henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (07/17/90)
[No, I haven't stopped doing AW&ST summaries, I've just, um, gotten a bit behind...] The cover of this issue is a foldout color photo of HST deployment. Editorial urging NASA to make an effort to keep public education about HST going even after the initial hoopla dies down. [Well, the best-laid plans...] Soviets say they are experimenting with a Mars rover combining both wheels and walking legs. Alcoa-Goldsworthy Engineering, McDonnell Douglas Space Systems, and the Space Studies Institute combine to experiment with using solar concentrators to melt simulated lunar soil, in hopes that it may be possible to make a fiberglass-like composite from lunar soil without major chemical processing. Space-station partners negotiate agreement on various minor details of using each other's equipment and facilities in orbit. It's not yet final though, notably because of "technology transfer questions". :-[ The [first] slip of the Astro-1 mission is likely to have a domino effect on subsequent shuttle missions. [So much for optimism... :-)] ESA officially establishes its astronaut center in Cologne, with major construction to start next year and the first astronaut selection to be done around then too. The intent is a corps of about 40, representing all 13 ESA members, by 2000. Scout launch May 9 puts two small experimental military comsats into orbit. First HST pictures delayed due to (human) error in pointing data -- a correction for Earth's precession in relation to 30-year-old star data was applied with the wrong sign. More pictures of HST deployment, and pictures of Earth taken from high altitude. All the Discovery astronauts were surprised at the striking view from the unusually high orbit. Germany is pushing for a more prominent role in Hermes, and ESA is making some management-structure changes towards a less France-dominated program. Current Hermes plans are for an unmanned launch in summer 1998 and a first manned mission early the next year, with a two-orbiter fleet eventually flying [as I recall] 2-3 times a year. The official switch from definition to full-scale development has slipped six months, to 1 July 1991, mostly to avoid it becoming an issue during Germany's national elections this autumn. Support grows for Inmarsat's proposal to equip its third-generation Clarke-orbit comsats to radiate Navstar/Glonass-style navigation signals as well. The major uncertainty is who's going to pay for it. One possibility is for coalitions of national aviation agencies to fund it, e.g. a Western Hemisphere coalition mostly consisting of Canada and the US. CNES is trying to organize a European/African coalition. In any case, the problem is some distance away, since Inmarsat-3 deployment is several years off yet. -- NFS: all the nice semantics of MSDOS, | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology and its performance and security too. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
small@boole.seas.ucla.edu (James F. Small/;093090) (08/09/90)
I have lost my list of ftp sites. Can someone please tell me
the site name of the NOAA site that has the satellite photo gifs
--
Devout Atheist
atheist%gendep.info.com@trout.nosc.mil
small@seas.ucla.edu
IZZYZ93@OAC.UCLA.EDU