It has been a week of launches and advances in astronomy for the space frontier. Both the US and Japan have launched astronomy missions this past week. The shuttle Discovery has been launched on its Hubble repair mission and the MUSES-B radio telescope mission has been launched on the maiden flight of Japan's new M-5 rocket. Other launches include a Russian resupply and crew rotation launch and a test launch of a Minuteman III. Several items of business advance include a French microgravity testing company, Intelsat, Teledesic and Space Systems/Loral.
Not all news is positive. The International Space Station continues to be caught in a funding and scheduling crunch caused by Russia's economic problems.
The shuttle Discovery launched early Tuesday Feb. 11 from KSC pad 39a. The shuttle and its seven-man crew were placed into a 320-mile orbit setting up the capture of the Hubble Space Telescope early Thursday morning. Beginning late Thursday night and extending into Friday morning, Mark Lee and Steve Smith conducted a spacewalk, successfully replacing aging spectrographs. Ironically, one of the spectrographs had failed last week when it overheated. The Goddard High-Resolution Spectrometer and the Faint Object Spectrograph have been replaced by the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS). The work was delayed when escaping air from the airlock fluttered one of the Hubble's solar panels. The end of the walk was also delayed when the astronauts had difficulty latching a door on the telescope. Next, Greg Harbaugh and Joe Tanner are scheduled to replace a reel-to-reel tape recorder with a more efficient Solid State Recorder and install a new fine guidance sensor that will allow Hubble to better target stars, galaxies and black holes. The last two walks will replace a degraded Reaction Wheel Assembly (RWA), put protective covers on equipment and perform other maintenance on the Hubble. Supporting the space walk are pilot Scott Horowitz, Mission Specialist-2 Steve Hawley, and commander Ken Bowersox (Flatoday).
Russia successfully launched a Soyuz U rocket from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakstan. The rocket carried a Soyuz TM-25 spacecraft containing Russians Vasily Tsibliyev, the mission commander, and Alexander Lazutkin, the flight engineer along with German Reinhold Ewald. Ewald will return to earth in twenty days in the company of Russians Valery Korzun and Alexander Kaleri, who have been stationed on Mir nearly half a year. The German Space Agency paid $60 million to put Ewald in orbit. Ewald, who is the eighth German to fly in space, will participate in a number of experiments including sleep studies. Soyuz TM-25 reached Mir on Feb. 12, but the first docking attempt using the automatic system failed. A second docking with Tsibliyev at the controls was successful (NASA; Flatoday; ITAR-TASS).
Funding and construction of a crucial International Space Station (ISS) component will be the topic when Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Palm Bay; Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr., R-Wis., chairman of the House Science Committee; and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., chairman of the Space and Aeronautics subcommittee travel to Russia next week to meet with Russian political and space industry officials. "This is Russia's last chance," announced Rohrabacher at a press conference with Weldon on Thursday. "If we can't work something out, nobody will ever trust them again" (Flatoday).
Meanwhile, last week Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin assured U.S. Vice President Al Gore that the Russian government will release an overdue $100 million in space station funding to the Russian Space Agency by Feb. 28. However, it should be remembered that Chernomyrdin made a similar promise at a meeting in July 1996. Less than 10 percent of the needed funding was released to Khrunichev of Kaliningrad and RSC Energia of Moscow which were building the space station's service module (SN).
NASA's aircraft microgravity simulator dubbed the "Vomit Comet" now has a French competitor doing commercial flights. Novespace of Paris recently tested solar panels for NEC Corp. of Tokyo with a series of 24 parabolic arcs to simulate the microgravity of space (SN), using ESA's Airbus parabolic aircraft.
On Tuesday February 11, the Japan's Institute of Space and Astronomical Science (ISAS) successfully launched their first M-5 rocket from the Uchinoura Space Center near Kagashima. The 100-foot-high, all solid- propellant rocket, placed the 1,826 pound Muses - B radio telescope into a 6 hour orbit. Four maneuvers placed the low point of the orbit at 620 miles. About ninety minutes into the flight two solar panels were deployed. The main antenna sub-reflector will be deployed twelve days after launch and the 26-foot mesh main antenna will be deployed fourteen days after launch. Over the next few weeks, controllers will test ground links, amplifiers and attitude control.
The space deployment of the radio observatory was made possible by utilizing NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellites. As part of a Japanese tradition, the telescope which was referred to as MUSES -B while on the ground was renamed "Haruka" shortly after launch (NASA; Flatoday).
Once operational, Haruka will create a radio telescope 2.5 times the diameter of the earth - - the largest astronomical "instrument" ever created. The three-year mission of the Very Long Baseline Interferometry Space Observatory Program is part of an international collaboration led by ISAS. Very Long Baseline Interferometry is a technique by which astronomers link many widely separated radio telescopes together to function as a single instrument, in this case, forty. By using the new Haruka telescope astronomers will be able to triple the resolution previously available using ground-based radio telescopes and will have about 1,000 times the power of the optics of the Hubble Space Telescope. The new system will be used to observe masars, the cores of quasars and active galaxies, believed to be powered by super-massive black holes (Flatoday; NASA).
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has ask for $66 million to order up to four new weather satellites. Their current budget of $237 million includes costs associated with two satellites already in orbit, three satellites in production, and includes launch costs. NOAA plans to award the contract for the additional four satellites later this year (NOAA).
The Department of Energy is working on advanced space nuclear power systems--specifically radioisotope power systems--and is seeking $47 million for the coming year. These systems would power both defense and outer planetary missions where solar power cannot meet energy demands. The project is being subsidized by $10 million from NASA and $8.5 million from the Pentagon (SN).
As a test of the reliability of the Minuteman III weapons system, the USAF successfully launched a Minuteman III missile on January 30. The unarmed missile was launched from a silo on the north end of Vandenberg AFB and successfully sent its payload to a target area near Kwajalein Island in the Pacific. The missile used for the test was pulled from a silo of the 321st Missile Group at Grand Forks AFB, North Dakota.
Teledesic: Teledesic Corp. is currently negotiating with a newly-formed Russian-Ukrainian partnership to launch up to 204 Teledesic satellites into Low Earth Orbit on the Dnepr rocket. This rocket consists of former Soviet SS-18s missiles converted to peaceful use by Askond of Moscow and Ukraine's Yuzhnoye State Design Bureau. Teledesic plans to place around 900 satellites into orbit (SN).
Intelsat: Intelsat is considering spinning off a private company with between three and six satellites with the possible addition of a Ku-band satellite currently under construction. Intelsat currently is operating 24 satellites in orbit. The move comes to help Intelsat better compete for commercial business. Intelsat may retain up to 15% ownership of the company (SN).
McDonnell Douglas: McDonnell Douglas and Space Systems/Loral have entered into an agreement for McD/D to provide Space Systems/Loral with launches on five of the new Delta III rockets between 1999 and 2001. McD/D now has a backlog of eighteen launches on the system set to debut in 1998. The new rocket will be able to deliver 18,200 pounds to a low earth orbit and 8,400 pounds to GEO. Space Systems/Loral is a subsidiary of Loral Space & Communications Ltd. which has a backlog of 75 spacecraft (Flatoday).
The space population is near capacity with thirteen persons in orbit: On Mir are four Russians, one American and one German. On the shuttle Discovery are seven Americans.