July 1990
From The Space Library
NASA and U.S. university scientists and Canadian researchers joined in a study of pollution at high northern latitudes resulting from the release of methane, an important greenhouse gas, from tundra, forests, and marshes. Both ground and air measurements were taken; NASA's main sampling platform was a Lockheed Electra aircraft. Research began July 5 and was scheduled to conclude on August 20, 1990. (NASA Release 90-102)
The Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, selected Stanford Telecom for negotiations leading to a five-year, $30 million contract to provide systems engineering support for the Advanced Tracking and Delta Relay Satellite and the Advanced Network Control Center. Also, Martin Marietta Corporation received a $326.8 million contract from the Air Force for modifications to space launch facilities at Cape Canaveral, Florida. (NASA Release C90-m)
Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, devised a way to salvage the Japanese lunar mission that successfully orbited a probe around the Moon but did not send data back because of a failed transmitter. The mother ship that launched the probe was in an elliptical orbit around the Earth and could achieve lunar orbit by taking advantage of the "fuzzy boundary". The "fuzzy boundary" is an area about one million miles from Earth where gravitational forces emanating from our planet and the Sun cancel each other out. The limited supply of fuel carried by the spacecraft was not sufficient to allow it to reach a lunar orbit by conventional means. Success with the plan, they determined, would mean an enormous fuel savings should lunar bases be built in the future. (LA Times, July 16/90)
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