Jul 25 1990
From The Space Library
The hydrogen leak that was detected in the Space Shuttle Atlantis reappeared, and engineers determined that the Shuttle would have to be taken off the launch pad and rolled back to the hanger for a closer look. Columbia, undergoing repairs for a similar leak, was expected to be on the launch pad early in August. The Atlantis liftoff with its classified military payload were rescheduled for November, bumping another launch into 1991 and reducing the projected number of flights in 1990 to seven. (P Inq, Jul 26/90; NY Times, Jul 26/90; W Times, Jul 26/90)
After three delays, NASA and General Dynamics Corporation launched a Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, that carried a $189 million satellite to study the Earth's magnetic and electrical fields. The Combined Release and Radiation Effects Satellite (CRRES), a joint effort by NASA and the Department of Defense, carried 24 canisters containing chemicals that were to be released in fall 1990 and become ionized by the sun's rays. Visible clouds would then spread along magnetic field lines, allowing scientists to see how electrical fields interact with normally invisible charged particles. The CRRES releases were to be augmented by chemicals released from 10 sounding rockets launched from Puerto Rico and the Marshall Islands. (P Inq, Jul 26/90; NY Times, Jul 26/90; NASA Release 90-97; 90-98)
The United States and the Soviet Union signed an agreement in which NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) would fly on a Soviet Meteor-3 spacecraft sometime in 1991. A TOMS instrument had monitored ozone concentrations from a Nimbus-7 satellite since 1978, focusing on the southern hemisphere and the development of the Antarctic ozone hole. This satellite, however, had already performed well beyond its designed lifetime, and the TOMS/Meteor-3 mission was slated to replace it. Another TOMS satellite was scheduled to be aboard a U.S. spacecraft in 1993; two or three years subsequent to that mission another TOMS was scheduled for a Japanese ADEOS satellite. (NASA Release 90-105)
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