Oct 17 1994
From The Space Library
NASA announced that its Hubble Space Telescope (HST) had provided new insights into how stars might have been formed billions of years ago in the early universe. A preliminary assessment of HST observations indicated that a pair of clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud instead of containing fewer than 1,000 stars as earlier thought, contained nearly 10,000 stars. If this were true billions of years ago, it would have altered drastically the early history of the universe, according to Nino Panagia of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and the European Space Agency. (NASA Release 94-171)
NASA announced the establishment of a Phase One Program Office at the Johnson Space Center, Houston, to direct upcoming Shuttle flights to the Russian Mir Station. Tommy Holloway was appointed manager of the office. (NASA Release 94-172)
The International Space Station was entering a decisive six-month period in which governments in the United States, Russia, Japan, Europe, and Canada were poised to sign the final industrial contracts and intergovernmental accords needed to build the facility. Barring unforeseen developments, the European Space Agency would be unable to commit itself to the Space Station before November 1995, when its member governments' ministers were scheduled to convene. Other remaining hurdles were the signing of the prime contract for Station hardware between NASA and the Boeing Company; the conclusion of a smaller contract between the Canadian Space Agency and Spar Aerospace; a final round of negotiations bringing Russia into full Station partnership; and an agreement among the partners on who would contribute what to the Station's upkeep and the apportioning of access to the Station's limited electricity and other resources. (SP News, Oct 17-23/94)
JoBea Way, a radar scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, came up with the idea for KidSat in November 1993 while working with scholarship students in NASA's Space Radar Laboratory program. KidSat was a project to establish a permanent orbiting research payload that only students could operate to broaden their educational horizons. Sally Ride, director of the California Space Institute at the University of California, San Diego, was backing the project, which would enlist help from NASA and other organizations such as the National Science Foundation and private charitable foundations. The aim would be to begin the first KidSat classroom lessons in the 1995-96 school year. (SP News, Oct 17-23/94)
Flight tests of new terminal automation software confirmed that airline traffic could be routed to arrive at a gate within 20 seconds or less of a scheduled time, while enabling fuel-efficient descents initiated at pilots' discretion. According to NASA researchers, when deployed at hub airports, the complete Center-Tracon Automation System (CTAS) would optimize the flow of aircraft and improve air traffic control productivity significantly. Recent evaluations dealt with the Descent Advisor portion of CTAS but other parts of CTAS provided air traffic controllers with the data they needed to ensure efficient and safe operations. The recent flight tests were performed under a joint research and development effort involving the Federal Aviation Administration, NASA's Ames and Langley Research Centers, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, several contractors, and United Airlines. (Av Wk, Oct 17/94)
NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin was the scheduled keynote speaker for an October 27-28 conference at Auburn University on the past, present, and future of the U.S. space program. (Htsvl Tms, Oct 17/94)
NASA was expanding its efforts to make procurement information readily accessible on the Internet. In the procurement reform act signed by President Clinton the previous week, NASA was granted authority to test soliciting bids for mid-range procurement (from $25,000 to $500,000 annually) on the Internet. (Av Wk, Oct 17/94)
The crew of NASA's November Atlantis Shuttle mission were scheduled to test the feasibility of an unusual rendezvous procedure for the second docking with Russia's Mir Space Station in 1995. They would fly Atlantis on a "plus R bar" (the radius vector from the target's center of mass to the Earth's center) to rendezvous with and retrieve the Crista-Spas atmospheric research satellite on the ninth day of the planned 11-day mission. The new approach would save fuel and not require any braking. Crista-Spas was to be deployed from Atlantis's robot arm within about 20 hours of Atlantis's launch. (Av Wk, Oct 17/94; SP News, Oct 24-30)
The Clinton administration authorized NASA to be an advocate for satellites in the evolving National Information Infrastructure/Global Information Infrastructure (NII/GII), the so-called information superhighway. The Administration wanted to ensure that industry-satellite builders and operators and telecommunications users-was intimately involved in . formulating satellites' role in the NII/GII. Industry in turn wanted NASA to provide research and development on "pre-competitive technologies." (Av Wk, Oct 17/94)
NASA was scheduled to test fly Pratt & Whitney's new high-pressure oxidizer turbopump on only one of Discovery's three main engines in June 1995 before committing itself to the advanced design pump's use on all Space Shuttle engines. The new pump was intended to simplify Shuttle processing and increase the margin of safety. It was designed to fly 10 times before removal or replacement was required, compared with the single-flight ability of the current pump. (Av Wk, Oct 17/94)
NASA was consulting researchers in Canada, Europe, and Japan on how best to build on two successful Earth surveys by a Shuttle-borne set of complex, multifrequency radar instruments carried by the Space Radar Laboratory. NASA had asked the National Academy of Sciences to recommend the next step, such as the possibility of a reflight of the Laboratory. But a major objective was by international consultation to determine the potential for combining international efforts into a joint project to orbit a highly capable space radar system, according to William Townsend, NASA Deputy Associate Administrator in charge of the Office for the Mission to Planet Earth. (Av Wk, Oct 17/94)
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