Sep 5 1986
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
NASA and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics planned a symposium on Quality and Productivity for December. The event would focus on strategies for revitalizing organizations and provide a forum for discussing issues involved in increasing national quality and productivity. The symposium would bring together over 900 key executives from industry, government, and academia. (NASA anno)
NASA launched its first successful rocket since the Challenger accident, a Delta rocket from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Carrying two payloads for the Strategic Defense Program, one satellite would attempt to track down and intercept the other. McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Company, manufacturer of the rocket, viewed the event as a stepping stone that might lead to the company's entry into commercial launches. NASA had two more Delta rockets in its inventory, one committed to a U.S. Government weather satellite identical to the one lost in May and the other to an Indonesian weather satellite. (NASA Release 86-32; WSJ, Sep 8/86, P Inq, Sep 6/86; NY Times, Sep 6/86; Sep 8/86; W Post, Sep 6/86; C Trib, Sep 6/86; LA Times, Sep 6/86)
NASA extended a $1.32 billion contract to Lockheed Space Operations Company for processing services at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The contracted price, however, did not reflect the schedule changes brought on by the Challenger accident; the changes would be handled through contract amendments. NASA also awarded contracts at $500,000 million each to five different firms for the study of designs for second generation Solid Rocket Boosters. The companies were required only to submit concepts for a newly designed rocket. (LA Times, Sep 6/86; WSJ, Sep 8/86)
NASA cleared a site at Wallops Island, Virginia, for use by Space Services, Inc., a new rocket company, to launch its Conestoga rocket. The company planned to put cremated remains of 10,000 people on a satellite that was to orbit the Earth. (P Inq, Sep 9/86)
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