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Aviation History
1990
1990 - 3282.PDF
OPERATIONS: SPACEFLIGHT NASA budget cuts restrict Freedom BY TIM FURNISS NASA may be told by the US Government to delay the launch of the first components for the Freedom international space station to the year 2000 as a result of independent project reviews and budget negotiations in Congress. The space station could also be redesigned and major com ponents launched on expenda ble unmanned launch vehicles, rather than the Space Shuttle. The reaction of international partners involved in the project, the European Space Agency, Japan and Canada, will await final confirmation of Freedom's status in November after full Congressional clearance of NASA's budget. Launches of partners' components could be delayed by two to three years. Partners have already been informed that there will be a 90-day redefinition study by NASA ordered by Congress as a condition of granting NASA's Fiscal Year 1991 budget request. Ian Pryke, ESA's director in Washington, has confirmed that top level discussions have al ready taken place between the agencies about the possible ram- Tanking test cl< Atanking test at the Kennedy Space Centre on 24 October revealed no propellant leaks on the Space Shuttle Atlantis, which is likely to be cleared for a night launch about 10 Novem ber on its mission for the US Department of Defense (DoD). A tanking test in June re vealed hydrogen leaks which delayed the DoD mission from July. A similar test on Columbia was scheduled for October 29 in the hope that its hydrogen leak problem can be isolated and the Shuttle cleared for launch on its much-delayed STS 35 Astro 1 mission before the end of 1990. The STS 38 DoD mission scheduled for November will be ifications of the redefinition. The US space agency re quested $15.1 billion for FY 1991 and after a series of wran gles in the House and Senate during the summer — not helped by NASA's Hubble and Shuttle problems — a final budget of around $13 billion seems likely to be approved. This is a 13% increase over 1990 but the agency has been told that in future it cannot expect an increase over 8%, which would have a crucial effect on Freedom and other programmes. The space station request for 1991 could be slashed from the requested $2.5 billion to around $1.9 billion and the agency's redefinition will be directed at lowering the development and operating costs and reducing its reliance on the Space Shuttle. Over 20 Space Shuttle mis sions from 1996-1998 were to have been required to assemble the full station. The NASA re view committee, led by Norman Augustine, chairman of Martin Marietta, will urge NASA to await the development of an Advanced Launch System-class unmanned booster to launch the main components. • the penultimate classified Shut tle flight. STS 44 Atlantis is scheduled to carry a DSP early warning satellite into orbit next year. An unclassified DoD mis sion, STS 39 by orbiter Discov ery, is scheduled for February next year but an SDIO Spacelab research mission, STS 49, Star- lab, may be cancelled due to budget cuts. No further Shuttle DoD mis sions are scheduled after this. The original Magnum elec tronic-intelligence satellite pay- load for STS 38 may have been replaced by a quick-reaction reconnaisance satellite to oper ate in low Earth orbit in support of operation Desert Shield. • ARIANE SCORES HUGHES DOUBLE Ariane V39, the fifth launch of the most powerful Ariane version, the 44L, took place from Kourou, French Guiana on 12 October, carrying two Hughes communica tions satellites, SBS 6 and Galaxy 6. The SBS 6 providest Ku-band high-speed digital data services for Comsat, while the Galaxy 6 model is Hughes Communications' first Ku-band spacecraft with 16 transponders for VS domestic services. The next Ariane launch, V40 with an Ariane 1 44P booster, is set for November, car rying Satcom CI and GStar IV. COBE captures I NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) has taken its first image of the Milky Way galaxy in a wavelength that reveals the dust from which planets and galaxies are formed. The image was taken by the spacecraft's Diffuse Infra-red Background Experiment and shows radiation from cold inter stellar dust. Combined with an earlier image taken with the same in strument but at a different Debris danger faces Shuttle Increasing space debris in Earth orbit may soon make it too dangerous to fly manned spacecraft, such as the Shuttle and space station Freedom, ac cording to the US Congress' Office of Technology Assess ment (OTA). "Unless nations reduce the amount of orbital debris they produce each year, future space activities could suffer loss of capability, loss of income and even loss of life, as a result of collisions between spacecraft and debris," the OTA says. Of the 6,645 artificial objects larger than a football, and together weighing a total of 2.04 million kg, that can be tracked in Earth orbit, only 6% are functional satellites. The other debris com prise mainly dead spacecraft and spent rocket stages. There are also an estimated 70,000 bits of smaller debris that can not be tracked, such as nuts and bolts, and billions of small par ticles such as flakes of paint and spacecraft insulation. Even a flake of paint at a relatively high velocity could puncture an astronaut's spaces- uit. "Continued steady growth of debris could render some well-used low Earth orbits too risky to use by the year 2000 or 2010," says the OTA. The report says that nations "must act", to reduce the prolif eration of debris, for example, rocket stages could be com manded to re-enter Earth's at mosphere or strengthened so they do not break up into nu merous bits. • ilky Way dust wavelength — which revealed the millions of stars in the Milky Way — the image will enable scientists to determine the content, energetics and large-scale structure of the gal axy as well as the distribution of dust within the Solar System. The data will also be studied for evidence of a faint, uniform infra-red background, the resid ual radiation from the first stars and galaxies formed following the creation of the Universe. • ars Atlantis FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 31 October - 6 November, 1990
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