henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (02/12/90)
[The subscription foulup dropped my copies of the late-Dec issues and the Jan 1 issue into a black hole. I've arranged for replacements, but they will be a little while coming. Meanwhile, I think I'd better carry on or I'll get hopelessly behind.] NASA to combine Office of Exploration and Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology, on the grounds that the two are closely interrelated. Arnold Aldrich, recently appointed head of the OAST, will be in charge. [Translation: the Office of Exploration is dead.] NASP officials and contractors meet in Florida to talk about the notion of combining the competing contractors into a single team. Big fuss over the Japanese "lunar mission". Muses, a magnetospheric science mission, is set for launch Jan 23. On March 20, it will make a lunar flyby, detaching a small subsatellite which will go into lunar orbit. The lunar-science content of the mission is essentially zero; the only useful results of the orbiter will be experience in the problems of tracking and communicating with a lunar mission. There are no specific plans for a followon. A matching fuss about several Japanese companies starting to spend small amounts on lunar-base technology. Ohbayashi Corp., a large Japanese construction company, will be heavily involved in a joint project (with several US companies) to build a lunar-base technology-research facility near KSC. There are political grumblings about the Japanese involvement. Also viewed with alarm is the Japanese company which is buying a Mir engineering mockup from the USSR. The US says it is impressed with the Japanese interest in lunar bases etc., but it is too early to say what international participation there might be in the US project. Second Pegasus captive-carry test run Dec 15, with hopes high for a real launch in Feb. [No, they decided a third carry test was in order, so launch date has slipped to March.] DARPA/USAF Teal Ruby infrared tracking experiment moves to dead storage at Norton AFB, out of its Rockwell clean room. Originally it was going to be the payload for the first Vandenberg shuttle launch, to run live tests on detecting and tracking aircraft and missiles from space. Unfortunately, the original low-cost fast-track program hit major technical trouble and massive cost escalation, further complicated by Challenger. It was then manifested to fly March 1990 from KSC, after modifying it for launch on an expendable was determined to be difficult and costly. Then DARPA and the USAF agreed that the USAF would handle all Teal Ruby funding in 1990 and 1991, and once the DARPA funding ended in 1989, the USAF cancelled the program instead. Teal Ruby is ready to fly, but probably never will. If nothing happens in the next two years, it will be cannibalized for parts. Arianespace decides to develop a slightly uprated Ariane 4, stretching the third-stage tanks a bit. The combination of this, various weight- reduction measures being gradually implemented on Ariane 4, and the fact that Ariane 4 performance is slightly above original expectations, will raise payload about 5%. This is officially the last Ariane 4 change. Magellan has had a memory failure [sounds like a single bit dead] and is on its backup computer. Software to bypass the failed section will be in place within a few days. This is expected to happen occasionally. First Commercial Titan launched Dec 31 on the tenth attempt [!]. Most of the delays were weather. Telemetry was lost at T+73s, but everything worked as planned and this caused no problems. Payloads were Skynet 4 (British military comsat) and JCSat 2 (Japanese domestic comsat). Martin Marietta has three more CT launch contracts -- two Intelsats, one next month and one in June, plus Mars Observer in 1992 -- and says this is plenty, the program is viable with only 1-2 launches a year. MM has decided that it doesn't want to mix and match customers, so it will emphasize single-payload launches in future. This largely takes it out of competition with the other commercial launches, as CT costs up to $125M and is not cost-effective for single payloads unless they are too heavy for the competition. CT marketing is in low gear right now anyway, because the CT pad (Complex 40 at the Cape) will be shut down for major modifications for 18-24 months as soon as the second Intelsat goes up. Group of US aerospace engineers visiting USSR sees formerly-flight-ready Soviet lunar module and orbital module, meant to take two cosmonauts to lunar orbit and one to the surface in 1968. The plan was scuttled by repeated failures of the N1 heavy booster. The Soviets told the MIT/Caltech group that the N1 would have launched the lunar module and a propulsion stage into Earth orbit, after which a Proton would have taken up the modified-Soyuz orbital module with the crew aboard, and the two would have docked and proceeded together from there. The Soviets also said that two complete N1s were scrapped when the whole program was finally killed in 1974. [Note an interesting side issue here: the crew were supposed to go up on a *Proton*. I'm not one of the serious Soviet-watchers, but this is the first time I recall the Soviets hinting at what some Western observers have been claiming for some time: Soyuz was meant to fly on Proton, not the slightly modified Vostok booster it now uses. One claim which has been heard is that Soyuz 1 went up on a Proton, and vibration problems during ascent contributed to the landing failure and Komarov's death, leading to the decision to cut down Soyuz for the Vostok booster and abandon man-rating of Proton.] Lockheed Space Operations begins deployment of a new computerized work-tracking system at KSC, aimed at reducing paperwork and speeding communication in shuttle ground processing. It may make enough of a difference to permit one more launch per year with the same manpower. RFP imminent for major design studies for ATDRSS, improved tracking and relay satellites which are meant to start replacing the existing TDRS system circa 1997. US civil-aviation leaders urge DoD to reaffirm availability of Navstar to civilians, after mutterings from the Pentagon about technology transfer etc etc cast doubts on future intentions. Moves towards developing a system which can receive both Navstar and Glonass signals -- a major win for the aviation community, which badly needs enough redundancy to detect an ailing satellite -- have apparently upset DoD. At a recent Moscow conference where the idea was discussed, a DoD representative kept an eye on the FAA officials and cautioned them not to reveal too much technical detail about Navstar. Attendees observe that the KGB does this routinely but it's a first for DoD. Technology-transfer worries are a bit odd since companies making civil Navstar receivers already have approval to sell to the USSR. Inmarsat proposes to equip its third-generation satellites with Navstar-like navigation-signal transmitters, providing more redundancy to aviation users except in the polar regions. (The Inmarsats are in Clarke orbit above the equator.) There is general agreement that Inmarsat would probably try to fill the void if DoD decided to make Navstar unavailable to civilians, but extending coverage to the polar regions would require a number of extra satellites and would probably result in imposition of user charges to cover the cost. USAF C-135 transport spends 12 days flying around the world (with a number of stops, of course) with a ground center in Cambridge tracking it and exchanging digital communications with it continuously via Geostar and Inmarsat satellites. This was a demonstration flight to show the capabilities of satellite-based transoceanic air-traffic control. -- SVR4: every feature you ever | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology wanted, and plenty you didn't.| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu