henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (08/20/90)
Discovery's right payload-bay door bent slightly by a crane operator's
error. The door recovered after the crane was moved away and there is
thought to be no damage, although an investigation is underway.
Once again the best Pegasus coverage in AW&ST is in advertising! An
Orbital Sciences ad opposite one of the lead news pages is mostly a
full-page photograph of Pegasus in flight, motor lit and pulling up
into its climb.
Imax photos of Hubble deployment, as seen from within the payload bay.
More on Hubble's problems. The USAF apparently offered NASA the use
of spysat test facilities for testing HST optics, on condition that all
personnel involved have Top Secret clearances... which most of them lacked.
"Retired NASA managers" comment that a major problem -- in hindsight --
was that the "prime contractor", Lockheed, was not required to oversee
Perkin-Elmer work. There may have been some deliberate compartmentalization
because of each company's military projects, also. [The real problem here,
which was noticed well before launch, is that there *was* no real prime
contractor for HST. NASA was in charge of putting everything together
from what P-E and Lockheed supplied. The perceptive reader will notice
that NASA is doing the same thing with the space station... except that
it has *five* contractors instead of two! Talk about optimism...]
As one might expect, changes are being made to HST planning. Reassessment
of which observing proposals are workable is underway. Some early science
observations are being moved up further, as experiments in using the
messed-up optics. Planetary imaging in the UV will be done, as will early
attempts at tracking of nearby stars to detect planets around them. A try
will be made at imaging Pluto, although it may not work. A team is being
formed to investigate computerized image enhancement, something optical
astronomers have seldom made much use of; bright stars, at least, should
be observable at full resolution by using the central "spike" of sharp focus
and filtering out the fuzzy halo around it. The principal observers for
WFPC earlier thought that it was useless, but guest observers planning to
use it say that 10-20% of the original observing program may still be
worth doing. ESA is talking about the idea of using Faint Object Camera
spare parts to build a replacement FOC with correcting mirrors.
Shuttle program still stalled by hydrogen leaks. Diagnosis is proving
very difficult, because the problem shows up only at liquid-hydrogen
temperatures, with all the complications and safety problems that incurs.
Known small misalignments between orbiters and tanks are largely discounted
as possible causes, since their effects are believed to be well understood
and insufficient to account for the leaks, but investigation of them is
nevertheless continuing because it is a very suspicious coincidence that
the biggest misalignments yet seen [minor ones have flown before] are on
the same orbiter/tank combinations that have leaks. Sabotage is definitely
discounted; a saboteur could find simpler ways of causing trouble.
European industry working on revisions to their proposal for Columbus,
after ESA bounced the original. Changes include reductions in the complex
and confusing structure of options, and a simpler management structure
with clear responsibilities. [NASA could learn from this...]
ESA Council approves ESA-NASA agreement on the Cassini Saturn mission, with
ESA to provide the Huygens probe to go into Titan's atmosphere.
Space Services Inc. lays off most of its employees, after its primary
financial backer decides to turn off the tap.
--
Committees do harm merely by existing. | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
-Freeman Dyson | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry