Aug 15 2002
From The Space Library
NASA announced that it had lost contact with the US$159 million comet-exploring spacecraft Comet Nucleus Tour (CONTOUR), launched on 3 July 2002. Ground controllers had lost contact with CONTOUR after a scheduled ignition of its solid-propellant rocket engine, designed to propel the spacecraft out of Earth-orbiting space and into a heliocentric trajectory where it would eventually encounter comets Encke, Schwassmann-Wachmann, and d'Arrest. At the time of its scheduled ignition, the spacecraft was orbiting Earth approximately 140 miles (225 kilometers) above the Indian Ocean. (Warren E. Leary, “Comet-Exploring Spacecraft Has Disappeared, NASA Says,” New York Times, 16 August 2002; NASA National Space Science Data Center, “CONTOUR,” http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/masterCatalog.do?sc=2002-034A (accessed 26 September 2008).)
Boeing and the U.S. Air Force signed a US$9.7 billion contract for 60 C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft. The contract, an extension of previous agreements between the Air Force and Boeing, would increase the number of C-17s in the Air Force fleet to 180. The Air Force had been using C-17s to transport personnel, equipment, and supplies in support of combat and humanitarian missions. (The Boeing Company, “Boeing and U.S. Air Force Sign $9.7 Billion C-17 Contract,” news release, 15 August 2002, http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2002/q3/nr_020815m.html (accessed 2 February 2010).)
ESA announced that an international group of astronauts would attend a training session at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, to prepare for missions to the ISS. The specific objective of the training was to prepare the astronauts for the tasks they would need to accomplish when a Japanese experiment module and ESA's Columbus laboratory docked with the ISS. Upon completing the training, the international ISS partners planned to assign the astronauts to specific, long-duration ISS missions. The training session, scheduled to last from 26 August to 6 September, would include ESA astronauts Pedro Duque, Léopold Eyharts, Paolo A. Nespoli, and Thomas Reiter; Japan's NASDA astronauts Takao Doi, Satoshi Furukawa, Aikihiko Hoshide, and Koichi Wakata; and NASA astronauts Nicole Passonno Stott and Stephanie D. Wilson. (ESA, “Ten Astronauts Train in Europe for the International Space Station,” ESA news release 56-2002, 19 August 2002.)
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