Jan 29 1992
From The Space Library
Jim Scott, Magellan project manager at the NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, expressed regret at NASA's decision to cut short the spacecraft's mission. Since its launching from the Space Shuttle Atlantis on May 4, 1989, the spacecraft had mapped 97 percent of Venus' surface, using radar to peer through the planet's thick clouds and take pictures of the rugged, volcanic landscape. Scientists hoped to continue mapping in more detail during an "extended mission" ending in 1995, but NASA officials decided to avoid adding $80 million to the cost by ending the mission on September 30, 1993. The budget decision meant that engineers would not be able to move Magellan from its elliptical orbit and into a lower circular orbit starting in May 1993. That would have allowed Magellan to remap Venus with three to 10 times more detail than the pictures it already had taken. (NASA Release, 92-14; W Times, Jan 29/92)
The Space Shuttle Discovery's international crew took time off from their scientific work to remember the seven astronauts who died in the explosion of the Shuttle Challenger six years ago. "It being the 28th, we're all mindful of the sacrifices made along the way," Discovery crewman William Readdy said during a news conference from space. It was the first time that Americans had been in orbit on the anniversary of the January 28, 1986 explosion of Challenger 73 seconds after it took off from Cape Canaveral. (P Inq, Jan 29/92; USA Today, Jan 29/92)
With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the fate of the Russian space program is in doubt. Although most of the republics that make up the successor to the Soviet Union, the Commonwealth of Independent States, had signed an agreement pledging to continue the space program and to honor all the Soviet Union's international agreements on space projects, many experts questioned the impoverished nascent union's ability to follow through. "There is a high level of uncertainty," said James Head, a planetary scientist at Brown University. "The commonwealth will absolutely not be able to maintain a space program at the same level of activity," declared Roald Sagdeev, former director of the Soviet institute that ran all scientific research programs in space. (C Trib, Jan 29/92; Boston Globe, Jan 30/92)
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