Oct 1 1999
From The Space Library
V. Philip Rasmussen Jr., Head of the Department of Plants, Soils, and Biometeorology at Utah State University, began work as NASA's first and only agricultural extension agent, with the task of disseminating to American farmers satellite data that could increase their productivity. In 1917 Congress had established the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Cooperative Extension Service, operating out of land-grant universities and serving every county in the country. Through this program, the federal government had made research-based agricultural information available to the public in exchange for federal resource support at the universities. Initially, Cooperative Extension Service agents had focused on farm and ranch questions, but the program had evolved to assist home gardeners, greenhouse users, and businesses as well. After studying the land-grant university system, NASA had decided to create a space-grant consortium system to provide the public with access to space science, such as the sciences of remote sensing and crop management. These scientific fields had developed significantly since the 1970s, when Rasmussen had used Landsat Data strategically to predict Russian crop yields. At that time, the U.S. government was not using Landsat Data to assist American farmers, but under NASA's new space-grant program, Rasmussen's primary task would be to make such satellite data available, through the existing county extension service, so that county agents could teach farmers how to use the data to improve crop yield. Rasmussen described his extension work-using the global positioning satellite (GPS) program in tandem with the geographic information system as "precision agriculture," because farmers could use the data to make informed adjustments concerning methods of watering and fertilizing fields of various soil types.
The Perseus B research aircraft, built by Aurora Flight Sciences Inc., sustained moderate damage when it crashed on a California highway during a flight from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) in Edwards, California. The craft was a "developmental vehicle designed to operate at high altitudes for extended periods on scientific sampling missions," one of several aircraft that NASA was evaluating as part of its Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology program. Controllers could operate the craft remotely from a ground station, or the Perseus B could navigate autonomously along a preprogrammed flight path. At the time of the accident, ground-based Aurora Flight Sciences mission controllers at Edwards Air Force Base were guiding the Perseus B. DFRC flight safety officials, with assistance from Aurora Flight Sciences operations staff, formed an accident investigation team to determine the exact cause of the crash.
NASA announced that scientists studying high-resolution images from Mars Global Surveyor had detected no evidence that ocean shorelines once existed on Mars. Previously, researchers had interpreted features in images from NASA's Viking missions of the 1970s as remnants of ancient coastlines. However, Surveyor images taken in 1998, with a resolution 5 to 10 times sharper than images that Viking had produced had not provided evidence that water in a coastal environment had formed those features. Michael C. Malin of Malin Space Science Systems, Principal Investigator for the Mars Orbiter Camera aboard Surveyor, remarked that although scientists could not rule out the presence of oceans on Mars at one time, the evidence in the new images appeared to undermine the "foundation for the `ocean hypothesis' developed in the 1980s on the basis of suspected shorelines." Nevertheless, Malin acknowledged "significant other evidence of water on Mars in the past," suggesting that as the Mars Orbiter Camera continued to acquire new high-resolution images, scientists might have new clues to the role of water in the evolution of Mars.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
