Jun 8 1993
From The Space Library
NASA announced that its astronomers investigating how stars are born were using new instruments to observe clumps of interstellar gas that were about i7s to become new stars and planetary systems. The astronomers were using instruments developed for NASA's High Resolution Microwave Survey (HRMS), which was searching for radio signals that might be coming from technological civilizations on planets orbiting distant stars. (NASA Release 93-106)
NASA announced that scientists had found water molecules frozen in the surface ices of Jupiter's Moon Io. According to Dr. Farid Salama, University of California, Berkeley, who led the project at NASA, "This is the first strong evidence of solid water on the surface of this satellite." (NASA Release 93-107; NY Times, June 15/93)
The media announced that NASA had unveiled four designs for a scaled-down Space Station. None of the designs, however, could be built as cheaply as the White House had requested and still meet the orbital laboratory's main goals. The team presented cost figures ranging from a low of $11.9 billion to $13.3 billion to build the design that more completely resembled the Space Station Freedom. Three of thee options were similar to the original design of the Space Station but achieved savings through reduction in hardware, management, and capability.
The design team also reported that NASA's estimate for the present design of the Space Station had been understated by some 10 percent because of costs that had been hidden throughout the Agency's budget. (W Post, June 8/93; NY Times, June 8/93; LA Times, June 8/93; W Times, June 8/93; B Sun, June 8/93; USA Today, June 8/93; AP, June 8/93; RTW, June 7/93; UPI, June 7/93; WSJ, June 8/93)
The New York Times reported that at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society, Dr. Douglas N.C. Lin of the University of California at Santa Cruz had described the Milky Way as practicing "galactic cannibalism." Lin explained that the gravitational force of matter in the vast halo encompassing the Milky Way Galaxy was causing the Milky Way to consume the stars and gases of its nearest galactic neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud 160,000 light-years away. (NY Times, June 8/93; LA Times, June 8/1993; USA Today, June 8/93; B Sun, June 8/93; P Inq, June 8/93)
The Washington Post published a letter from James E. Hansen, Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in which he charged that a Washington Post article, "Greenhouse Effect Seems Benign So Far" [front page, June 1], misrepresented his views. The article depicted the scientific under-standing of the human-made greenhouse effect as a retreat from earlier predictions that global warming threatened the Earth's environment. In fact, according to Hansen, computer models confirmed that the Earth's climate is "sensitive and can be expected to warm about five degrees Fahrenheit when human-made greenhouse gases reach an amount equivalent to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide." (W Post, June 8/93)
The newly released proposals to redesign Space Station Freedom drew mixed reviews on Capitol Hill, with supporters praising the effort and detractors citing the cost of the project as further evidence that it should be abandoned. (W Post, June 9/93; LA Times, June 9/93; USA Today, June 9/93; P Inq, June 9/93; AP, June 9/93; APn, June 8/93; RTW, June 8/93; H Chron, June 9/93; H Post, June 10/93)
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