Jul 9 1992
From The Space Library
To help bolster the competitiveness of American industry, NASA and the Department of Energy announced that they had formed a partnership to enhance the transfer of technologies developed in their laboratories to American enterprise. Areas of cooperation included outreach to business and non-profit research organizations, access to Federal technology resources, training and education, dissemination of scientific and technical information, and technology transfer policy and program analysis.
The two agencies also signed a cooperative agreement on energy-related civil space programs. The agreement provided overall principles that outlined the responsibilities and authority of both NASA and the Department of Energy in research and development, fundamental science, advanced technology development, and education efforts. (NASA Releases 92-104 and 92-107)
The Space Shuttle Columbia landed at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at the conclusion of the longest-ever Shuttle flight, a 14-day research mission intended as a rehearsal for NASA's Space Station. The arrival was diverted from the preferred site, Edwards Air Force Base in California, because of rain. (P IN, Jul 10/92; The Sun, Jul 10/92; LA Times, Jul 10/92; W Times, Jul 10/92; W Post, Jul 9/92, 10/92; CSM, Jul 10/92; NY Times, Jul 10/92; WSJ, Jul 10/92; AP, Jul 09/92; UPI, Jul 9/92)
NASA researchers said they had "flown" a complete three-dimensional high-performance aircraft in a supercomputer for the first time. The research was part of an effort to reduce wind tunnel tests of new aircraft designs. The new supercomputer techniques have promise in aerodynamic studies of fighter aircraft and in other areas where fluid flow is modeled, such as weather pre-diction, spacecraft entry, artificial heart design, etc. (NASA Release 92-105)
NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin and National Space Council Executive Secretary Brian Dailey left with an interagency delegation to visit the European Space Operations Center in Germany. The delegation planned to proceed on to Moscow to gain a first-hand understanding of Russia's space program. (NASA Release 92-106)
In a letter to the British journal Nature, two American scientists at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, David Kring and William Boynton, said that they had found what they believe to be the location where a gigantic object from outer space crashed into the Earth 65 million years ago, possibly ending the age of the dinosaurs. The site is a buried crater 110 miles across on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. (The Sun, Jul 9/92; WSJ, Jul 9/92)
In another article in Nature, scientists from NASA and Hughes STX Corporation in Lanham, Maryland, said that the uppermost part of Earth's protective ozone layer was about seven percent thinner in 1989 than it was in 1980. The conclusions were based on observations taken by the Nimbus-7 environmental research satellite launched in 1978 and refined by a calibration device on a Space Shuttle mission in October 1989. The new observations were consistent with previous projections of ozone depletion. (UPI Jul 9/92)
NASA announced that it expected to launch a radar satellite in August that would sweep above the Bering Sea off Alaska and beam down a detailed radar snapshot giving the location of every fishing vessel. The project was intended to be the beginning of a foolproof system to police the world's fishing grounds against pirate trawlers. NASA expected to spend $650,000 as its share of a program to transfer its sophisticated technology to commercial uses. (P Inq, Jul 9/92)
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