Nov 15 1994
From The Space Library
Although the November 8 elections gave control of Congress to the Republicans, major changes in funding for the space program were not expected. This was the case despite the fact that Newt Gingrich, Republican from Georgia, who was expected to be the next Speaker of the House of Representatives, was an outspoken space advocate as was Representative Robert Walker, Republican from Pennsylvania and ranking Republican on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. NASA was already making plans to sell the Space Station program to the 11 freshman Senators and approximately 85 new House members who were to take office in January. (SP News, Nov 14-20/94)
NASA announced that two teams of astronomers, working independently with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, had ruled out the possibility that red dwarf stars constituted the invisible matter, called dark matter, believed to account for more than 90 percent of the mass of the universe. The results increased the mystery of the missing mass because whatever dark matter was, its gravitational pull ultimately would determine whether the universe would expand forever or would someday collapse. Bruce H. Margon, an astrophysicist at the University of Washington at Seattle, in discussing the mystery of the missing matter, said "It's a fairly embarrassing situation to admit that we can't find 90 percent of the universe." Various theories had been proposed by physicists, such as that neutrinos, electrically neutral subatomic particles produced prolifically in the Big Bang, had mass, or that the value of the cosmological constant, a concept invented by Albert Einstein, was low, helping to account for the difference between the observed density of matter and the critical density. (NASA Release 94-188; Reuters, Nov 15/94; W Post, Nov 16/94; H Chron, Nov 16/94; C Trib, Nov 16/94; CSM, Nov 17/94; Av Wk, Nov 21/94; NY Times, Nov 29/94)
NASA announced that a new satellite, the NOAA-J, a joint project of NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. Air Force, was scheduled to be launched on December 4 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The new satellite would circle the Earth every 102 minutes, passing over the North and South Poles on each orbit. The satellite would collect meteorological data and transmit them directly to users around the world to enhance local weather analysis and fore-casting. (NASA Release 94-189)
NASA announced the signing of a collaborative agreement of the chief executive officers of the nation's 28 largest aerospace contractors, NASA, and the U.S. Department of Education in a plan to improve the nation's mathematics, science, and technology education goals. The agreement was in furtherance of President Clinton's Goals 2000: Educate America Act, which he signed March 31, 1994. (NASA Release 94-190)
NASA announced the selection of Orbital Sciences Corporation, Dulles, Virginia, as a contractor to provide launch services to deploy Ultralight-class payloads into their required orbits. (NASA Release C94-ii; Htsvl Tms, Dec 5/94)
A feature article, accompanied by photographs of Mount Rainier and of the newly exploding Russian volcano taken from the radar images brought back by Space Shuttle Endeavour, commended the extraordinary quality of NASA's Spaceborne Imaging Radar. It discussed the process by which more than 500 sites were reviewed and gave particular attention to efforts to further define ancient Ubar, buried beneath desert sand. (Newsday, Nov 15/94)
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