Sep 4 1998
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
NASA awarded contracts to Boeing Information, Space, and Defense Systems; Kelly Space and Technology; Lockheed Martin Astronautics; and Orbital Sciences Corporation Space Access. The five contracting companies would study ways that NASA could meet its requirements for human spaceflight at a lower cost. The studies would examine three scenarios: 1) keeping the Shuttle operational until 2020, 2) replacing the Shuttle when it was cost-effective to do so, and 3) developing an alternative plan in case NASA's funding remained at FY 1999 levels.
The journal Science published data gathered from NASA's Lunar Prospector, indicating the presence of hydrogen, often bundled as water molecules, on the north and south poles of the Moon. Alan B. Binder, Chief Scientist for the Lunar Prospector mission, explained that the spacecraft had detected an abundance of hydrogen, and that the science team had interpreted the data to mean that the Moon has 1-10 billion tons (910-9,100 kilograms or 0.9-9.1 billion tonnes) of water. In a previous mission to the Moon to collect data, the spacecraft Clementine had found radar indications of water on the Moon's south pole. Paul D. Spudis, a member of the Clementine science team, remarked that Prospector's discovery was significant because "the presence of lunar water has been confirmed by two different research methods."
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