Jan 26 1998
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(New page: A Russian Space Agency official insisted that there had been no problem with Andrew S. W. Thomas's spacesuit, describing the U.S. astronaut as bad tempered and expressing concern a...)
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A Russian Space Agency official insisted that there had been no problem with Andrew S. W. Thomas's spacesuit, describing the U.S. astronaut as bad tempered and expressing concern about the implications of Thomas's attitude for the remainder of the mission. Deputy Flight Commander Viktor Blagov indicated that, since major work would take place on Mir, "any fuss about the space suit is out of place." Blagov explained that Thomas would keep both David Wolf's spacesuit and his own.
Endeavour lost power to its small forward-maneuvering jets for 30 minutes. Because the jets, which deliver 25 pounds (11 kilograms) of thrust, keep the complex stabilized as it orbits Earth, the loss of power left the Endeavour Mir complex adrift. During this malfunction, the crew continued its main task, to transfer supplies and equipment from the Shuttle to the space station. NASA officials explained that the crew had never been in danger. However, if the Shuttle's small maneuvering jets had not regained power, Endeavour would have had to rely on its primary jets, which deliver 875 pounds (397 kilograms) of thrust. Using the primary jets would have risked damage to Mir upon separation of the two spacecraft.
NASA announced the discovery of a fast-spinning pulsar, providing evidence of an evolutionary link between strong-field, slower-spinning, energetic pulsars and weak-field, millisecond pulsars. Frank Marshall, William W. Zhang, and Eric V. Gotthelf of GSFC found the pulsar by examining x-ray emissions that NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer spacecraft had recorded in 1996. Observations of the Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics spacecraft, a satellite jointly owned by Japan and the United States, confirmed the discovery. The scientists reported that the pulsar was spinning at a rate of 60 times per second, and that it could have been spinning as fast as 150 times per second when it formed 4,000 years ago. An astrophysicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory remarked, "this is the fastest high-energy pulsar of its type we know about." The research team reported that the pulsar is "likely associated with the remnant of a supernova (N157B) that exploded in the Large Magellanic Cloud about 4,000 years ago." Comparing the pulsar found in N1 57B to the high-energy pulsar in the Crab Nebula, the scientists reported that the central source of x-ray light from N1 57B is this fast-spinning pulsar associated with a supernova remnant, proving the hypothesis that the weaker the magnetic field, the faster the pulsar spins at birth.
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