Aug 30 1991
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
NASA announced that the Magellan spacecraft, mapping the surface of Venus with imaging radar, had discovered the longest channel known in the solar system, 4,200 miles long. Steve Saunders, Project Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, said it was not known what formed the channel. (NASA Release 91-141; LA Times, Aug 30/91; UPI, Aug 30/91)
Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science announced that Japan had successfully launched a solar flare observation satellite, designed to analyze X-rays and gamma rays from solar flares. (DPA, Aug 30/91)
Exploring the Moon and Mars, a report by the congressional Office of Technology Assessment, was quoted. The report advocated the need for the United States to take the development and use of robotic technology more seriously if robots are to be used in a mission to Mars. Furthermore, the report projected that robots would be considerably cheaper than human exploration that NASA appeared to favor. (W Times, Aug 30/91)
Robert C. Cowen, a science writer for the Christian Science Monitor, wrote of a recent article in the journal Science by Compton J. Tucker and Wilbur W. Newcomb of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, and Harold E. Dregne of Texas Technical University in Lubbock. They used American polar-orbiting weather satellites to show the shifting sands of the Sahara Desert. (B Sun, Aug 30/91)
AP reported that the Baikonur Space Station in western Kazakhstan seemed ready to avoid the problems that harmed nuclear testing at Semipalatinsk. A Soviet space delegation visited the Kazakh capital of Alma Ata in April to conclude a program of scientific, technical, and economic cooperation between the two countries and to build a training school for young cosmonauts in Leninsk. (AP, Aug 30/91)
According to the Press Trust of India, quoting the Indian Space Research Organization, India's second remote-sensing satellite, launched on August 29 by a Soviet rocket from the Baikonur cosmodrome, sent back its first pictures August 30. (AP. Aug 30/91)
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