Jan 13 1993
From The Space Library
Crew members of a NASA booster-recovery ship waiting for the launch of the Shuttle Endeavour rescued three Cubans found floating in the ocean about 37 miles east of Cape Canaveral. The Cubans, who were floating on two large inner tubes fastened together with boards and ropes, said they had been at sea for eight days and without food and water for six days. They were heading for Miami. (W Post, Jan 13/93; AP Jan 12/93)
According to reports, the planet-probing spacecraft Galileo was approaching its last pre-Jupiter target, the asteroid Ida. It was to pass about 1,500 miles from the asteroid on August 28 and was scheduled to arrive at Jupiter on December 5, 1995.
Galileo's controllers at the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, continued to work on unfurling the spacecraft's stuck high-gain antenna. If their attempts were unsuccessful, the craft's controllers would use Galileo's low-gain antenna to gather data, including data from a probe that would descend into Jupiter's atmosphere. Use of the back-up system would enable NASA to complete 70 percent of its mission, according to project manager William O'Neill. (CSM, Jan 13/93)
The three main commercial sponsors of the 52-foot Conestoga 1620 rocket scheduled to be launched this spring from Wallops Island, Virginia, were selling ad space on the shell of the rocket. The price: $500,000 for 58 feet of space. The Conestoga launch was part of NASA's Commercial Experiment Transport program. (P Inq, Jan 14/93; USA Today, Jan 13/93; Advertising Age, Jan 11/93; W Post, Jan 26/93)
Research recently confirmed that 65 million years ago a comet or asteroid crashed into Earth at the northern tip of what is now the Yucatan peninsula. Because dinosaurs disappeared at about the same time, researchers have speculated that there might be some connection between the impact and the dinosaurs' disappearance. However, the comet or asteroid that gouged out the crater seems to have been only one cause of the massive extinctions that occurred at the time. According to Walter Alvarez of the University of California, Berkeley, "If a single big impact and a single big extinction were the whole story, it would be clear by now. Instead we keep finding mysteries wrapped up in enigmas." (CSM, Jan 13/93)
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