May 18 1993
From The Space Library
NASA announced that the Magellan spacecraft would dip into the atmosphere of Venus beginning May 25 in an "aerobraking" maneuver that would slow the spacecraft and allow it to circularize Magellan's orbit. Currently Magellan was looping around Venus in a highly elliptical orbit. The new orbit would make possible better measurements of Venus' gravity fields. (NASA Release 93-89)
A Christian Science Monitor editorial urged the Clinton administration to rethink its civilian space program, noting that the program had drifted without overall purpose since rivalry with the old Soviet Union had ceased to be a significant factor. The editorial urged the administration to define what the United States should accomplish in space and outline a realistic program to do it. (CSM, May 18/93)
The Washington Times reported that the former Soviet military had welcomed the U.S. decision to scrap most of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev called the decision a "reasonable decision" and said that "it seems there's no reason to raise the possibility again" of putting weapons in space. (W Times, May 18/93)
The Baltimore Sun reported that researchers believed that a meteorite that crashed through a Japanese home in December probably was a piece of the same space object as a falling star that landed in Japan more than a thousand years ago. (B Sun, May 18/93)
A NASA spokesman announced that the Mars Observer spacecraft had spent eight days pointing the wrong direction but engineers thought that they now had the problem under control. It was the Observer's fourth such malfunction. Mars Observer was scheduled to go into elliptical orbit around Mars on August 24. (AP, May 18/93)
Robert T. Dulaney, a salesman who sold foreign-made fasteners to a NASA contractor in violation of a Federal law that required that all fasteners purchased by NASA be domestic in origin, was sentenced to five years probation, including 60 days home confinement. Dulaney was also ordered to repay $26,567.73 to NASA. (UPI, May 18/93)
NASA engineers believed that they had identified the source of a mysterious "bang" in Shuttle Endeavour's engine section. A Kennedy Space Center spokesman said that probably a hall inside a flexible joint on a fuel line had gotten pinched. (AP, May 18/93)
U.S. and European space officials announced that they had postponed a planned rocket firing intended to move the European Retrievable Carrier (EURECA) to a position where it could be retrieved by a Space Shuttle next month. An apparent gyroscope problem aboard the orbiting research satellite forced the postponement. (RTW, May 18/93)
An article in Flight International featured the U.S. SPACEHAB, the world's first privately owned, manned microgravity laboratory. The SPACEHAB was scheduled to be lifted aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour mission on June 3.
The SPACEHAB was funded partly by a $185 million contract from NASA that enabled the Agency to use two-thirds of the SPACEHAB's capacity during the first six flights. The SPACEHAB, however, would need the commitment of commercial customers in order to survive, according to the author of the article. (Flight International, May 18/93)
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