Jan 9 1995
From The Space Library
A large storm on Saturn was imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope on December 1, 1994. The storm, which was on Saturn's equator and the size of Earth, was white and in the shape of an arrowhead. It was only the third storm seen on Saturn in the past two centuries. (AV Wk, Jan 9/95)
The 1,700 lb., $1.7 million robot Dante II, built by Carnegie Mellon University scientists, took gas samples and video pictures of the Spurr volcano in Alaska. The research is aimed at proving that cheap robots can be used on dangerous missions on Mars. (Bus Wk, Jan 9/95)
NASA scientists expressed concern about space trash from spent satellites and burned out rocket boosters that pose a hazard to functioning satellites and Space Shuttles. Instead of attempting to collect such debris, NASA has been concentrating on preventing its further buildup by programming satellites and boosters to spiral into the atmosphere and burn up harmlessly. In the future, however, NASA may take a closer look at the possibility of retrieving space debris. At that point, the research of Kumar Ramohalli, formerly of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who was attempting to develop a debris retrieving satellite, should be useful. (CSM, Jan 9/95)
Two new images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope provided details of the results of two violent cosmic events. One image shows a single star, actually a planetary nebula in the constellation Draco, which blew off its outer shell 1,000 years ago and is in the last stages of its life. The other shows the result of a rare and spectacular head-on collision between two galaxies located 500 million light-years away in Sculptor. (NASA Release N95-1; B Sun, Jan 12/95)
A space endurance record was set by Russian Cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, who completed his 367th day aboard the Russian Space Station Mir. Polykov was launched into orbit January 8, 1994, and was expected to remain on Mir until March 22. (Phillips Business Information, Jan 9/95; USA Today, Jan 10/95; AP, Jan 10/95)
A team of national geologists working with NASA scientists dropped a 700-pound weight on a jumbled mound of rock in Canyonlands National Park in Utah in an attempt to determine whether Upheaval Dome is a badly eroded salt dome or the remnants of a five-mile-diameter meteorite impact crater. Earlier studies of shattered rocks and quartz crystals had already convinced many researchers that an asteroid or comet fragment slammed into southeast Utah sometime between 5 and 100 million years ago. Impact craters such as Upheaval Dome are common in the solar system, so the geologists were attempting to learn how such craters form. (Salt Lake City Tribune, Jan 10/95)
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