Jul 2 1998
From The Space Library
PanAmSat Corporation announced the impairment of a critical subsystem of its Galaxy VII spacecraft. A spokesperson for the company said that engineers had not yet determined whether the problem was the same as that which caused the failure of the Galaxy IV spacecraft on 19 May. Both the primary and backup systems keeping the Galaxy IV correctly pointed toward Earth-bound controllers had failed, but although the Galaxy VII had lost its primary system, its backup system had continued to function properly. Hughes Electronics Corporation's Space and Communications Company, the manufacturer of the two satellites, was investigating the failures. Both satellites were HS601 models, the world's "best-selling large communications satellite," with customers including the U.S. Navy, NASA, the government of Mexico, and communications companies throughout the world.
SPACEHAB Inc., a Virginia-based, commercial space company with a staff of 85, purchased the Johnson Engineering Corporation, a 400-person firm contracted to support NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas. SPACEHAB's chairperson said the company would "expand the use of Johnson Engineering's larger technical staff to support its plans for expansion into the commercial space arena." Investors had incorporated SPACEHAB in 1984, to "develop a commercial research module that could accommodate small, private, as well as government-financed science experiments and engineering tests during space shuttle mission[s]." However, when the anticipated commercial market had failed to develop, SPACEHAB "changed its strategy," winning NASA contracts. NASA used SPACEHAB modules, stored in the Shuttle's payload bays, as cargo containers for storing "tons of food, clothing, and other gear that was ferried to Russia's Mir space station aboard a series of recently concluded U.S. shuttle flights."
Russia announced it would retire the Mir space station during the summer of 1999, six months earlier than originally planned. The decision resulted from a meeting between Russian Space Agency Director General Yuri N. Koptev and Deputy Prime Minister Boris E. Nemtsov, who agreed that Russia had insufficient funds to continue to fly the station. The agreement allocated approximately US$ 100 million for Mir's final year, including funds for "a series of rockets to direct Mir to an unpopulated area of the Pacific Ocean." Nemtsov also agreed to pay the Russian Space Agency the US$600 million owed for Mir's operations in 1997, using "unspecified `nonbudgetary sources'."
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