Mar 8 1993
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
Launch of the Commercial Experiment Transporter (COMET), which was scheduled to lift off March 31, was postponed for at least two months. NASA contributed $85 million toward three launches of the COMET; the spacecraft was to carry 11 experiments from NASA's commercial space development centers. COMET was also serving as the first space billboard. Columbia Pictures paid $500,000 to advertise an upcoming Arnold Schwarzenegger movie on the rocket. (Space News, Mar 8-14; AP, 9/93, Mar 10/93)
NASA announced that it had awarded Government Technology Services Inc., of Chantilly, a contract to provide Unix work station products to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. (W Times, Mar 4/93)
NASA announced that an ER-2 aircraft, an updated version of the U-2 spy plane, would spend seven months next year researching the ozone hole over Antarctica. The study, part of a joint New Zealand-U.S. atmospheric study into ozone depletion, would explore the extent of the hole in the ozone layer. NASA research pilot Jim Barrilleaux was to fly the NASA-owned ER-2 air-craft. The work was scheduled to begin in late March 1994. (RTw, Mar 4/93) The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce announced that it had awarded NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin, U.S. Air Force Lt. General Edward Barry, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) its Kitty Hawk, Sands of Time Award. The chamber annually recognizes individuals and companies in the aerospace industry as a means of promoting the industry. (Space News, March 8-14/93)
General Dynamics Space Systems Division of San Diego proposed returning to the Moon for a 21-day, two-person mission in 1999. The mission would use a capsule and return vehicle transported by the U.S. Space Shuttle and a Titan 4 rocket with a Centaur upper stage; the proposal did not call for the construction of a new launcher. However, NASA's head of exploration called many of the calculations in the proposal overly optimistic. NASA's own rough draft for a lunar base program entailed construction of a new launcher and higher costs than those projected in the General Dynamics proposal. (Space News, March 8.14/93)
NASA announced that a hydraulic hose that ruptured in Columbia's engine compartment during a launch-pad test had a manufacturing defect; the defect was also found in nine other lines in the Shuttle. The problem delayed Columbia's German Spacelab mission, scheduled for March, by at least five days. (AP, Mar 8/93)
Clinton administration officials said that the fate of the U.S. Space Station depended on finding a new design that would not absorb NASA's entire budget. Dr. John H. Gibbons, head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the White House, said that the administration had ordered the redesign after it discovered that the rising costs of the project threatened all the other civilian space and aeronautics research programs. (AP, Mar 8/93, Mar 9/93; W Times, Mar 9/93; USA Today, Mar 9/93; Av Wk, Mar 8/93)
Aviation Week & Space Technology reported that Lockheed was leading a six-member industry team in an effort to develop an unsolicited National Aerospace Plane (NASP) proposal for the Air Force. The team was to recommend scrapping the NASP in favor of a much lighter hypersonic research vehicle called NORA, for National Orbital Research Aircraft. NORA's $5 billion price tag was far less than the $10-15 billion slated for the NASP. (Av Wk, Mar 8/93)
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