From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: space news from Oct 5 AW&ST
To: sci-space-news@news.arc.nasa.gov
Followup-To: sci.space
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 22:19:59 GMT

Cover is the Aug 14 Long March 2E launch, carrying the Australian Optus
B1 comsat.

Wes Huntress, director of solar-system exploration for NASA, gets the
Korolev medal from the Russian Federation of Astronautics and Cosmonautics.

Last week's NASA funding agreement goes to Bush; approval expected.

NASA picks Hughes to build the ground system for EOS.

GAO says the dispute over Patriot effectiveness may never be fully resolved
due to inadequate evidence, noting that the evidence for some of the Army's
claimed 25% "high confidence" kills is weak.

Rep. George Brown circulates a draft bill for a slimmed-down NASP program,
to produce a smaller craft flying sooner at lower cost.

NASA complains to USAF, asking it to please stop citing Mars missions as
a justification for developing nuclear thermal propulsion.  NASA is worried
that military support for a Mars mission may hurt its chances, due to
suspicion of the military's motives.

Mars Observer launched Sept 25, after a short delay due to weather and
problems getting the pad properly cleared (the newly-refurbished pad has
bugs in its personnel-checkpoint procedures).  It was a textbook launch
with one nerve-racking exception:  no telemetry from the new TOS upper
stage.  MO people chewed their nails for an hour until MO fired up its
own transmitter after separation from TOS.  TOS did work perfectly in
all other respects, so MO is on its way.  MO should have been recording
TOS telemetry on its tape recorder as a backup measure, although first
attempts to retrieve it have not been successful.  Preliminary assessment
is that a pre-launch command error may have turned off power to TOS's
transmitter.

Mars Observer itself appears healthy.  Some minor problems have been seen
with its star tracker, probably as a result of dust released when booms
and antennas were deployed.  And the high-gain antenna deployed most of
the way to its cruise position but did not actually lock into place for
another several hours, possibly because fluid-filled dampers were colder
than expected.  Finally, there were minor attitude-control problems at
antenna-deployment time, tentatively ascribed to the slow deployment,
and one of the sun sensors may be shadowed by the solar array somewhat
more than expected in cruise configuration.  None of this is considered
very serious.

Planetary-mission planners meet at Toulouse, cite need for strong leadership
and cooperation at a crucial time for Mars efforts.  Some cooperative work
is already underway; Goldin is in Moscow to buy an engineering model of a
Russian Mars lander, to be used by JPL to develop US instruments for the
Mars 1994 mission.  JPL is also pushing the idea of adding a US microrover
to the Russian 1996 rover mission, and the US is encouraging Italy to do
a Mars-orbit comsat.  Finally, there is considerable pressure in the US
for NASA to buy proven Russian Mars reentry/landing systems rather than
reinventing the wheel at great expense, but this is not going to be popular
with US contractors.  [Prediction:  some reason will be found why the
Russian systems can't quite be adapted to meet US requirements.]

The real problem, though, is defining what will follow MO and the Russian
1994/1996 missions.  Several groups have ideas.  JPL and Ames are pushing
MESUR, Mars Environmental Survey, using small rovers and landers (including
a pathfinder mission in 1996 for $150M).  ESA is examining Marsnet, another
small-multiple-lander/rover scheme with Russian collaboration, but it has
been criticized as too similar to MESUR.  CNES is studying a large, long-
range rover as a followon to either of these, but costs would be high and
lack of coordination with the earlier efforts has been criticized.  The
various groups also differ on basic approach:  the US would like to see
a single international program, but the French don't want to abandon their
plans for cooperation with the Russians for the sake of a minor role in
an unwieldy multi-way partnership.

DASA proposes keeping the Columbus man-tended-free-flier concept alive by
combining it with the Russian Mir 2 effort into a "Euro-Russian" space
station.  MTFF is in danger of cancellation at the November meeting of
ESA ministers.

Long March launch of the Swedish Freja auroral-research satellite is
imminent; it will go up together with a Chinese recoverable imaging
mission.

APT Satellite gets a major customer for its APStar-1 satellite, slated
for launch in 1994 -- probably on Long March -- to compete with Asiasat 1.

More details on the abortive Chinese launch in March, which left a Long
March 2E and its Optus payload sitting live on the pad after an ignition
problem aborted launch at the last possible instant.  Rescue crews spent
39 hours putting out minor fires and deactivating pyrotechnic hardware,
during which some technicians were hospitalized for gas poisoning (presumably
from nitrogen tetroxide, although it might have been hydrazine) due to poor
breathing equipment and crew carelessness.  The payload was unhurt and the
booster took only minor damage; the successful August launch used both.
-- 
MS-DOS is the OS/360 of the 1980s.      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
              -Hal W. Hardenbergh (1985)|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
Newsgroups: sci.space.news