Sep 21 1994
From The Space Library
NASA announced that it had selected the science team for the first spacecraft designed to rendezvous with an asteroid, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission. The NEAR spacecraft was scheduled for launch in February 1996 aboard a Delta 2 rocket and should arrive in orbit around asteroid 433 Eros in early January 1999. It would survey Eros for a minimum of one year, at altitudes as close as 15 miles. The NEAR Science Payload would consist of six instruments: a multispectral imager system, a near-infrared spectrograph, an X-ray/gamma-ray spectrometer, a magnetometer, a laser altimeter, and the spacecraft's radio, which was sued also for gravity measurements, Members of the science team were assigned to each of these instruments. (NASA Release 94-159)
NASA announced that astronomers using its Hubble Space Telescope had found a new quasar, a mere 600 million light years away in Earth's cosmic backyard, as opposed to other quasars that were billions of light years away. The discovery of a quasar in galaxy Cygnus A would give astronomers their first opportunity for detailed study of a quasar. (NASA Release 94-160)
A German company set up a joint venture with China, called EurasSpace, to develop state-of-the-art satellites. It expected to launch its first high-capacity data transmission satellite, the Sinosat-l, in 1997 for the People's Bank of China. The satellite would be assembled and tested in China and boosted into orbit by a Chinese Long March rocket. (UP, Sep 21/94)
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