Jul 11 1994
From The Space Library
In connection with the July 16 projected smashing into Jupiter of fragments of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 at a speed of about 130,000 miles an hour, numerous media presentations appeared. Although collisions were scheduled to occur on the far side of Jupiter, the impact sites should rotate into view in less than an hour, so lasting effects could be studied by observatories on Earth and by NASA's crippled Galileo spacecraft. NASA was setting up an around-the-clock Comet Impact Newsroom at Goddard Space Flight Center to assist scientists interpreting the event. (SP News, Jul 11-17/94; LA Times, Jul 11/94; NY Times, Jul 12/94; LA Times, Jul 12/94; USA Today, Jul 12/94; Reuters, Jul 12/94)
The National Research Council reported that NASA officials had not yet established a solid working relationship with the Russian Space Agency. The Council found tremendous improvement in NASA management but considered that NASA thus far lacked a strong grip on Russian involvement. Since 1985, the Council, the operating arm of the National Academy of Science and the National Academy of Engineering, had reviewed the Space Station regularly under Federal funding. The Space Station Committee, headed by Jack Kerrebrock, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, also expressed concern that NASA needed to invest more in experiment development and preparatory work on Spacelab, the Shuttle's science laboratory. (SP News, Jul 11-17/94; NY Times, Jul 29/94; Phillips Business Information, Jul 29/94)
Officials at NASA, Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said mission designers were being discouraged from including Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) in future satellites. RTGs were plutonium-powered and were used most frequently on spacecraft traveling beyond Earth's orbit because solar panels became increasingly less efficient the farther they were from the Sun. Scientists and engineers planning NASA's proposed Pluto Fast Flyby mission wanted to use an RTG, but thus far approval had been refused. The scientists were concerned that NASA was becoming anti-nuclear, but NASA officials and the White House denied there was a policy decision to end the use of RTGs. In late June, a Technology Challenge team headed by Dwight Duston, director of science and technology for the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, "unanimously recommended the use of an RTG without reservation" for the Pluto Fast Flyby. (SP News, Jul 11-17/94)
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