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Aviation History
1985
1985 - 0695.PDF
SPACEFLIGHT ESA and Nasa meet on Space Station WASHINGTON D.C. ~ European Space Agency (ESA) director general Prof Reimar Lust and Nasa admin istrator James Beggs are meeting this week to discuss design concepts for European Columbus modules which will form part of the US Space Station, in preparation for the start of Phase B preliminary design work. This phase has been extended from 18 to 20 months by Nasa because of reductions in funding which, it says, will delay the Station launch date to 1993. Also high on the agenda are major worries that ESA has to quell before making a firm commitment to Phase C development in 1987. Fore most among these is tech nology transfer. The USA fears that the security of its electronic and computer tech nology, and particularly its military applications, will be impaired by a too-liberal flow of information to Europe during co-operative develop ment and construction of the Station and during its oper ation. ESA believes that this issue could prove to be a major obstacle. Vega experiments MOSCOW ~ The Soviet Union has released details of three experiments to be conducted by Vega 1 and 2 as they pass Halley's comet by 10,000km on March 8 next year. Two television cameras, with focal lengths of 150mm and 1,200mm respectively, are expected to give a resolution of 180m and a view of the comet's nucleus. Instruments will be used to "specify the composition" of dust particles with masses ranging from 3 x 10"16 to 5 x 10 grammes and to count particles with a mass of more than 10"10 grammes. The third experiment will identify elements and isotopes in neutral gas and the flows and spectra of molecules and atoms. Insurance anguish for Ariane PARIS ~ The satellite insurance market is heading towards "chaos", according to Ariane- space, following the sharp increase in insurance cover quoted to France for its Tele com IB satellite, one of the payloads for Ariane VIS in August. France's Posts and Tele communications Administra tion (PTT) is having diffi culty finding cover for the launch and the satellite at what it considers to be a real istic figure of $50 million. The situation has become "unbearable", says Ariane- space, which was not happy with the rates quoted to its customers for the last Ariane launch, V12. Brazil and the Arab League were asked to pay premiums of 16 per cent and 20 per cent respectively on Brazilsat 1 and Arabsat Fl, compared with rates of 11 per cent a year ago. In fact, the Arab League decided to pay just $25 million to cover launch costs. Despite the successes of Ariane, with seven missions deploying 11 commercial satellites into correct orbits, Arianespace feels that its customers are having to pay the consequence of the $300 million pay-out to insurers for the loss of Palapa B2 and Westar VI on Shuttle mission 41B and of Intelsat V-F9 in a Centaur launch failure. Because of these losses, premiums quoted to cover Shuttle launches have risen to about 18 per cent. sttWll?
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