Dec 7 1992
From The Space Library
The asteroid Toutatis passed within about 2.2 million miles of Earth on its orbit around the Sun, the closest an object of that size is known to scientists to have come to Earth. Toutatis is about one to two miles wide, large enough to survive passage through the atmosphere and crash into Earth's surface, potentially causing major ecological and human disaster. (W Post, Dec 8/92; The Sun, Dec 8/92)
The U.S. Air Force said that budget realities had necessitated cuts in plans to have the National Aerospace Plane reach orbit and fly 25 times the speed of sound. The experimental hypersonic craft's top speed was likely to be cut from Mach 25 to Mach 12 or Mach 15 and its runway-to-space approach might be abandoned in favor of launch from the back of another airplane. Cost was projected to drop from $10 billion to $3 billion. (W Times, Dec 9/92)
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