Dec 10 1997
From The Space Library
NASA dedicated a plaque in memory of Ellison S. Onizuka, celebrating his record of achieving the highest altitude for propeller-driven aircraft. Onizuka had been Hawaii's first astronaut and a member of the Shuttle crew aboard Challenger when it exploded in 1986. NASA's recognition of Onizuka's achievement, more than a decade later, occurred during the same year that the remotely controlled AeroVironment Pathfinder broke a distance record for unpiloted space travel, topping 71,000 miles (114,000 kilometers) during its 7 July 1997 flight. NASA honored Onizuka for his part in "reaching for the heavens and striving for excellence," noting that his achievement had contributed to that of Pathfinder. NASA dedicated the plaque honoring Onizuka at the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, where the record-setting Pathfinder plane had set flight on its historic mission.
U.S. Senator D. Robert "Bob" Graham (D-FL) announced a plan to lease room aboard NASA Space Shuttles and the ISS to private entities, to offset the costs of space exploration. Graham announced his plan during a news conference at a new Cape Canaveral, Florida, air station dedicated to commercial launches. Congress had banned the use of the Shuttle for commercial purposes after the Challenger accident. Some space experts believed that Graham's plan would take advantage of a strong commercial market for the retrieval of satellites from space. Graham's plan joined a list of other initiatives of the mid-1990s, designed to merge government and private space interests to ease costs for the federal government.
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