henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (03/19/90)
Voyager 1 is about to snap its solar-system-portrait pictures. JPL is studying including a very short exposure of the Sun, which involves some risk of damaging the video system (which will not be used again). Soviets fly manned maneuvering unit on Mir, doing it cautiously with a safety tether (partly because Mir does not have maneuvering capability to go after a stranded cosmonaut). Flights without a tether will come later. The Soviet MMU is significantly heavier than the US one, and has more thrusters, probably to provide redundancy with less reliance on computer control. It also has about 50% more total delta-V, and may have a very small ranging radar built in. Congressional space-station supporters warn Bush not to try to take funding for new initiatives out of existing projects. First photographs of a shuttle military payload [before launch], specifically the AFP-675 due to go up on Atlantis in 1992 (formerly late this year, until the latest revisions to the manifest). The biggest component is the CIRRIS infrared missile-tracking telescope, which flew on the fourth shuttle mission but returned no data because of an internal failure. Canada starts detailed design work on Radarsat. Radarsat goes up in 1994 to provide commercial synthetic-aperture-radar services for five years, with some possibility of a follow-on. Radarsat was approved in 1987, but political wranglings between Ottawa and the provinces over a complex cost-sharing deal have held things up. This will be the first operational (as opposed to experimental) radar remote-sensing satellite. NASA will have access to the data in return for launching Radarsat (on a Delta) and use of a US receiving station in Alaska. [Yes, that's all -- light week for space news.] -- MSDOS, abbrev: Maybe SomeDay | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology an Operating System. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu