Dec 4 1992
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
NASA sent its remote-controlled robot named "Dante" to Antarctica, where it was scheduled to explore the active volcano Erebus. The $2 million mission was intended to use Antarctica to test possible Mars-bound technology because the harsh climate is as close to that of Mars as occurs naturally on Earth. Upcoming U.S. missions to Mars were expected to land small robots programmed to look around, take samples, and perhaps begin mapping the planet, all tasks "Dante" would test in Antarctica. (WSJ, Dec 8/92; NY Times, Dec 8/92)
In the last of a week-long series of talks at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin said NASA, its partners, and its contractors, were suffering from a bureaucratic "sickness" and political infighting that had sapped the U.S. civilian space program's will to take risks or to admit mistakes. "We need a complete resurgence of our space program to be bold, to take risks, and accept failure," Goldin said during a lively, two-hour discussion and debate with Carl Sagan, astronomer and founding president of the Planetary Society, based in Pasadena. Sagan agreed that NASA had lost its "sense of direction" and said that the key questions facing NASA were what would be its role in the post-Cold War era and what could it accomplish that was in the national interest in a time of pressing economic problems. (Space News, Dec 14-20/92)
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