Jun 15 1999
From The Space Library
The Boeing Company named former cosmonaut Vladimir G. Titov as the company's director for Space and Communications, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, located in Boeing's Moscow office. With the appointment, Titov became responsible for initiating new business opportunities, working closely with Boeing's ISS program members and with Russian and Ukrainian partners on the Sea Launch program. A cosmonaut since 1976, Titov had commanded several Soyuz missions, served as a mission specialist on two Space Shuttle missions, and lived aboard Russia's Mir space station, logging 387 days in space, including nearly 19 hours of extravehicular activity.
Keith R. Hall, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Air Force for Space and Director of the National Reconnaissance Office, and Edward C. "Pete" Aldridge Jr., Chief Executive Officer of the Aerospace Corporation, which provides technical analysis for the United States and international space programs, testified before the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence's Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence, regarding three rocket-launch failures. All of the launch failures an explosion after launch in August 1998, a missile-warning satellite launched into the wrong orbit on 9 April 1999, and a military communications satellite launched into the wrong orbit on 30 April 1999 had involved Lockheed Martin Titan IV rockets. The three mission failures had cost taxpayers "at least [US]$3 billion." Hall explained that the U.S. Air Force had traced the three launch failures to human error. The investigators had traced the most recent failure specifically to a misplaced decimal point. Aldridge, whose company had been responsible for checking U.S. Air Force rockets for defects prior to launch, explained that the mistake "got through," despite the system in place to prevent such occurrences. Aldridge remarked that his company's workforce of engineers, scientists, and support personnel had decreased by 30 percent since 1993, and that the recent launch failures had caused further delays, resulting in increased costs for the Titan program. Both Aldridge and Hall requested federal funding. House Subcommittee Chairperson Michael N. Castle (R-DE) asked whether the military rocket program, which receives less supervision than NASA, needed greater congressional oversight. Castle announced that the subcommittee would hold further public hearings on the failures.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) detached the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-L (GOES-1) from an Atlas IIA rocket, returning the satellite to the integration facility Astrotech, where engineers planned to recondition its batteries and purge it of gaseous nitrogen, to prevent degradation. NOAA had planned to store the satellite in orbit, ready to replace one of the weather satellites, GOES-8 or GOES-10, but GOES-1 had been on the launchpad since 6 May. On 15 May, NASA and NOAA had decided to delay the launch of GOES-1 until they had received the results of the investigations into the recent Titan and Delta launch failures.
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