henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (11/18/87)
Cover is a Landsat photo of the Hangzhou river delta, from the new Chinese
Landsat receiving station.
Editorial urging US, Europe, USSR, and others to join in internationalizing
the Navstar and Glonass navsat systems, to reduce fears of service being cut
off at one country's whim.
Vandenberg shuttle facilities formally mothballed. Reactivation time would
be four years or more. Modifications to the exhaust duct against hydrogen
buildup will be designed but not implemented at this time.
[As has been clear for some time, the shuttle will never fly from Vandenberg.]
Payload Systems Inc will sponsor another series of KC-135 microgravity flights
using NASA's aircraft.
Soviet Union breaks manned spaceflight endurance record during the Moscow
Space Future Forum. Yuri Romanenko has been aboard Mir since Feb 6, beating
the previous Salyut 7 record. The Mir crew are unloading the Progress 32
freighter.
Analysis of Soviet spysats shows that their working lifetime is rising by
about one month per year.
Soviets launch biological spacecraft carrying rats and two monkeys. There
is some international participation planned in analysis of results.
First Soviet shuttle launch now not expected until 1989, according to Soviet
officials. The next (unmanned) Energia launch will not happen until next
year, and its initial schedule will be only 2-3 launches per year.
Soviets disclose long-term planning for a dozen new space-science missions,
and offer international participation in conjunction with the International
Space Year set for 1992. Notable are Medilab (medical lab module for Mir,
early 1990s), Priroda (remote-sensing module for Mir), Relikt-2 (galactic-
background sky-survey, 1992), Spectral-Roentgen (extreme-UV observatory,
1992-4), and Aelita (submillimeter-microwave observatory, 1994-5).
DoD to seek funds to add three more satellites to the Navstar configuration.
This essentially restores the original 24-satellite configuration, largely
eliminating the reduced-accuracy areas that were a major concern for aviation
use of Navstar. Another issue is that planned monitoring stations might not
detect degradation of a satellite's signals for several hours. This might
be addressed by adding some civil monitoring stations, or by cross-checking
the satellites against each other in each receiver. The latter is possible
a good bit of the time with a 24-satellite configuration, and would work
even better if some civil Navstars in Clarke orbit were added, to increase
redundancy. DoD is suggesting that Europe or Japan might wish to do this,
or perhaps Inmarsat (which is interested in navsats, and might be able to
use its existing satellites to some extent), partly as a way of assuring
international civil access. Reagan's decision to open Navstar to civil use
(1983, after KAL 007) is also causing some worries for the USAF: "Today we
might have a brief outage of one of our early warning satellites or a
communications satellite, and only a handful of people would be aware of
the problem. But with GPS [Navstar], if a couple of satellites `hiccup'
briefly, hundreds or thousands of civil pilots will know and complain."
[Personal prediction: civil Navstar is not going to take off in a big way
unless/until it is done as a civil system, perhaps in coordination with DoD
but not through them. Too many people, in the US and elsewhere, don't trust
DoD and the USAF in particular (it would be better if Navstar was being run
by the Navy, which has a tradition of supporting civil sea use)... with
considerable justification.]
NASA officially proclaims its strong support for space commercialization.
Boeing forms new branch for commercial space activities, and joins Space
Industries Inc. and Westinghouse in development of SII's Industrial Space
Facility. Boeing will do the docking and berthing systems. SII and NASA
are near agreement on launching the first ISF in early 1992.
British Aerospace urges Britain to set its space budget at $400M, to keep
the British space industry alive and independent. This is about what the
budget had been informally set at before the June elections. [The government
didn't listen, as will be seen a couple of summaries from now.]
Pictures of Chinese Landsat facilities. China is very enthusiastic about
use for the obvious civil applications, and is also taking a good look at
intelligence uses of the images. A second Landsat station is planned for
western China; this will provide complete coverage of the country, and
incidentally better coverage of India and the USSR (China's major enemies).
The Chinese are emphasizing the high-resolution thematic mapper, and are
paying little attention to the old multispectral scanner except for tests
and possible marketing to neighbors. The station is set up to receive Spot
images as well, but isn't equipped to process them yet. Picture of a
boresight calibration antenna being hauled into position by mulecart.
There were problems on the processing end because Beijing has poor electric
power (solved by a power conditioner), very low humidity (solved by careful
grounding of film-processing mechanisms), and a lot of dust (a continuing
problem). One remaining concern is that the Chinese don't seem to realize
that the equipment contracts did not including ongoing maintenance support;
it took a while before they realized that they had to get involved in the
maintenance procedures.
Two consortia form to apply for FCC licensing for North American mobile
satellite communications; the FCC badly wanted to see only one. The small
consortium is worried that the big one, which includes Hughes, will award
a noncompetitive contract to Hughes for Hughes's proposed new three-axis-
stabilized spacecraft. Hughes has never built a three-axis spacecraft
before, and the small consortium fears that the big consortium will pay
Hughes' development costs for this new market rather than buying existing
hardware from other companies. This would also cause a delay that might
result in loss of business to other services, notably Geostar.
Commercial Space Working Group of the White House organizes briefings for
a government panel from US space companies. Companies say it's not clear
that the panel is doing anything that hasn't already been done by industry
and NASA studies, to no visible effect.
3M will fly a materials-processing secondary payload on STS-26.
Seven comsat owners apply to FCC for approval for new satellites. Most of
the applications are for replacements for existing satellites, not new
programs.
AW&ST is selling copies of the Ride Report ($14.95, Amex/Visa/Diners/MC okay,
to "The Ride Report (A128), Aviation Week & Space Technology, PO Box 5505,
Peoria, IL 61601"). [There is an implication, not 100% clear, that credit
cards are okay only for multi-copy orders over $50.]
--
Those who do not understand Unix are | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
condemned to reinvent it, poorly. | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry