Jan 29 1988
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
It was announced in a recent NASA press briefing that there had been a total of 230 reported "close calls" since the Challenger accident. A "close call" was defined by NASA as an incident in which there is no injury, no damage, and no impact on schedule, but which possesses the potential for a more serious mishap. (NASA Release 1-29-88)
Scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, Maryland, successfully launched a rocket experiment aimed at simulating the effect of small comets entering the Earth's atmosphere. Following two aborted attempts, the Environmental Reactions Induced by Comets (ERIC) experiment payload was launched from GSFC's Wallops Flight Test Facility, Wallops Island, Virginia, by a two-stage suborbital Terrier-Black Brant VC rocket. At the 186-mile (300 kilometer) apogee of suborbital trajectory, the payload released a combination of water, carbon dioxide, and ice crystals into the upper atmosphere, simulating the release of gases that would result from the impact of a small comet with the Earth's atmosphere. The gas release was synchronized with the passage of NASA's Dynamic Explorer (DE) satellite over Wallops Island. The satellite photographed the atmosphere over Wallops in ultraviolet (UV) light in order to detect ionospheric depletion resulting from the release of the gases. The purpose of the experiment was to test the hypothesis that the phenomenon of ionospheric depletion-a sudden appearance of small holes in the Earth's ionosphere-is caused by the impact of small, undetected comets. The principal investigator for the project, Dr. Michael Mendillo, declared the experiment a success and noted, based on preliminary data, that the hole in the ionosphere "seemed to last longer than we had anticipated." (GSFC Release 88-5; UPI, Jan 29/88)
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