henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (03/20/89)
Cosmic Background Explorer, slated for Delta launch this summer, has now been loaded with liquid helium in preparation for launch. NOAA and CNES begin formal negotiations aimed at possible merger of Landsat and Spot systems. National Academies of Sciences and Engineering report to Bush says the space station should be undertaken after, not before, long-term goals (e.g. return to the Moon, manned flight to Mars) are selected... which should be a high priority. Soviets plan two consecutive medium-duration missions to Mir, pending full analysis of data from the year-long mission. The current crew will be up until April or May, followed by a two-man crew which will stay up until October or so. Speaking of the one-year crew... Soviets say: "We're one step closer to Mars... Our initial observations of Titov and Manarov show they are in great shape..." Soviet Mars-mission planning is moving ahead. One approach would be launch of living quarters on one Energia, followed by the Mars lander and the Earth return module on another, followed by fuel and nuclear- electric propulsion systems on several more. The total crew would be four, with two going down to the surface. AW&ST visit to Baikonur sees second Soviet shuttle orbiter nearing completion, as well as test models of it. Two test models had a pair of unusual pods, resembling jet-engine nacelles but not in the same place as the jet pods used on the atmospheric-flight-test model (which also had the mystery pods). The Soviets refuse to explain. Soviets comment that six people is really too many for Mir -- when it had that many recently (the two one-year cosmonauts, two visitors, Dr. Poliakov, and Chretien), it had trouble with temperature and humidity buildup. They say this will be remedied when the long-awaited expansion modules are added. Glavkosmos signs definitive marketing agreement with Space Commerce Corp. of Houston [this is Art Dula's bunch], giving the latter exclusive US marketing rights for Soviet space services, hardware, and data. SCC has been marketing Soviet launch services for some time, but will now also handle Mir payload space, payloads on unmanned recoverables, Soviet comsats, data from navigation and ocean-sensing satellites, images taken from Mir, and Soviet space-program technical literature. In the past, customers like Payload Systems Inc. (which is flying payloads aboard Mir) have dealt direct with Glavcosmos. SCC is also arranging inspection trips to Baikonur for businessmen interested in Soviet launch services; there is considerable interest in public tours. Trials of telephone service from trans-Atlantic airliners, using Inmarsat satellites, will start soon. Two British Airways 747s will be the trial aircraft; the price will be about $10/minute. Experiments are also underway to evaluate automatic position reporting for aircraft via satellites, which could greatly simplify oceanic air-traffic control. Position reporting is easy to do because it needs little bandwidth and cheap antennas (voice is harder, with current satellites). The major obstacles to satellite-based oceanic traffic control are not technical but political: traditionally, responsibility for traffic control over oceans rests with the nearest country, to get the best use out of limited communications range, and a more efficient scheme using satellites and a few consolidated control centers would mean loss of revenue, employment, and prestige for some countries. First Pegasus launch (scheduled for July) will probably carry a Glomar experimental message-relay satellite for DoD and a pair of gas-release canisters for NASA ionospheric research. Launch will be into polar orbit from off Vandenberg. The original payload plan was a cluster of small store/dump comsats, but they have been postponed due to the slight element of risk in using the first launch of a new booster. This will be the second Glomar (an earlier one went up on a shuttle in 1985); they are aimed at demonstrating feasibility of using small satellites to relay data from (and commands to) small military sensors. A particular application is data relay from antisubmarine-warfare sensors scattered on the Arctic ice, to help track Soviet submarines under it. NASA jumped at the chance to use the rest of the Pegasus payload for gas-release tests, several of which had to be dropped from the NASA/DoD CRRES satellite when it was shifted from the shuttle to an expendable. This will replace one of two planned Scout launches with canisters, which would have cost more and taken longer. -- Welcome to Mars! Your | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology passport and visa, comrade? | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu