henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (04/29/91)
NASA's Precision Segmented Reflector program, aimed at mirrors for space astronomy, will terminate at the end of FY91. The excuse offered is that advances in adaptive optics etc. require some rethinking. The U of Houston Wake Shield project, intended to fly on the end of the orbiter's arm, is being upgraded to a free-flier, separated from the shuttle for a few days during a mission. The intent of the project is to provide an ultra-clean environment in the wake of a conical shield, and concerns about contamination from the orbiter have arisen. NASA decides to launch Atlantis despite minor hinge cracks. The cracks found in Atlantis are actually closer to being scratches, and are not as serious as the ones in Discovery and Columbia. The Ariane mission delayed due to third-stage worries flies; no problem. Launch dates for Cassini and CRAF have been swapped to give CRAF more development time and weight margin. Cassini goes in Nov 1995, CRAF in Feb 1996. The changes also include a Venus gravity assist for CRAF, which will add eight months to the flight time but increase payload and provide better fallback launch windows if CRAF can't make Feb 1996. NASA engineer at Reston, asked by visitor why his office and adjacent hallways lack models, photos, paintings of Fred, comments: "Are you kidding me? This is the Space Station Office. We don't know anything about hardware here!" [Meant humorously, but oh so appropriate...] OSC to get two new NASA contracts: seven Pegasus launches (plus options on three more) for Goddard's Small Explorer series, starting 1993 and running two per year, and five years of data from OSC's proposed SeaStar commercial remote-sensing satellite, starting in Oct 1993. The latter is noteworthy as the first government purchase of such data from a fully private venture. DARA (the German space agency) recommends cutting the size of the Columbus lab for Fred by a factor of two, mostly to cut costs but also to permit a fully-equipped launch. "If NASA is going to reduce their space station, I think we have the right to reduce ours as well." The resulting module will be about the size of Spacelab. The change would also help keep Columbus logistic support within its current allotment of shuttle space. NASA has not reacted officially, but Lenoir has said in the past that the NASA changes might well spark changes in the foreign modules, and that the US:foreign interfaces remain unchanged and the impact thus is minimal. ESA has also asked NASA whether the Columbus man-tended free-flyer can be serviced by the shuttle rather than by docking to Fred. This would be cheaper, but another concern is that docking the free-flyer to the station will be trickier with the more closely-spaced solar arrays of the new Fred design. DARA also thinks that the man-tended free-flyer and Hermes should get a program stretch, as both funding and manpower are tight for doing them, the Columbus Fred module, and Ariane 5 simultaneously. Arianespace is proposing to boost the performance of Ariane 5 [again!] because Hermes keeps gaining weight. -- And the bean-counter replied, | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology "beans are more important". | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry