Jan 27 1988
From The Space Library
NASA announced August 4, 1988, as the target for launch of the next Space Shuttle mission, STS-26. This new launch target was selected following a major program assessment, subsequent to the most recent full-scale firing of the redesigned solid rocket motor (SRM) in December 1987, which revealed a design defect in the outer boot ring of the SRM case-to-nozzle joint. As a result of the assessment, NASA officials determined that the SRMs that would boost the orbiter Discovery on STS-26 would use an alternative outer boot ring configuration tested successfully during the Development Motor-8 firing in August 1987. Rollout of Discovery to Kennedy Space Center Launch Pad 39B was scheduled for May 13, and a flight readiness firing of Discovery's main engines and liquid propulsion system was to take place on June 13 (NASA Release 88-11; NY Times, Jan 28/88; W Post, Jan 28/88; USA Today, Jan 28/88; LA Times, Jan 28/88; P Inq, Jan 28/88)
The Washington Post reported that the Martin Marietta Corporation agreed to launch communications satellites for the General Electric Corporation (G.E.) on untended Titan rockets during the next several years. According to the news account, the agreement to launch 15 satellites would establish Martin Marietta as the dominant company, developed in the two years since the January 28, 1986, explosion of the Challenger, in the domestic rocket business. The agreement was expected to bring in revenues between $750 million and $1 billion for Martin Marietta through the early part of the next decade, one senior company official told the Post. Analysts told the newspaper that the G.E. agreement would make Martin Marietta dominant over two U.S. rivals in the commercial satellite launching business-McDonnell Douglas Corporation, manufacturer of the Delta rocket, and General Dynamics Corporation, manufacturer of the Atlas Centaur rocket. (UPI, Jan 27/88.)
A United Nations (U.N.) report warned of an alarming increase in the amount of space debris in low-Earth orbit since the first orbital launch in 1957. The report, prepared by Siegfried J. Bauer, Chairman of a U.N. panel on "Potentially Environmentally Detrimental Activities in Space," declared that "action on an international scale is obviously needed to deal with the global issue of space debris." Bauer, a professor at the Institute for Meteorology and Geophysics of the University of Graz, Austria, said most damage in space collisions until now had been caused by debris from "normal" activities in space. However, as a result of the first U.S. anti-satellite weapon tests, part of the Strategic Defense Initiative program, "there are already signs of `willful' fragmentation and production of space debris," he said.
Bauer said that in the 30 years of the Space Age, since the first Soviet Sputnik of October 4, 1957, about 18,000 man-made objects had been projected into space. About 7,000 of them, larger than 8 inches-the visibility limit of radar-remain in "near-Earth space." Of these, 23 percent are satellite payloads, 10 per-cent are burned-out rocket stages, and 62 percent are various fragments. Only 5 percent are "active" satellites. Some 50 objects "appear to contain radioactive material." Besides the larger fragments, there are at least 2,000 objects ranging in size from 4 to 8 inches and about 50,000 in the range of 1/2 inch to 4 inches. Below that, there are "millions to billions of metal and paint chips in the millimeter and submillimeter range" which pose greater danger than would appear from their size. Bauer claimed that a half-millimeter metal chip moving at 18,500 miles per hour "could easily penetrate a space suit and even kill an astronaut." Most space junk is concentrated between 220 and 800 miles above Earth, "exactly where most of the satellites, the Space Shuttle and space stations operate." Bauer said that at this point "the possibility of a collision with space debris is still very small, but is not completely negligible, particularly compared to the hazard from extraterrestrial material such as micrometeorites." Bauer listed several examples of damage to satellites caused by man-made space debris. (UPI,. Jan 27/88)
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