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From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: space news from Oct 10 AW&ST
Message-ID: <1988Nov17.052317.25865@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 88 05:23:17 GMT

Cover photo is Discovery landing.

Japan is facing a high probability that its current space budget, about
$1.12G/yr, is not enough for the space station and the H-2 launcher and
their other projects, once the big things move into peak funding periods.

NASA got 10 proposals to use expended shuttle tanks in orbit.  About half
of them are passing the first cut and proceeding to detailed review.

SDI's Relay Mirror and Laser Atmospheric Compensation Experiment payloads
are likely to go into storage rather than being launched, when they are
completed in spring.  There will be no launcher available, SDI expects a
budget that will limit its launches, and these two are low priority.

Earlier this year, DoD proposed firing the Miracl infrared laser at White
Sands at an orbiting US satellite [the now-useless Asat test target?] as
an experiment in antisatellite weaponry.  Senior USAF types vetoed the idea.

Landsat data acquisition will be curtailed starting Nov 1, to the extent of
shutting down the US ground stations (but not the foreign ones, which pay
a fee for use of the satellites) and reducing acquisition through TDRS a
lot.  Congress appropriated only $9M for Landsat operations for FY89; the
business-as-usual costs are about $26M/yr.

Major coverage of Discovery's flight.

NASA will study the "plume migration" that occurred on both SRBs on STS-26.
It is believed to be unrelated to the SRB design changes.

Discovery's Ku-band antenna, its link to the TDRS system, had a mechanical
or electrical failure in its pointing system the second day up.  Details
not known yet.

Discovery's flash evaporator, used for cooling the orbiter when the payload
bay doors are closed and their radiators thus are useless, failed during
orbital insertion.  The F.E. boils water for cooling, and ice formation is
suspected as the cause of the problem.  To help thaw the ice, the orbiter
was kept rather warm and the FE's heaters were left on.  Several hours
before reentry, several bursts of water were released into the FE to blow
remaining ice out; this worked.  The FE also had an oscillation problem
of some sort during retrofire; it was reset and that cleared the problem.

TDRS-C, deployed by Discovery, is undergoing checkout in Clarke orbit after
some trouble in getting one of its big antenna booms deployed.  The boom
started to deploy on command, but then stopped.  After 30 minutes in which
nothing happened, a meeting was called to assess the problem; during the
meeting, the boom freed itself and deployed, perhaps because of some minor
thruster firings around that time.  Later there was a minor delay,
unrelated, when thrusters failed to fire after a change of control station
at White Sands; this turned out to be due to a procedural error on the
ground.

NASA hopes to launch Atlantis and its secret DoD payload [which I'd guessed
to be an early-warning satellite, but which I've seen variously reported as
an NSA snoopsat or a low-orbit spysat; the former is plausible but the
latter is wrong, this one's using an IUS to reach Clarke orbit] by
Nov 24; the official target is Nov 17 but this is considered optimistic.
There was little damage to ground facilities from the Discovery launch,
so the pacing items are orbiter readiness and Discovery post-flight
analysis.  The minor hardware problems experienced on Discovery will need
looking at, and things are being delayed because workers without security
clearances have limited access to the orbiter.

Discovery is being prepared for ferrying back to KSC.  The tires and new
brakes behaved fine and showed only normal wear, despite a shorter landing
roll than expected.  There was minor tile damage, as usual.  There was
one nasty gouge, 19x8x1.5 inches, under the right wing, possibly due to
a piece of cork insulation coming off the nose of an SRB during launch.
Temperature measurements in this area during reentry showed nothing worse
than 114F, no problem.

First photo of the Soviet shuttle on the pad.  (This is reproduced much
better than the one in the NY Times, by the way.)  It is slightly shorter
than the US shuttle, has a two-part rudder, and has its OMS engines buried
in its tail (since its main engines are on Energia and hence the tail is
free for the OMS).  Otherwise the orbiter is superficially similar to the
US one.

The new US orbiter is slightly ahead of schedule, which calls for delivery
in April 1991 and first flight in Feb 1992.  It is being built to about
the same standard as Atlantis, but with a couple of improvements which are
scheduled to be retrofitted to the other orbiters as well.  It will have
a drag chute, to be deployed on touchdown, which will shorten landing
run and make life easier for the shuttle's somewhat-marginal brakes,
landing gear, and tires.  The other improvement is a new toilet,
although design work on that is on hold until NASA sorts out what will
be used on the space station -- there are hopes of using the same system
for both.  [Why not use the Skylab toilet?  Unlike the Shuttle one, it
worked.]

DoD establishes tri-service Space Test Range organization to coordinate
future military space tests.  A primary objective is better management
of space debris.  This will essentially provide a permanent version of
the ad-hoc systems set up for each military test in the past.

Anticlimax:  Cosmos 1900's emergency on-board systems were triggered
Oct 1, perhaps by the beginning of noticeable air-drag heating, and
boosted its reactor safely into high orbit.

ESA approves $6.8M to reactivate Giotto early in 1990 so it can be checked
out for possible use in another comet flyby.

Major article on Japan's spaceplane plans.  There are three major efforts
underway:  the Hope small unmanned spaceplane for launch on the H-2 as
early as 1996, a longer-term (2006?) manned vehicle possibly similar to
the US aerospace plane, and a general effort on advanced propulsion
methods.  This doesn't all necessarily have funding approval yet.

Major article on NOAA-11, the polar-orbit metsat launched Sept 24.  It
will replace NOAA-9, which is aging and of limited use.  NOAA-11 payloads
include an ozone instrument, new to the NOAA series, and a Cospas/Sarsat
payload to replace the one on NOAA-9.  There is one earlier NOAA satellite
in mothballs, which will be refurbished for launch next.  It was ready for
launch before it was needed, and its successor was the first NOAA with
Sarsat, so it was bypassed to get Sarsat hardware up quickly.  Money has
been tight for NOAA of late, and refurbishing it will be cheaper than
building a new satellite.  The refurbishing process may add a Sarsat
package; there are no plans for adding an ozone instrument, but it would
not function properly in the intended orbit anyway, so if Sarsat can be
added, this would be a fully-functional satellite.

Cospas/Sarsat, since its inception with the first Cospas payload on a
Soviet satellite in 1982, has saved 1149 lives, mostly at sea and from
aircraft accidents.  With four satellites active, distress signals are
detected within an average of two hours most anywhere in the northern
hemisphere.  Southern-hemisphere coverage is sparse because the current
hardware requires the satellite to be within range of the emergency
transmitter and a Cospas/Sarsat ground station simultaneously, and there
are few ground stations in the south.  A new 406-MHz system, slowly coming
into service, is specifically designed for the satellite system:  it has
better range and frequency stability, carries encoded identification
(and, if known, exact position), should be accurate to within 2-5 km
(against the existing system's 20 km), and most important, is processed
on board the satellite and recorded for retransmission when within
range of a ground station.  This will give global coverage.  Canada
provides the transponders and France the receiver/processor units for
US satellites; the Soviet hardware is all their own.  A new Cospas/Sarsat
agreement was signed July 1 to continue the system for 15 years with
automatic 5-year renewals thereafter.

Japan loses one:  a small hypersonic flight-test model of one of Japan's
spaceplane concepts was lost at sea after an equipment failure aborted
a test launch from a balloon.

NASA accelerates studies on a shuttle replacement, hoping for a new-start
budget item by the mid-90s.  There are two efforts underway, one for
evolutionary change and one for a fresh start.  The evolutionary approach
is looking favored, as it exploits existing experience.  The revolutionary
approach could use a lot of the ALS technology effort, but that is starting
to lag because DoD isn't keen on funding it soon.  Hopes are for formal
development of one approach to start in 1995, to fly around 2005.  The
evolutionary studies, aimed at building new hardware based on existing
designs with major modifications, will look at better SRBs, a crew-escape
module, better main engines, liquid boosters, and flyback boosters that
would replace the external tank as well.  [In other words, they're trying
to build the shuttle we should have had in the first place.]  The fresh-
start folks are looking at a fully-reusable design with a flyback booster,
an orbiter carrying fuel, and a payload housing on top of the orbiter to
"simplify interfaces"; a partially-reusable design with a flyback booster
carrying an expendable stage with an orbiter on top; an expendable approach
with orbiter atop large expendable booster [alas for the Saturn V, just
what the doctor ordered]; and air-breathing rocket systems derived from
the Aerospace Plane.

Letter from Karl Sanders, observing that Pegasus resembles a concept
briefly studied by Temco (now the T in LTV) 30 years ago; they found
the same general advantages.
-- 
Sendmail is a bug,             |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
not a feature.                 | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu