Feb 4 1999
From The Space Library
The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, established by Congress after the Apollo 1 spacecraft fire on 27 January 1967, submitted its annual report to NASA. The panel found Shuttle safety satisfactory, but cautioned that cutbacks, such as hiring freezes and budgetary restrictions, had created a "looming crisis" of future shortfalls in the workforce. The panel warned that NASA was at risk of "losing the core competencies needed to conduct the nation's spaceflight and aerospace programs in a safe and effective manner." Budgetary constraints had also caused NASA to postpone planned improvements to the Shuttle fleet and the International Space Station (ISS). The panel's chairperson remarked that both programs were operating at an "acceptable level of risk," but that updating Shuttle computers and refurbishing the supply of spare parts would make the programs safer.
NASA's Mars Global Surveyor successfully completed the aerobraking phase of its mission, raising its orbit completely out of the Martian atmosphere and preparing the craft to begin its primary mapping mission. Glenn E. Cunningham, Deputy Director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), described the Mars spacecraft's "pioneering operation" of aerobraking as a long and arduous task, which had become a valuable learning experience for all involved-engineers and scientists alike. The technique required the spacecraft to use frictional drag "as it skim[med] through the planet's thin atmosphere," altering the shape of the craft's orbit and providing an innovative method to change the orbit using less on-board fuel. NASA had first tested aerobraking in 1994, during the final days of the Magellan mission to Venus. A structural problem with Mars Global Surveyor's solar panel had delayed the final burn of aerobraking by approximately one year, so that the flight team could ensure that the process would not overstress the weakened panel. The extended aerobraking phase had enabled Global Surveyor to acquire bonus science data, yielding "some spectacular new findings about Mars," such as a "profile of the planet's northern polar cap and information about the unique nature of its remnant magnetic fields.”
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