Jul 9 1991
From The Space Library
NASA announced its Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, would participate in two experiments to study the July 11 solar eclipse from the ground and from space. A new cryogenic instrument attached to NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii, was to test a theory about the sun's atomic processes in its infrared regions. Also, an x-ray telescope in a sounding rocket, to be launched from White Sands, New Mexico, was to study the solar corona. (NASA Release 91-108)
ST Systems Corporation, Vienna, Virginia, announced its selection by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center to provide support for the High Energy X-ray Telescope Sounding Rocket Program. (PR Newswire, Jul 9/91)
The media reported that 14 major scientific organizations were joining forces to warn of the "excessive cost" of the planned $30 million Space Station that would "threaten the vitality" of essential scientific research programs and imperil U.S. leadership in world technology. The organizations urged a "balanced" space program but did not call for the Space Station to be killed. (LA Times, Jul 9/91; P Inq, Jul 10/91; W Post, Jul 10/91; NY Times, Jul 10/91; Science, Jul 19/91)
The Wall Street Journal criticized NASA's decision to drop a proposed instrument to detect environmental change, the High-Resolution Imaging Spectrometer, or HIRIS, and to substitute a Japanese instrument being offered NASA at no cost. The Japanese instrument to be built by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry, is the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, or Aster, to detect minerals and geological formations that may contain oil. Criticism of the decision, which NASA said was based on HIRIS being too risky and too expensive, centered on the boost Aster would give Japanese technology as well as the Japanese oil industry and the lost U.S. ability to detect environmental change. (WSJ, Jul 9/91)
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