A House Appropriations subcommittee voted Tuesday to cut NASA's proposed 1996 budget by 6 percent, leaving the space station, space shuttle and Mission to Planet Earth intact while sharply cutting space science and recommending the closure of three NASA centers.
The House Appropriations Committee's subcommittee for Housing and Urban Development, Veterans Affairs, and independent agencies approved a $13.54 billion budget for NASA for 1996, a six percent cut from 1995. Full funding was maintained for the space shuttle ($3.23 billion), space station ($2.1 billion) and Mission to Planet Earth ($1.4 billion). Combined they account for one half of NASA's budget.
The most prominent space science mission cut was Cassini, NASA's mission to Saturn. The spacecraft is scheduled for launch in November 1997, with a 2004 arrival at Saturn. Most of the hardware for Cassini has already been built. Two major infrared astronomy projects, SIRTF (an infrared orbiting telescope) and SOFIA (an infrared telescope mounted in an aircraft) were also recommended to be delayed.
Three NASA centers were recommended for closure by the committee. They are Goddard Space Flight Center, outside Washington, DC; Langley Research Center, in Hampton, Virginia, near Norfolk; and Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The responsibilities of these centers, as well their equipment and employees, would be shifted to other centers.
The full House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to review the subcommittee's recommendations this Wednesday, July 19. The full House will consider the budget later this summer.
The shuttle Discovery lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center Thursday morning less than six days after the shuttle Atlantis landed at the space center, as a busy month for the space agency continues.
The five-person crew of the Discovery, including four Ohio natives, immediately went to work on the primary goal of the mission, the deployment of a TDRS communications satellite. The satellite, which will serve as a spare should any of the current TDRS satellites fail, was launched six hours after Discovery reached orbit.
The launch of the Discovery less than six days after Atlantis landed marks the shortest interval between space missions in NASA history. At least five days are required between landing and launch to give space center workers enough time to tend to the completed mission before starting final preparations on the next mission.
The shuttle Endeavour is scheduled for launch on August 3. Its planned launch date of July 30 was pushed back to give its crew enough time in the simulators, which had been busy with astronauts preparing for the Atlantis and Discovery missions.
Discovery will spend the rest of the time in orbit conducting a number of medical and technical experiments in the middeck. The shuttle is scheduled to land in Florida July 21.
The DC-X experimental SSTO testbed finished its planned sequence of test flights July 7 at White Sands, successfully completing a pitchover maneuver before sustaining minor damage from a faster-than-normal landing.
The eighth test flight of the DC-X was designed to test the critical pitchover maneuver, where the vehicle goes from a tail-up attitude for reentry to a nose-up attitude for landing. The DC-X tested the pitchover by swinging up from a nose-up to tail-up orientation, then swinging back to a nose-up position. The maneuver was successfully completed.
During the landing, the DC-X approached the ground at a faster-than-planned speed. A sudden burst of the engines at full throttle slowed the vehicle down, but it still landed at 4.25 meters per second (14 feet per second), much faster than the planned landing rate of 1.2 meters per second (4 feet per second).
The DC-X suffered minor damage from the fast landing. A set of crushable honeycomb material in the vehicle's landing legs were compressed by the landing, as designed. A small crack also appeared in the DC-X aeroshell.
The damage forced controllers to scrub a planned 9th test flight later in the day, as a test of the vehicle's short turnaround time. The turnaround test will be conducted next year, after the vehicle is converted to the DC-XA by NASA as part of a program to test new SSTO technologies.
NASA unveiled a new mission control center Thursday, replacing old monochrome monitors used since the 1960s with a network of 200 workstations that will provide access to flight data faster and at a lower cost than before.
Astronaut Story Musgrave made the first call from the new center to the shuttle Discovery Thursday, officially handing off control of the mission from the old center to the new. Both centers will be staffed for the remainder of Discovery's mission should something go wrong with the new center.
The old mission control, made famous from the Apollo moon missions and more recently by the movie Apollo 13, had been used since the Gemini 4 mission in 1965. The old center used a series of consoles with monitors, dials and switches, connected to a mainframe computer.
The new control center uses a network of workstations in place of the mainframe, providing for a more flexible system. The new center also features improved lighting and new blue-gray consoles.
The new mission control center cost NASA $250 million. NASA expects to see savings in the long run, though, due to lower costs to maintain the new control center.
The crew of the Mir space station conducted a five and one-half hour spacewalk Friday, inspecting several of the space station's modules and starting repairs on a malfunctioning solar battery.
Cosmonauts Anatoly Solovyov and Nikolai Budarin spent five and a half hours, a half-hour longer than planned, outside the space station. Their main goal was to open two solar-cell batteries on the Spektrum module that had not been working. They were unable to fully open the batteries, but mission controllers did not believe it would be a major problem.
The cosmonauts also conducted inspections of the exterior of the Quantum-2, Spektrum and Krystal modules, in particular the docking bays on the modules.
The cosmonauts have been on board since their arrival last month on the American shuttle Atlantis. They will remain on board until August, when a relief crew is launched from Russia on a Soyuz.
Helios 1A, Europe's first reconnaissance satellite, was launched July 7 from French Guiana as France leads an effort to wean Europe from dependence on data from American intelligence satellites.
The 2.5 ton spacecraft was launched by an Ariane 4 into a sun-synchronous polar orbit. This orbit allows the spacecraft to pass over the same place on Earth at the same time each day, which allows for better comparison of images. However, the Helios satellite is limited to providing data during the day and during good weather, limitations not faced by advanced American spacecraft.
France, which funded most of the $2 billion project, is pushing for more involvement from other European countries on more advanced successor spacecraft. France is placing the most pressure on Germany which is considering between joining the Helios project or purchasing an reconnaissance satellite from the American aerospace giant Lockheed Martin.
France is currently developing the successor to Helios 1A, dubbed Helios 2. Helios 2 will be able to operate 24 hours a day, but still only in good weather. An all-weather 24-hour radar satellite, known as Osiris or Horus, is planned for a 2005 launch.
The Galileo probe spacecraft separated from the main spacecraft early Thursday morning, setting the stage for a 170,000 kmph plunge into Jupiter's atmosphere this December that will provide planetary scientists with a better understanding of the largest planet's complex atmosphere.
"The probe is configured for its encounter and is on its way," Marcie Smith, manager of the probe spacecraft said after ground controllers confirmed that the probe had separated from the parent spacecraft. The separation took place as scheduled, at 1:30 EDT Thursday morning.
The probe will remain dormant until shortly before it encounters Jupiter on December 7. The probe will hit the upper Jovian atmosphere at 170,000 kilometers per hour (106,000 miles per hour), the fastest speed ever for a human-made object. A heat shield will protect the probe as it deaccelerates in the upper atmosphere.
After slowing down, the probe will jettison its heat shield and deploy a parachute to drift slowly down through Jupiter's complex atmosphere. Seven instruments on the probe will collect data on the atmosphere's composition and structure, as well as wind speeds and lightning. The probe batteries have a 75 minute lifetime, although enormous pressures deep in the Jovian atmosphere may crush the probe before then.
The probe's data will be relayed to the main Galileo spacecraft as it enters orbit around Jupiter. The main spacecraft will then relay the data to Earth.
Using data from the Ulysses spacecraft, a team of Bell Labs scientists has discovered a set of periodic oscillations in particles in interplanetary space which may provide clues on the structure of the interior of the Sun.
The Bell Labs group announced their discovery in the current issue of Nature, a weekly scientific journal. The team was headed by Louis Lanzerotti, principal investigator of the particle detector instrument aboard Ulysses.
The oscillations were noticed in energetic particles streaming outward from the Sun. The oscillations were likely caused by oscillations within the Sun disturbing the magnetic field lines, which in turn pass on the oscillations to the particles.
The oscillations are similar to seismic waves in the Earth that are created by earthquakes. Just as seismologists study these waves to learn more about the Earth's interior, a branch of astrophysics called helioseismology studies solar oscillations to learn more about the interior of the Sun.
Ulysses, launched by the space shuttle in 1990, is currently conducting its reconnaissance of the northern pole of the Sun. It will reach its maximum northern latitude at the end of July, and finish its study of the northern regions of the Sun in late October.
Orbcomm Second Thoughts: The future of Orbital Science Corporation's Orbcomm project remains in doubt. Its primary investor, Teleglobe, Inc. of Montreal, has delayed until August 7 a decision on whether or not to commit $70 million to the project. The first two Orbcomm satellites were launched in early April but were plagued with problems. OSC has recovered both satellites, and finished in-orbit testing earlier this week.
Titan 4 Launch: The Air Force successfully launched a classified payload on a Titan 4 from Cape Canaveral July 10. The booster carried a classified payload which may be an Advanced Jumpseat intelligence satellite. The use of the Titan 4 Centaur and a launch up the East Coast appear to indicate a launch into a Molniya-type orbit for extended surveillance of northern Europe and Russia. It was the sixth successful Titan 4 launch in 18 months.
Obituary -- Georgy Beregovoi: Georgy Beregovoi, a pioneer cosmonaut and former high-ranking official in the Soviet space program, died June 30 after open heart surgery at the age of 74. Beregovoi flew on Soyuz 3 in 1968 on a five-day mission. For fifteen years starting 1972 he was in charge of the Cosmonaut Training Center at Star City. Born in 1921, he had the earliest birthdate of any person to fly in space.
Obituary -- Todd Hawley: Todd Hawley, who co-founded two influential space organizations in the 1980s, died Tuesday from AIDS-related complications at the age of 34. In the early 1980s Hawley, with Peter Diamandis and Robert Richards, founded Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS), a student-run space interest group. In the mid-80s, he, Diamandis, and Richards founded the International Space University (ISU), dedicated to the multidisplinary education of future space leaders. SEDS now has thousands of members in chapters in the USA, Canada, UK, and elsewhere; while ISU has had a number of successful summer sessions and will soon start year-around operations in Strasbourg, France.