Aug 2 2000
From The Space Library
Mitsuyuki Ueda of the Aeronautics and Space Development Division of Japan's Science and Technology Agency announced that Japan had decided to freeze the development of an unpiloted Space Shuttle, which was four years behind schedule, because of problems in Japan's shuttle program, as well as in its H-2 rocket program. Japan had originally conceived its planned 20-ton (18,000-kilogram or 18.1-tonne) shuttle in the 1980s, modeling it after the U.S. Space Shuttle, and designing it to conduct scientific experiments and to carry into space payloads of up to 3 tons (2,700 kilograms or 2.7 tonnes). Technical and financial setbacks within Japan's shuttle program contributed to the freeze. In addition, because the original plan had called for Japan to launch the Space Shuttle aboard a Japanese-designed H-2 rocket, a launch failure of an H-2 rocket had influenced the decision to halt Japan's shuttle program. In the failed launch of November 1999, officials had to destroy the rocket in midair, leading an advisory panel to suggest that Japan's planned shuttle should launch from a reusable high-speed jet plane, rather than atop a rocket.
Space Media Inc. and S. P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia (RSC Energia), prime contractor of the Russian service module of the International Space Station (ISS), announced a new multimedia partnership called Enermedia LLC. Under the new partnership, Space Media Inc. would use the Russian Space Program archives to develop and provide multimedia, which the Russian service module would broadcast on television and the Internet.
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