Oct 14 1999
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(New page: NASA announced its selection of the next two missions of its Medium-Class Explorer (MIDEX) Program. The first mission, headed by Neil Gehrels of NASA's GSFC...)
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NASA announced its selection of the next two missions of its Medium-Class Explorer (MIDEX) Program. The first mission, headed by Neil Gehrels of NASA's GSFC and planned for launch in 2003, was the Swift Gamma Ray Burst Explorer, a three-telescope space observatory designed with the "unique ability to rotate in orbit and point its gamma-ray telescope, x-ray telescope, and ultraviolet/optical telescope at gamma-ray bursts [GRBs] within minutes of the burst's first appearance." The second mission, led by Kenneth J. Johnston of the U.S. Naval Observatory, was the Full-Sky Astrometric Mapping Explorer (FAME), scheduled to launch in 2004, a space telescope designed to "obtain highly precise position and brightness measurements of 40 million stars." From a group of five missions selected in January 1999, NASA had chosen these two missions for detailed four-month feasibility studies, examining cost, management, and technical plans, such as small business involvement and educational outreach. NASA had originally received 31 full proposals in August 1998. Associate Administrator for Space Science [[Edward J. Weiler] remarked that the selection of the two missions had been the most difficult he had made during his 21 years at NASA, because, over the years, the space science community had been submitting to NASA a steadily increasing number of first-class concepts for smaller missions.
Two satellites, the China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite (CBERS-1), sometimes called ZY-1 in Chinese reports, and the Brazilian Saci-1 satellite, launched atop a Chinese Long March 3B rocket from Taiyuan Launch Center in central China. Brazil and China had jointly financed the 1,500-kilogram (3,307-pound) CBERS-1, which carried three high-resolution cameras for monitoring environmental and vegetation conditions in Brazil and China, as well as in other, unspecified locations. Brazil had designed the 60-kilogram (132-pound) Saci-1 microsatellite to monitor cosmic rays, the magnetic field, and plasma. Shortly after launch, communications with the craft failed.
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