Dec 15 1992
From The Space Library
NASA officials said that the Galileo spacecraft and its atmospheric probe had passed the half-way mark on their voyage to Jupiter. The first full test results on November 20 and December 2 since launch three years ago showed that the probe's systems were in good working order. Galileo was scheduled to arrive at Jupiter in early December 1995. A major milestone in space communications was achieved recently when NASA scientists success-fully transmitted laser signals to Galileo at a distance of 1.3 million miles. (NASA Releases 92-224 and 92-225; AP, Dec 16/92)
In the current issue of the British journal Nature, two scientists, Martin I. Hoffert of New York University and Curt Covey of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, reported new findings, largely developed from geological studies, on how Earth's climate responded to changes in atmospheric heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other influences in the distant past. Using climatic data from two periods in the past, one 20,000 years ago in the midst of the last ice age, and the other in the mid-Cretaceous period 100 million years ago, the two scientists found that if atmospheric carbon dioxide doubles from its present level, the average global climate will become about 4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer. These findings agree with computer models of climatic change. They are also compatible with earlier work by NASA scientists at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, whose climatic studies predicted that a doubling of carbon dioxide would reproduce a warming of about 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit. (NY Times, Dec 15/92)
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