Apr 23 1992
From The Space Library
The Justice Department accused a large military electronics maker of falsifying results of tests on sophisticated weapons and spacecraft, including the Space Shuttle. The department joined a $250 million civil lawsuit that accused Teledyne Relays, a Teledyne Inc. unit, of falsifying tests to ensure the reliability of electromagnetic relays, according to court papers. Government contracts accounted for about a third of Teledyne's $3.2 billion in sales last year. (AP, Apr 23/92)
The Magellan spacecraft, which had used radar to unveil 97 percent of Venus' cloud-covered volcanic landscape, started measuring the planet's gravity. Magellan showed that Venus' crust is built up vertically as volcanoes erupt, adding material to the surface. The measurements should help scientists understand the planet's interior and how internal activity shapes the rugged surface. (NY Times, Apr 23/92)
Daniel S. Goldin, the newly appointed NASA Administrator, said he was a strong supporter of the controversial Space Station Freedom, which was being developed in part at the NASA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland. The Space Station Freedom, whose price had soared from $8 billion to $40 billion, was a frequent target of lawmakers looking to trim NASA's budget. But Goldin said, "I believe that there is a crying need for human interaction in space. If we are to fulfill our role of NASA and to have humans seek their destiny in space, we must understand the interactions of humans in a hostile space environment, the long-term impacts of zero gravity, microgravity, radiation." (News-Herald, Apr 23/92; Plain Dealer, Apr 23/92)
It was announced that NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite had achieved two of the three goals of its $400 million mission to study the "big bang." In 1991, COBE had shown that the wavelength or "color" of the cosmic background radiation was consistent with what the big-bang theory predicted, said John Mather, project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Scientists also said that COBE had met its second goal: detecting the oldest structures in the universe, thereby explaining how matter first started clumping together in the young universe to produce galaxies and stars. COBE was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on November 18, 1989. It was carried into a 559-mile-high, near polar orbit by a two-stage Delta rocket with nine strap-on boosters. (AP, Apr 23/92; LA Times, Apr 24/92; B Sun, Apr 24/92; NY Times, Apr 24/92; USA Today, Apr 24/92; NASA Release 92-51)
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
