Jun 7 1991
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
The media covered the House vote of 240 to 173 overturning the House Appropriations Committee action halting the Space Station program and authorizing $1.9 billion to keep the program going. The role of the White House in pressuring Congress to support the project was stressed. Several articles also commented that the action was a boon to aerospace firms. The importance of the United States maintaining its space leadership and having a permanent presence in space, despite the high costs entailed, also were emphasized. (P Inq, Jun 7/91; WSJ, Jun 7/91; NY Times, Jun 7/91; B Sun, Jun 7/91; W Times, Jun 7/91; USA Today, Jun 7/91; LA Times, Jun 7/91; W Post, Jun 7/91; C Trin, Jun 7/91; AP, Jun 7/91; UPI, Jun 7/91; Htsvl Tms, Jun 7/91; NY Times, Jun 8/91; Birmingham News, Jun 10/91)
Prior to the House vote, Thomas M. Donahue, Professor of Planetary Science at the University of Michigan, wrote an article published in the Christian Science Monitor. In it he sharply criticized NASA for making the Space Station its priority rather than scientific inquiry and urged Congress not to support the Space Station. (CSM, Jun 7/91)
The press reported that NASA was considering having two astronauts engage in a spacewalk to fix a cargo-door seal of Columbia that could prevent a safe return to Earth. The seal apparently shook loose during launch. It was later reported that NASA ground personnel determined the seal posed no re-entry problems so no spacewalk was needed. This allowed the astronauts more time to pursue their scientific experiments and medical research. (P Inq, Jun 7/91; NY Times, Jun 7/91; W Post, Jun 7/91; W Times, Jun 7/91; LA Times, Jun 7/91; AP, Jun 7/91; UPI, Jun 7/91; B Sun, Jun 8/91; NY Times, Jun 8/91; W Post, Jun 8/91; AP, Jun 8/91; UPI, Jun 8/91; NY Times, Jun 9/91; W Post, Jun 9/91; C Trin, Jun 10/91; LA Times, Jun 10/91)
The Baltimore Sun reported that thanks to a NASA program to establish a super computer network among black universities, Morgan State University had received a super computer. The university planned to make the super computer the foundation of a new Center for Applied Space Science and Engineering. (B Sun, Jun 7/91)
NASA announced that as part of its Planetary Astronomy Program of the Office of Space Science and Applications, a team of radar astronomers had identified a near-Earth metal asteroid for the first time. Their discovery, observed from the giant Arecibo radar/radio telescope in Puerto Rico, was published in Science magazine. The object, called 1986 DA, was observed and analyzed by a team under Steven Ostro of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. The asteroid contains mostly iron but also eight percent nickel as well as some platinum-group metals and gold. (NASA Release 91-89; NY Times, Jun 11/91)
NASA gave an update about the launching of Joust 1, a commercial suborbital rocket being launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Because of bad weather, the launch was postponed to June 9. (NASA Joust 1 Update, Jun 7/91)
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