May 19 1997
From The Space Library
NASA unveiled a new facility, called the Chemical Crib, at Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC). Officials hoped the new facility would reduce chemical waste by as much as 50 percent in three years. Waste disposal had become an increasingly expensive problem for NASA. "For every dollar spent to buy chemicals," NASA's Hazardous Materials Officer reported, "we spend three dollars to dispose of them." The Chemical Crib would use a variety of techniques and technologies to compress waste, such as breaking down photographic-waste chemicals into a sludge, possessing as little as 5 percent of the mass of the original waste. NASA planned to construct similar facilities at its other sites. Staff of DFRC's Safety, Health, and Environmental Office believed that the new facility would not only benefit the environment, but also the Center's budget.
Astronaut Shannon W. Lucid, who had spent more than six months aboard Mir in 1996, received the Order of Friendship Medal from Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin in a ceremony at the Kremlin. The medal was the highest honor available to a non-Russian citizen.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
