Dec 7 1994
From The Space Library
NASA was preparing to move to a new Mission Control room in 1995 for the first time since 1965. Of particular concern was the new world of computer linkage that was challenging security-minded planners. The planners feared various security problems related to computers including sabotage, computer viruses, software imperfections, and confidentiality of data. (H Post, Dec 7/94)
Scientists of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which managed the U.S.-French TOPEX/Poseidon oceanography satellite, had been studying data it developed. The findings from two years of monitoring the oceans, which were to be announced at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, indicated that the average sea level had risen about 0.12 inches a year from December 1992 to September 1994. Such a rise was an indicator of global change and supported theories than an increase in "greenhouse" gases was causing long-term global warming. (Pasadena Star News, Dec 7/94)
An interview was published with retired Princeton physicist Freeman Dayson in which he strongly criticized NASA. He advocated that NASA be dismantled like AT&T, feeling it was overly expensive and inefficient. Instead, science should be done by individuals following their own curiosity and creativity. (CSM, Dec 7/94)
NASA announced that scientists at its Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, were observing rare gamma ray flashes above thunder-storms at a rate six times that of previous observations. Steve Goodman of Marshall's Space Sciences Laboratory said the observations were being made by the Burst and Transient Source Experiment aboard NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, which was recently modified by ground commands to be more sensitive to such events. NASA planned to bring together investigators from the fields of space and atmospheric physics to study the newly discovered events. (NASA Release 94-204; AP, Dec 7/94)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
