The eight remaining candidates for the Republican Presidential nomination have put a great deal of effort into their economic and social policies but have done little to articulate their views on space, according to a SpaceViews special report.
In December, SpaceViews, in conjunction with the Student Space Policy Organization, sent policy questionnaires to the nine candidates then in the race:Lamar Alexander, Pat Buchanan,Bob Dole, Robert Dornan, Steve Forbes, Phil Gramm, Alan Keyes, Richard Lugar, and Morry Taylor (Gramm ended his campaign on February 14). A follow-up letter was sent to the candidates in late January.
Of the nine, only Lamar Alexander's campaign office responded. "Governor Alexander is committed to a vibrant space program," wrote Daniel Casse, Director of Policy for the Alexander campaign. "He supports continued funding for the space station and shuttle, and for other areas which private research cannot cover."
Alexander also favors greater privatization of NASA and more cooperation with outside companies. "Those missions which can be accomplished better by commercial firms...should be cut back and their missions handed over to private firms," Casse wrote.
While the Buchanan campaign did not respond to the questionnaire, Buchanan has referred to space in at least one campaign speech. In a speech on foreign aid last December, he recommended that the $5 billion a year in foreign aid for Egypt and Israel be used instead for a "land- and-space-based missile defense" for the US.
In a move that may be the final straw for a troubled program, Rockwell International announced Monday that it was withdrawing from the X-34 reusable launch vehicle project.
According to the announcement in Aerospace Daily, Rockwell is pulling out of its partnership with Orbital Sciences Corporation on the X-34 project, citing "business reasons." Whether OSC will continue with the project is unclear.
Rockwell's departure from the X-34 project comes after a series of problems with the project. The final design of the vehicle was to be finalized last November, but was delayed for months when NASA suspended the project in a dispute with Rockwell over the rocket engine for the X- 34. Rockwell advocated a Rocketdyne-built engine while NASA pressed, and finally won, use of the Russian RD-120 engine.
OSC stopped work on the X-34 in late January when company executives saw problems with the vehicle design and price spiral out of control. "The design, weight, and cost of the booster were growing," an OSC spokesperson told Space News.
The X-34 was designed to be launched in the air from a 747 aircraft. The vehicle would fly a suborbital trajectory, deploying its payload in space before returning to a runway landing on Earth.
The United States and Russia have agreed to extend the life of the Russian Mir space station into 1998 by adding two more Shuttle-Mir docking missions, while selecting a crew for the first mission to the new international space station.
Under the agreement, two dockings between the shuttle Atlantis and Mir will take place in 1998. One mission, STS-90, has already been manifested, while a second one will be added for later in 1998. The two additional dockings will bring the total of linkups to nine.
Also, officials announced the crew for the first mission on the international space station Alpha. American astronaut William Shepherd, a veteran of three shuttle missions, will be mission commander. Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, the first Russian to fly on the American space shuttle, will also be on the crew, as well as a third person to be added later. The crew will be launched on a Soyuz in May 1998 for a 120-day stay.
The agreement to extend the life of Mir is seen as a gesture to Russia, who had requested a drastic restructuring of the international space station program in December. The agreement, which includes a restructuring of Russian contributions to the space station, is hoped to help Russia ease its financial constraints without jeopardizing the timetable for the space station.
The accords were announced January 30 during a meeting between U.S. Vice-President Al Gore and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.
Japanese efforts to develop an unmanned space shuttle suffered a setback February 12 when a scaled-down prototype sank in the Pacific Ocean after a test flight.
The HYFLEX shuttle was launched from the Japanese launch facility on Tanegashima Island. The shuttle, 4.5 m (15 feet) long, separated from its booster four minutes after launch at an altitude of 112 km (70 miles), as planned. The shuttle glided to a landing in the ocean 960 km (600 miles) southwest of Tokyo.
When recovery teams arrived at the site of the landing, they found that a cord connecting the one-ton shuttle to a flotation device had broken, allowing the shuttle to sink. Officials said no attempt to recover the shuttle was planned, but they already had most of the data from the shuttle before it sank.
The flight is part of a test program to develop HOPE, an unmanned space shuttle whose first launch is planned for the year 2000. Another test flight of a HOPE prototype is planned for March, which will include a test landing at the Woomera range in Australia.
The launch of the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft, the first Discovery-class low-cost spacecraft mission, is set for this Friday, weather permitting.
The launch on NEAR atop a Delta II rocket is scheduled for 3:53pm EST Friday. The launch window Friday lasts only one minute, although opportunities for launching NEAR exist until early March.
NEAR will spend nearly three years flying to the near-Earth asteroid Eros. Once there, the spacecraft will spend nine months in orbit around the 40-km (25-mile) asteroid, taking images, spectra, and other measurements.
The mission is the first in the new Discovery class of spacecraft missions, designed to cost no more than $150 million dollars (1992 dollars) and take no more that 3 years from approval to launch. Upcoming Discovery missions include Mars Pathfinder, scheduled for launch in December, and Lunar Prospector, scheduled for a 1997 launch.
Problems with a cosmonaut's spacesuit forced an early end to a spacewalk outside the Mir space station Thursday February 8 but did not endanger either spacewalker.
Mir commander Yuri Gidzenko and German cosmonaut Thomas Reiter ended their spacewalk over two hours early when a pressurization problem developed in Gidzenko's spacesuit, according to sources. Both cosmonauts returned to the interior of the ten-year-old space station without difficulty and suffered no injuries.
Gidzenko and Reiter were outside the station to retrieve samples of materials exposed to space for later analysis on Earth. They also installed a "space bicycle" used to more easily move around the exterior of the space station. Work on the space station's antenna, also planned for the spacewalk, was postponed when the pressurization problems developed.
Gidzenko, Reiter and Russian Sergei Avdeyev are finishing a nearly six-month stay aboard Mir. Launched in early September, they will be returning to Earth at the end of the month. A two-man relief crew is scheduled for launch February 21.
The asteroids should be the next destination for human explorers, using low-cost rockets for six-month missions to any number of asteroids near the Earth, astronomer Eugene Shoemaker said last week.
Speaking at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Baltimore, Shoemaker promoted an asteroid mission not only on its scientific merits but also its benefits for a human presence in space. "I can give you scientific reasons to be excited, but the real reason is getting back into space," Shoemaker said.
His proposed met with mixed reviews. While endorsed by some, including Planetary Society executive Louis Friedman, NASA administrator Dan Goldin panned the idea. "You don't just warm up the blood with a multibillion-dollar mission," he said.
Shoemaker, affiliated with the U.S. Geological Survey office in Flagstaff, Arizona, and Lowell Observatory, also in Flagstaff, has spent his career studying asteroids and the effects of asteroid impacts on the Earth. He is best known of the co-discovery, with his wife Carolyn and amateur astronomer David Levy, of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which hit Jupiter in July 1994.
NASA shuttle director Bryan O'Connor announced his unexpected resignation Friday, February 2, a signal to many that NASA's drastic overhaul of its expensive shuttle operations is not going as smoothly as hoped.
"The current transition underway in the Shuttle program management presents an occasion for me to leave NASA without causing a significant disruption," O'Connor said in a brief statement. He gave no reason for his departure, although it is believed to be due to disagreements over the restructuring effort.
Under one proposal, NASA would move management of the space shuttle program from NASA headquarters in Washington to the Johnson Space Center. The proposal has met with sharp criticism from employees of the Kennedy Space Center, who believe they would become a "second- class" center, reporting to JSC instead of headquarters.
O'Connor's resignation is the second move by a high-ranking NASA official in as many months. Last month, Wayne Littles left his post as chief of the space flight program to become director of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
As Australians weigh their choices in the upcoming national election, one candidate for Parliament is setting himself apart from the rest by running on a pro-science and pro-space platform.
Morris Jones, a 24-year-old magazine editor, is running for a seat in the Australian Senate on a platform that stresses the importance of science and technology, and specifically space, in Australia's future.
"When both the incumbent government and the opposition demonstrated an appalling level of disinterest in Australia's potential for a vibrant space industry, I decided to step in where others were not prepared to," Jones said of his reason to run.
Jones supports the current government's space initiatives, including agreements with Japan and Russia, but believes more vigorous action is needed. He advocates developing communications and remote sensing satellites within Australia as well as the boosters for launching them. He also supports the creation of a new spaceport near Darwin, in northern Australia.
Jones is running as an independent for one of twelve Senate seats from the state of New South Wales, which includes Sydney, in the Australian Parliament. The campaign is the first attempt at elected office for self-described long-time space activist and member of the National Space Society of Australia. The election will be on March 2.
A newly-discovered comet will pass near the Earth in late March and should be visible to the naked eye to observers throughout the northern hemisphere for much of the spring, astronomers announced earlier this month.
Comet Hyakutake(C/1996 B2) was discovered in the early morning hours of January 31 by Yuji Hyakutake, an amateur astronomer in Japan. The discovery was confirmed and reported in a circular by the International Astronomical Union on Saturday, February 3.
While too faint currently to be seen without binoculars, the comet may appear as bright as magnitude 1 by late March, when it passes 16.5 million kilometers (10.3 million miles) from the Earth. However, astronomers warn that the brightness predictions are very uncertain at this time.
If it does reach its maximum predicted magnitude, it will be the brightest comet since the passage of Comet West in 1976. The comet will also serve as a warmup for Comet Hale-Bopp, a large comet that will pass through the inner solar system next year. Hale-Bopp is also believed to brighten enough to be observed with the naked eye.
Observers in the Northern Hemisphere will be able to observe the comet from now until April, when the comet passes perihelion. After perihelion, the comet will be visible to Southern Hemisphere observers, persisting as a naked-eye object until as late as early June.
A team of students from kindergarten through 12th grade will use the Hubble Space Telescope next month to observe the planets Neptune and Pluto, Hubble officials announced Tuesday, February 12th.
Students participating in the "Passport to Knowledge" project selected the two planets after a "Great Planet Debate" when students heard presentations and quizzed astronomers on possible projects using the orbiting telescope.
After a series of discussions via the Internet, the students, who had three orbits of Hubble observations to allocate, gave two orbits to Neptune and one to Pluto.
The students will now work with astronomers -- Dr. Heidi Hammel of MIT for Neptune and Dr. Marc Buie of Lowell Observatory for Pluto -- to prepare the observations. The students will also take part in the analysis of the data collected during the observations.
The observations will be telecast live on public television and NASA Select on March 14 under the title "Live from the Hubble Space Telescope: Making YOUR Observations." A follow-up broadcast, where the results of the observations are announced, will take place in late April.
LATE NEWS: Chinese Rocket Explodes: A Chinese Long March exploded moments after liftoff Thursday morning, destroying a communications satellite onboard. The newly-developed Long March 3E veered towards the ground seconds after launch and exploded. Two soldiers were reported to be injured by the explosion, neither seriously. The rocket was carrying an Intelsat communications satellite leased to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which planned to use the satellite for a Latin American television service. The explosion is the second for a Chinese booster in just over a year. The cause of the accident is under investigation.
Apollo 13, Oscar 9: The movie Apollo 13 garnered nine Oscar nominations Tuesday, February 13, including Best Picture. Ed Harris was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of flight director Gene Krantz, and Kathleen Quinlan received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for playing Marilyn Lovell. Other nominations include Art Direction, Film Editing, Best Original Score, Sound, Visual Effects, and Screenplay. Notably absent were nominations for Ron Howard as Best Director and Tom Hanks as Best Actor, ending his streak of back-to-back Best Actor Oscars. The only movie to receive more nominations was Braveheart, which received ten.
Great Attractor Found: Astronomers reported last week that a cluster of galaxies 300 million light-years from the Earth is at the heart of the Great Attractor, a supermassive cluster that is pulling hundreds of other galaxies towards it. The cluster Abell 3627, previously known to exist but not previously identified with the Great Attractor, may contain up to 10 percent of the mass of the cluster, according to a team of astronomers in France, South Africa, and the United States. The Great Attractor was the name given to a then-hypothetical mass in the 1980s after a team of American and British astronomers found a large number of galaxies all moving to the same point in space.
Obituary: Mikhail Reshetnyov, a pioneer of the Soviet space program, passed away January 26. Born in the Ukraine in 1924, he went to work for Sergei Korolev, the man responsible for much of the early Soviet space program, in 1950s. In 1959 he was appointed head of NPO-PM, the applied mechanics institute, in the closed military city of Krasnoyarsk- 26, a post he held until his death. At the institute his teams built over 1,000 satellites for a variety of purposes, mostly communications. The institute also built the Kosmos booster that was to become the workhorse of the Soviet space program.