May 9 1991
From The Space Library
The Washington Times reported that the Smithsonian Institution had decided to keep the National Air and Space Museum Annex at Dulles International Airport and scale down the project, which is to include the Space Shuttle Enterprise. The cost at Dulles would be $8 million less than at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, and Virginia could make a larger contribution than Maryland to total costs. (W Times, May 9/91)
A giant black granite "space mirror" at Cape Canaveral, Florida, honoring America's 15 fallen astronauts was prepared for dedication, five years after the Challenger disaster. The monument was dedicated by Vice President Dan Quayle on May 9, in the presence of relatives of the astronauts killed. (UPI, May 9/91; B Sun, May 10/91; P Inq, May 10/91; W Times, May 10/91; USA Today, May 10/91; C Trin, May 10/91; AP, May 10/91; UPI, May 10/91; Newsweek, May 13/91)
NASA announced that based on satellite observations of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, researchers from NASA and Geo Eco Arc Research in La Canada, California, had located a "nearly perfect" semicircular ring of sink holes forming a crater more than 125 miles in diameter. The scientists believed that this evidence of an impact crater formed by a comet or asteroid might have caused the extinction of dinosaurs and other species about 65 million years ago. The findings were being published in Nature magazine. (NASA Release 91-71; UPI, May 9/91: LA Times, May 10/91; San Francisco Examiner, May 10/91; Long Beach Press Telegram, May 11/91; LA Times, May 27/91; W Times, May 31/91)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
