proposes to cut NASA FY96 budget, as a first step in cutting $5G (relative to previous plans) over the next five years. Goldin says this is going to require changes. Actually, the FY96 cut is fairly illusory, if you disregard inflation: the major loss is postponement of construction start on two new wind tunnels, a project that was somewhat uncertain anyway.
Details of India's new deals... Intelsat signs its first outright lease of transponder capacity, leasing 11 C-band transponders on Insat 2E (to be launched by Proton in late 1997) for about $100M. Intelsat has done capacity swaps before, but never outright leases; it says it wants to become a more commercial organization, and is open to similar deals where they are helpful, although it would still prefer to own its own birds. And Eosat has agreed in principle to market imagery and data from the ten remote-sensing satellites India expects to launch in the next decade, notably IRS-1C (slated for Russian launch this summer) which will provide better resolution than Eosat was expecting from the lost Landsat 6, plus an off-nadir viewing capability that will improve response time.
Final Ariane 5 "battleship" test (using flight-type engines but industrial cryo tanks) successful 27 Jan, including an automatic shutdown due to oxidizer depletion. Full-scale tests using full flight hardware are about to start, first five "M" development tests run by SEP, then three "Q" qualification tests run by Aerospatiale. Final qualification firings of the second-stage engine are already underway.
WorldView Imaging is merging with Ball's aerospace group, forming a new Ball subsidary to launch commercial 3m and 1m imaging sats (the 3m being WVI's former project, the 1m being Ball's). They plan a pair of each, each 400-500kg, all operating from 470km orbits. Launcher choice is not settled, although small Russian launchers and the LLV-1 are candidates.
Orion 1 comsat operational in Clarke orbit, after being maneuvered down from its unusual super-synchronous transfer orbit that took it as high as 75,000mi.
NASDA and ESA planning an intersatellite relay experiment, with NASDA's experimental LEO comsat Oicets talking to ESA's Artemis Clarke-orbit comsat by laser and S-band.
Wilcox and E-Systems to begin semi-operational trials of enhanced GPS systems to achieve full blind-landing accuracy. The objective here is demonstrating operational readiness, not just technical feasibility.
Discovery-Mir rendezvous successful. Discovery launched on schedule, right at the beginning of its 5min window. Problems with RCS valve leaks originally cast doubts on the rendezvous -- the Russians are very sensitive about possible contamination, especially of the horizon sensors on the Soyuz and Progress vehicles docked at Mir -- but fast negotiations led to approval of the approach. Discovery stayed within the planned corridor, nobody noticed any disturbance to Mir's solar arrays, and Discovery used less fuel than budgeted.
Experimental EVA, meant primarily to assess usability of the spacesuits in worst-case cold (with an eye on difficult thermal situations in station assembly) cut short, as the suits didn't fend off the cold quite as well as hoped.
Editorial on the pyrovalve controversy, urging more thorough testing of a smaller number of standardized designs. The biggest problem with the valves is that initially well-proven designs have been altered in many ways without full-scale testing.
There is a difference between | Henry Spencer cynicism and skepticism. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu