Jul 16 1992
From The Space Library
NASA announced that a group of Alaskans had started a three-year experiment in the use of a small emergency radio transmitter known as a Personal Locator Beacon to communicate with a 10-year-old search and rescue satellite system that up to now had been used primarily for aircraft and ship emergencies. The locator beacon has the potential to save lives when used in emergencies in remote areas. The experiment was being carried out by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Air Force, and the U.S. Coast Guard. (NASA Release 92-115)
At a news conference in Moscow, NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin announced plans for the United States and Russia to implement the agreements Presidents Bush and Yeltsin announced on June 17, 1992. Goldin said significant progress was made in developing a plan to carry out a wide range of projects, including expansion of cooperation in life sciences and global change research, the exchange of an American astronaut and Russian cosmonaut, and a Space Shuttle rendezvous and docking with the Russian Mir Space Station. A tentative date of October 1993 was set for a cosmonaut on the Space Shuttle, with an American on the Russian Space Station Mir the next year. Goldin also signed a $1 million contract with the Russian Space Agency for a detailed study of the use of Russian space technology in the U.S. space program. (NASA Release 92-116; UPI, Jul 17/92; WSJ, Jul 17/92; AP, Jul 16/92; W Post, Jul 20/92)
The North American Air Defense Command said that it was tracking nearly 7,000 spacecraft and pieces of debris bigger than a square yard that were in orbit around the Earth. The proliferating use of satellites has resulted in a ring of several hundred of the spacecraft around the Earth's equator, most in low-Earth to mid-Earth orbit. As a result, concerns were being raised about possible interference from one satellite to another and about the need for adequate distance between satellites in view of plans for more satellites in the 1990s. (W Times, Jul 19/92)
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