Mar 5 1998
From The Space Library
At a news conference at Ames Research Center (ARC), NASA scientists announced that the Lunar Prospector spacecraft had found "evidence of ice crystals sprinkled throughout the Moon's shadowy north and south poles." Alan B. Binder, a Lunar Prospector scientist, stated that the team believed they had detected anywhere from 10 million to several 100 million tons of water over areas of 3,600 to 18,000 square miles (9,300 to 47,000 square kilometers) at the northern pole and 1,800 to 7,200 square miles (4,700 to 19,000 square kilometers) at the southern pole. However, the ice, detected using a neutron spectrometer that scans the lunar surface for signs of hydrogen, was not in the form of ice sheets, but "present in small crystals mixed in with the moon's rocky soil, scattered across thousands of square miles in lunar polar regions." Although evidence of ice was quite strong, the water signal was relatively weak. Because the Moon is very dry, scientists theorized that comets or asteroids colliding with the Moon's surface had carried the ice to the Moon.430
NASA named astronaut Eileen M. Collins to command Space Shuttle Columbia on the upcoming Mission STS-93 in December 2008. Collins was the first woman to command a Space Shuttle mission. NASA had selected her as an astronaut candidate in 1990, and she had become an astronaut in July 1991. She flew her first mission aboard Shuttle Discovery in February 1995. On that mission, Discovery came within 30 feet (9 meters) of Mir during a practice run for docking with the space station. Collins was also the first woman ever to pilot a Space Shuttle, flying Shuttle Atlantis in May 1997, to deliver British-born U.S. astronaut C. Michael Foale to Mir and to return astronaut Jerry M. Linenger to Earth.431
Russian cosmonauts aboard Mir located a lost wrench among 12 years' worth of accumulated spare parts. They used the wrench to loosen the bolt that had broken three wrenches earlier in the week, preventing the two cosmonauts from undertaking a planned spacewalk.
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