Mar 28 2003
From The Space Library
NASA announced the publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research of the conclusions of a research team that had used data spanning the years 1991 through 2000, which the Microwave Limb Sounder on NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite had collected. The team had found that ozone depletion over Earth's Arctic region varies in amount, timing, and pattern of loss, confirming previous variations in Arctic ozone-loss estimates. The team's findings provided the first “consistent, three-dimensional picture of ozone loss during multiple Arctic winters.” 401" "401 NASA, “NASA Finds Wide Annual Fluctuations in Arctic Ozone Loss,” news release 03-125, 28 March 2003, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2003/mar/HP_news_03125.html (accessed 25 August 2008).
Administrator Sean O’Keefe announced an agreement between NASA and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), which provided for NIMA to capture detailed satellite images of Space Shuttles in orbit. NASA had sought this agreement with NIMA because of critics' “pointed questioning” of NASA's decision not to capture satellite images that it could have used to check for damage to Columbia's heat shields while the Shuttle was in orbit. The agreement would enable NASA to “employ NIMA assets during targets of opportunity” without requiring NASA to make a specific request for imaging. Before the disaster, NASA had turned down a NIMA offer to capture images of Columbia, and NASA officials had withdrawn an unofficial request for U.S. Air Force telescopes to capture images. O'Keefe stated that the agreement did not represent any NASA decision “about whether those images might have helped determine damage” to Columbia. (Associated Press, “Military To Capture Future Shuttle Flight Images,” 29 March 2003.
Japan launched two reconnaissance satellites~ Information Gathering Satellites (IGSs), IGS 1A and IGS 1B~ atop an H-2 rocket from Tanegashima Space Center. The pair, the first of at least four such spacecraft that Japan intended to place in orbit as part of a US$2.05 billion program, were capable of monitoring global natural disasters and hurricanes, as well as observing nuclear explosions and missile launches in nearby countries. Because the craft were able to monitor weather events, the launch did not violate the terms of the Japan-North Korea Declaration of September 2002. However, Japanese space officials acknowledged that Japan had developed the program in reaction to the “Taepodong shock,” when a North Korean Taepodong ballistic missile flew over Japan's main island in 1998. North Korea protested the IGS program as a “'hostile act' that violates the spirit” of the countries' bilateral agreement. One of the IGS craft carried optical cameras with 1-meter (3.3-foot) resolution and the other carried synthetic-aperture radar to capture images with resolutions of several meters. Japanese space officials provided no information about which craft carried which instrument. (NASA, Spacewarn Bulletin, no. 593; Eric Talmadge for Associated Press, “Japan's First Spy Satellites Reach Earth Orbit,” 27 March 2003.
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