🚀 go-pugleaf

NASA abandons the notion of a serviceable design for the polar platform,
reverting to a one-shot expendable approach.  [Hard to avoid, given the
lack of any way to service it...]

NASA plans to build a ground-based radar system to assess how bad the
small-space-debris problem is, specifically with reference to the space
station.  Existing radars track big pieces but not small ones.

SDI budget cuts slip Zenith Star space-laser experiment two years, at least.

Bush selects "Endeavour" as name of new orbiter, after Captain Cook's first
command, used in exploration of the Pacific, including Alaskan waters.
[As reported by others, AW&ST left out the "u" in the name.]

Authoritative report that the Titan 34D launch on May 10 was a pair of
strategic-forces comsats.  [Said report was later retracted; it was a
snoopsat instead.  The comsat pair is still waiting for launch.]

Magellan doing well en route, with daily star calibration maneuvers being
done to assess gyro drift.

A day before landing, the Atlantis crew replaced one of the orbiter's
five general-purpose computers after it failed.  The orbiter routinely
carries a spare, and the crew are trained in the replacement procedure,
but it took about four hours because the computers are behind some of
the middeck lockers and are not easy to get at.

Atlantis lands successfully at Edwards.  Landing on the lakebed runway
had been planned, but crosswinds were too strong and plans shifted to
one of the concrete runways.  The landing was made there with an 8kt
crosswind, which suited NASA fine, as landing in a mild crosswind has
been a test objective for quite a while.

NASA proposes to switch much of the station's power system from solar
arrays to a solar dynamic scheme.  Solar-dynamic was originally put off
to phase 2, but the technology has developed well and an important
advantage has appeared:  by using a phase-change heat-storage system,
a solar dynamic system can maintain full output even when the station
is in Earth's shadow.  Doing the same for solar arrays requires large
battery banks, which deteriorate and have to be replaced, to the tune
of the equivalent of a dedicated shuttle mission every five years just
for battery replacement.  Solar-dynamic systems also make power growth
cheaper, a significant issue since some feel the station is underpowered.
The station would probably retain one modest solar array for emergency
power.  Station management has not yet approved the switch; general
consensus seems to be that it may be a good idea but it's disturbing
that such major changes are still showing up now.

US and Soviet scientists propose monitoring firing of high-powered lasers
into space by placing scattered-light detectors 1 km or so from suspected
antisatellite-laser locations.  This could help verify a laser-Asat ban.

Soviet shuttle orbiter will appear at the Paris air show, contrary to
earlier reports.  It will be carried there on the new Mriya heavylift
transport aircraft, which will also star at the show.  [This report
quotes Soviet aviation officials as saying that the Paris orbiter will
be a test article, but I think it turned out to be Buran itself.]

Space Services Inc. and Space Data Corp. selected as contractors for
commercial sounding-rocket services being bought by NASA for materials
science.  Contracts are for two launches each, with options on two more.

NASA science managers [now there's a job title for you... :-)] say that
Soviet radarsat reactors will be a "nuisance" to the Gamma Ray Observatory,
requiring careful planning of operations but not badly disrupting them.
Crucial instruments will be turned off for short periods during close
encounters with the radarsats themselves, and will be adjusted to avoid
reporting gamma rays produced by electrons and positrons that the reactors
emit.  This will complicate mission planning but will reduce scientific
returns only slightly.  More reactors in orbit, however, would be bad news.

Martin Marietta gets contract for the space station's Canadian Contribution
Duplication, er excuse me Flight Telerobotic Servicer.  MM's latest design
is much more anthropomorphic than older designs, with a pair of video
cameras with zoom lenses and spotlights in the "head" and a pair of arms
attached to the "shoulders" of a roughly-rectangular equipment box.
There is a third arm, located... um... where a tail would be but in
front :-)... which will anchor the servicer to its work site.  There will
be a flight test in 1991, aimed mostly at human-factors assessment, and
a full flight demonstration in 1993.

SDI prepares to launch a neutral-particle-beam experiment on a sounding
rocket.  The main objective is to examine how the beam propagates away
from the spacecraft and interacts with the near-spacecraft environment.
The hope is to demonstrate that problems with NPB technology, formerly
thought to make it impractical as a useful weapon, have been overcome.

Letter from Michael Lang, commenting on an earlier expendables-are-best
letter:

	"H.L. Anderton is apparently living in a dream world if he thinks
	we would be able to recover from an expendable launch failure in
	a month.  Maybe he forgets that there have been long launch
	delays after every recent failure.  The incidents all have one
	crucial thing in common with the recovery process after the
	Challenger failure -- bureaucrats.  Every time we have a failure,
	it's not the engineers who determine the problems and solutions.
	A bunch of bureaucrats form advisory panels, testify endlessly
	in blue-ribbon, round-table discussions, and make technical
	decisions about systems they may not have seen in years (if ever).
	Meanwhile the technical people, who live and work with these
	systems every day, are forced to worry about layoffs and wait..."
-- 
$10 million equals 18 PM       |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
(Pentagon-Minutes). -Tom Neff  | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu