May 20 1997
From The Space Library
NASA researchers announced the discovery of wildly oscillating weather patterns on Mars. In yet another use for the HST images, scientists tracked much colder, cloudier, harsher weather conditions than they had expected. R. Todd Clancy of the Space Science Institute attributed Mars's chaotic weather to a combination of factors, including the planet's thin atmosphere and elliptical orbit and the ice and dust clouds surrounding it. When the planet's orbit places it closest to the Sun, large windstorms push dust into the atmosphere; the dust absorbs sunlight, causing the air to heat, and Mars's temperature to rise as high as 30°F (-1 °C). HST images seemed to demonstrate further that, when the planet is farthest from the Sun, the dust storms remain at low altitudes, and ice clouds surround the planet, causing temperatures to plunge precipitously. The findings were of particular importance to NASA's ongoing Mars Pathfinder Project, with Pathfinder's entrance into the Martian atmosphere planned for July 1997.
A Russian Zenit-2 rocket carrying a military satellite exploded moments after taking off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. According to Russian space officials, the failure occurred 38 seconds after liftoff, when an engine inexplicably shut off. The Russian Space Agency suspended all further launches until an investigation could determine what had caused the explosion. NASA believed that the destroyed satellite was a spy satellite intended to replace in orbit one of Russia's many outdated satellites. Russia had not insured the satellite, valued at US$17 million.
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