Aug 26 1993
From The Space Library
NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin named Dr. Timothy Coffey, director of research at the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, to head the review board to investigate the loss of contact with the Mars Observer spacecraft. (NASA Release 93-153)
NASA announced that a 12-member panel of experts from NASA and NOAA had been named to investigate the failure of the NOAA-13 meteorological satellite. (NASA Release 93-154)
The Mars Observer failed to call Earth on August 25, when a five-day timer should have had it send an emergency signal, lessening hopes that the mission could he salvaged. Observer was the latest reminder of the growing problems of the U.S. space program. The Observer failure added to a string of expensive space failures: the loss earlier in August of a $500-million spy satellite, then of a $67-million weather satellite, and a series of mishaps with NASA's orbiting observatories and other planetary probes.
In Washington, congressional strategies and private analysts suggested that NASA’s latest failure was likely to make the Agency more vulnerable to budget cuts as Congress considered the appropriations bill covering the space program. Ideas also were floated about new, cheaper ways to get a peek at Mars, for example, modifying small, inexpensive "Star Wars" satellites and hurling them toward Mars. Another idea mentioned was closer collaboration with Europe and Russia. (LA Times, Aug 25/93; WSJ, Aug 26/93, Aug 30/93; USA Today, Aug 26/93, Aug 30/93; W Post, Aug 26/93; W Times; AP, Aug 26/93; RTW, Aug 25/93; UPI, Aug 25/93; NY Times, Aug 29/93)
Orbital Sciences Corporation of Chantilly, Virginia unveiled the Orbcomm communications satellite, which was designed to provide global personal communications service. The company said it planned to initiate Orbcomm service in the United States by mid-1994 and planned worldwide service by 1995. The Orbcomm system planned to provide low-cost, two-way data communications to users world-wide through a constellation of 26 small satellites. (W Times, Aug 26/93)
A senior NASA official who asked not to be named said that the Agency was seriously considering attaching Space Station Freedom modules to Russia's Mir Space Station and helping to refurbish the seven-year-old facility. NASA was also actively looking at combining Freedom with the next-generation Mir Station, which Moscow said it planned to launch around 1996. (Defense Daily, Aug 26/93)
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