Jan 13 1994
From The Space Library
Dr. Gary A. Bower, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, said at an American Astronomical Society (AAS) conference that Hubble Space Telescope (HST) repairs were successful and would enable the HST to measure the velocity of stars and other matter rotating near the centers of galaxies and thereby more firmly establish the existence of black holes. (NYT, Jan 13/94; Reuter, Jan 13/97; AP, Jan 12/97; AP, Jan 13/94)
Astronomer Holland C. Ford and COSTAR project manager Dr. Jim Crocker, both with the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) at Johns Hopkins University, expressed scientists' jubilation at the remarkable photos from the recently repaired Hubble Space Telescope (HST). COSTAR is the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement package that repaired the HST. Dr. Gary A. Bower, an HST astronomer in a group of 1,800 attending an American Astronomical Society (AAS) conference in Crystal City, Virginia, predicted that the HST would be able to confirm evidence of black holes at the center of galaxies. Dr. [[Edward J. Weiler], an HST program scientist at NASA Headquarters, reserved judgement. (B Sun, Jan 13/94; AP, Jan 13/94)
Engineers William Weist and Ray McLaughlin, with three other scientists and pilots of AlliedSignal, Inc., have since October 1991 been flying a converted 1952 Convair with powerful, updated turboprops at 300 feet in Florida testing a new system to detect low-level wind shear. In summer, bursts of concentrated cold air descend to the ground and violently spread out horizontally in all directions, causing unpredictable changes in wind direction at low altitude. Identified only two decades ago, wind shear has since 1964 caused at least 26 aircraft accidents in the U.S., killing more than 500 people. Although airports are installing radar, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported that air-traffic controllers might need two minutes to warn pilots, who might have only 10 seconds to react. In contrast, this system can warn in 50 seconds, despite analyzing four million pieces of information per second and filtering out ground clutter such as traffic. (WSJ, Jan 13/94)
The Earthwinds balloon flew 200 miles in seven hours from Reno, Nevada, over the Sierra Nevada and landed 200 miles north of Los Angeles in its fourth failed attempt since its initial try in February, 1992, to make the first nonstop round-the-world flight. The hourglass-shaped craft about the length of a football field consists of an upper teardrop-shaped, helium-filled bag separated by a three-man crew capsule from its lower round, air-filled anchor balloon. The project, sponsored mainly by hotel magnate Barron Hilton, has cost $7 million to date, with $700,000 for non-reusable balloons and helium for each flight. Project manager Don Engen expected no new flight this season, but project advisor, Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan, predicted another attempt. (Reuters, Jan 12/94)
SETI Institute President Frank B. Drake announced that the organization in Moffett Field, California, will work with private backing, despite cancellation by NASA due to a funding cut by Congress. SETI-the search for extraterrestrial intelligence-was to continue as the new Project Phoenix, with some NASA scientists doing the latter half of the former NASA project, which had been a sky survey by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a targeted search by NASA's Ames Research Center. They planned to target areas around 1,000 nearby Sun-like stars. The NASA project was begun as a $100-million, ten-year project on October 12, 1992, the 500th anniversary of Columbus' landing in the Americas, but was stopped less than one year into its planned 10-year life. Observations were now planned to last into the next century. Major donors included Arthur C. Clarke through the British Interplanetary Society (BIS) and the founders of Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Microsoft. It was announced that $4.4 million of the $7.3 million needed for the next year had been raised. (Reuters, Jan 12/94; AP, Jan 13/94)
NASA and the California Institute of Technology (CIT) signed a five-year, five-billion-dollar, cost-plus-award-fee contract to manage NASA's 7,300-member Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). This contract consolidated two previous contracts for CIT, which has managed JPL since NASA's inception in 1958. JPL, NASA's lead site for solar system exploration, designed and built the Wide Field/Planetary Camera (WF/PC II) recently installed on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST). It also runs programs such as NASA's Mission to Planet Earth, its Galileo mission to Jupiter, and the Magellan mission to Venus, as well as the U.S. half of the NASA/ESA Ulysses mission to the Sun, the NASA/CNES TOPEX/Poseidon, and the SIR-C/X-SAR radar system on the Shuttle. (NASA Release C94-c)
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