Jan 28 1993
From The Space Library
NASA's newly formed Minority Business Resource Advisory Committee met in Washington to discuss their charter and to begin developing an agenda. NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin, who formed the group, charged them with helping NASA respond to a directive from Congress that required the Agency to award eight percent of the total value of the Agency's contracts to economically and socially disadvantaged businesses and minority educational institutions involved in key NASA activities. Goldin pledged in September that NASA would meet its eight percent goal. In an attempt to meet his pledge, the Agency identified 26 procurements that would be set aside for small disadvantaged businesses (SDBs) and for members of the Small Business Administration's 8(a) program for minority-owned firms. (NASA Release 93-17; Federal Computer Week, Feb 1/93; Set-Aside Alert, Mar 15/93)
The Boeing Company and the four leading European aerospace companies, partners in the Airbus Industrie consortium, reached an agreement to conduct a one-year study of the feasibility of jointly building a superjumbo airliner capable of carrying up to 800 passengers. (NY Times, Jan 28/93)
Washington Technology reported that Rich Fleet, president of Hemdon/Virginia-based PacAstro, planned to build an inexpensive launch rocket. Using technology from Apollo-era liquid rocket boosters and other reliable time-tested components, Fleet intended to offer 750-pound, low-Earth-orbit access for $5 million a shot. This amount was half of what other mainline smallsat launch firms such as Orbital Sciences and EER were asking. Fleet also runs PacAstro's sister company AeroAstro, a manufacturer of low-cost smallsats. (Washington Technology, Jan 28/93)
Working with a team of Hopkins scientists last spring, Kimberly Ennico, a 20-year-old junior at Johns Hopkins University, discovered a small flaw in the video camera that acts as a range finder for the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope scheduled for launch aboard a Space Shuttle in January 1995. Ms. Ennico discovered that the telescope's video range finder slightly distorted the positions of stars and distant galaxies. Her discovery allowed astronomers to compensate for the flaw by adjusting their computations. (B Sun, Jan 28/93)
An analysis of more than 27,000 recordings of temperatures taken at various altitudes over the Arctic Ocean in the past 40 years did not show the global warming predicted by computer simulations, according to a report in the journal Nature. Coauthor Jonathan Kahl, an assistant professor of atmospheric science at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, said that the findings do not disprove the warming theory. He added, "If they're not getting the Arctic quite right, then maybe they're not getting the whole picture quite right." (W Times, Jan 28/93; USA Today, January 28/93; 0 Sen Star, January 29/93)
Flags flew at half-staff and flowers were placed at the astronauts' memorial at Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, the seventh anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. The Challenger explosion, which took place 73 seconds after liftoff on January 28, 1986, killed all seven on board. (AP, January 28/93)
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