NASA announced October 28 that it was delaying a launch decision for STS-80 until November 4, only four days before the previously-planned launch of the mission.
     The delay gives workers extra time to understand the cause of a number of gouges in the insulation of one the solid rocket booster nozzles seen on the last shuttle launch.
     "Our decision to defer setting a launch date allows the team time to insure the RSRM nozzles are safe to fly," said shuttle program manager Tommy Holloway. "We will take whatever time is necessary to fully understand the phenomenon seen on the STS-79 boosters before we proceed with the STS-80 launch."
     About sixty "trench-like" grooves were seen in the insulation of one of the SRB nozzles after the launch of Atlantis in September. The gouges appear to have been created by hot exhaust gases from the booster, but the exact situation that allowed the gouges to form is not yet understood.
     Columbia is scheduled for a 16-day mission. The shuttle crew will deploy and retrieve two satellites -- the ORFEUS/SPAS astronomy satellite and the Wake Shield Facility -- during the mission and conduct a number of experiments on board. A pair of spacewalks will test assembly techniques for the International Space Station.

The first tourist in space will spend six days aboard the Russian space station Mir in 1998, according to a contest announced by an American marketing firm October 28.
     Atlanta-based Space Marketing announced an agreement with RSC Energia to run a contest where the randomly-selected winner will spend six days in space on Mir.
     "We predict this will be the most sought-after prize in the history of contests and promotions, and we expect that it will draw over fifty million entries worldwide," said Mike Lawson, CEO of Space Marketing.
     Lawson could not provide any specifics about the contest. "We are currently in the process of looking for the perfect sponsor who will most imaginatively combine their ability to promote their product in the global marketplace with our ability to take their promotion to new heights," he said.
     Space Marketing is the company that arranged the Pepsi commercial shot on and outside Mir this summer. The company also sold advertising space on the side of a rocket in 1993 for the movie "The Last Action Hero".

The launch of two spacecraft to study X-rays and gamma rays was halted Wednesday, October 30 with only five seconds in the countdown when a small locking pin failed to release as planned.
     The SAC-B and HETE spacecraft were to be launched Wednesday on a Pegasus XL launch vehicle. With five seconds left in the countdown the launch was halted when a locking pin in the rudder of the rocket failed to release.
     Several attempts were made to command the rocket to release the pin, by which time a fin battery went dead, forcing the launch to be scrubbed. The fin battery has a limited life and takes two days to replace, meaning the launch could not take place any earlier than Friday, November 1. No firm launch date was announced.
     Scientific Applications Satellite B (SAC-B) is an international project involving NASA and the Argentine space agency CONAE, with Italian and Brazilian cooperation. SAC-B will look at solar flares, gamma-ray bursts, and other high-energy astronomical phenomenon.
     The High Energy Transient Experiment (HETE) is a project by the MIT Center for Space Research to specifically study gamma-ray bursts. The HETE spacecraft was built under contract to AeroAstro.
     The SAC-B/HETE launch was originally scheduled for October 29, but pushed back one day after engineers worked late fixing an avionics problem with the rocket. Plans to televise the launch on NASA Select have been canceled since no money remains to fund the broadcast.

Kennedy Space Center director Jay Honeycutt announced October 22 that he would retire from NASA in early 1997, after spending two years at the helm of KSC.
     "When I first came to this position in 1995, I committed to staying on for two years and then reassessing my plans," Honeycutt said. "Those two years are up and it's time to think about what I want to do next."
     Honeycutt said he had no firm plans for life after NASA, nor had he set a specific date to leave.
     Honeycutt joined NASA in 1966 as an engineer at the Manned Spaceflight Center (later Johnson Space Center). During the Apollo missions he trained astronaut crews for lunar landings. Since then he served as a technical assistant at NASA Headquarters, deputy manager of the National Space Transportation System Program Office, and director of Shuttle Management and Operations, the last post at KSC.
     Honeycutt became director in early 1995 when then-director Robert Crippen resigned.
     No successor to Honeycutt has been named. Among the leading candidates are former astronauts Andy Allen, Roy Bridges, and Frederick Gregory.

Two launch systems which have yet to make their first flight -- the Sea Launch consortium headed by Boeing and McDonnell Douglas's Delta III -- announced new contracts in October for launches several years from now.
     Sea Launch announced October 25 that it had sold three more launches to Hughes Electronics. Sea Launch now has contracts for 18 launches, 13 of which from Hughes.
     Sea Launch, a consortium of Boeing, RSC Energia, NPO Yuzhnoye, and Kvaerner a. e., plan to launch satellites using existing Zenit rockets from a mobile platform anchored in open water. The first launch is scheduled for 1998.
     On the same day as the Sea Launch announcement, Hughes announced it was buying five launches on the new Delta III booster, beginning in 1999. The launches will be for part of the ICO Global Communications constellation of 10 HS-601 communications satellites in intermediate circular orbits 10,300km (6,450 mi) high.
     The first launch of the Delta III is scheduled for 1998. Hughes made an initial order of 10 launches and has since exercised options for three more.

How do you link the Russian economy with American animal rights protestors, via space?
     A lack of money needed to build launch vehicles has delayed a Progress resupply mission to the Mir space station and pushed back the launch of an international biological spacecraft.
     Russian authorities said delays at the Samara plant which builds Soyuz-U rockets forced them to delay the launch of Progress M-33 on a resupply mission to Mir. The launch, scheduled for October, was pushed back until November.
     The three-man crew on Mir, including American astronaut John Blaha, have enough supplies to last into December, according to a Russian spokesman.
     The Samara plant in central Russia, which once produced 60 boosters a year in the early 1980s, managed to build only four in all of 1996 to date. Problems with funding is the culprit behind the declining supply of boosters.
     Another mission to suffer from the delay is the Bion microgravity mission, which had been scheduled for launch this fall. The spacecraft, carrying a number of monkeys, would have spent two weeks in orbit being examined remotely before return to Earth.
     A early wire report erroneously reported that the monkeys would die before a replacement launch. NASA officials were quick to deny rumors of the monkeys' impending demise, stating that the monkeys were quite well and would live out their lives in a Moscow zoo after the rescheduled mission ends.
     However, this did not stop four members from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) from staging a protest at the NASA Administrator's office at NASA headquarters on the morning of October 31. The four women protested the Bion mission before being removed from the building by federal police.
     Dan Goldin was not in town when the protest took place.

The Earth's supply of atmospheric oxygen, long thought to have been created by biological processes, may have been created geologically instead, a NASA scientist announced October 29.
     "Although photosynthesis did provide an oxygen source strong enough to sustain the amount of existing oxygen, the creation and assembly of large modern-sized continents was responsible for early dramatic increases in oxygen," said Dr. David DesMarais of NASA Ames.
     According to DesMarais, several large continents were formed on the earth around 1.9 to 2.2 billion years ago, creating huge mountain ranges as smaller continents collided to form larger ones. The mountains' steep slopes rapidly eroded, and the sediment accumulated eventually on the seafloor.
     These sediments buried large amounts of organic materials with them. According to DesMarais, these buried materials released free oxygen which could accumulate in the atmosphere.
     Previously, scientists thought that photosynthesis alone created all the atmospheric oxygen, and had attributed the increase in oxygen in the atmosphere 2 billion years ago as the result of a decline in volcanic activity.

Both the Mars Global Surveyor and the Russian Mars 96 mission are on schedule for November launches towards the red planet.
     The Mars Global Surveyor will be the first spacecraft to head towards Mars, with a scheduled launch date of November 6. The spacecraft is currently with the launch vehicle at Pad 17 of Cape Canaveral.
     The Mars 96 spacecraft was flown to the launch site at Baikonur, Kazakhstan, in mid-October in preparation for a November 16 launch. The mission is the first Russian deep-space mission since the Phobos 1 and 2 missions to Mars in 1988. Those ended with the premature loss of both spacecraft, with little data returned.
     A third Mars-bound spacecraft, Mars Pathfinder, will launch from Cape Canaveral in early December. The small lander will fly a faster trajectory to Mars, arriving in early July, fully two months ahead of its slower counterparts.

Canada and India signed an agreement October 15 to cooperate in a number of space ventures, including launching Canadian satellites on Indian rockets. The two countries also agreed to cooperate in unspecified ways in satellite remote sensing... Former astronaut and KSC director Robert Crippen has been named president of the Thiokol Aerospace Group. Crippen will be responsible for space operations, defense and launch vehicles, and science and engineering divisions of Thiokol.

Mr. Blaha Goes to Mir: Astronaut John Blaha, currently aboard the Mir space station, had his plans to file an absentee ballot nixed by the Texas Secretary of State. Blaha wanted to file a ballot electronically, but such a ballot would be invalid according to state law. "We worked with everybody to try and make it happen," Phyllis Taylor, director of federal voting assistance, told the Associated Press. "I really believe that if my office had been aware of the situation originally, I don't think he would have any problem." Funny how those Presidential elections sneak up on you... Blaha said he voted for Clinton in 1992 but that either Clinton or Dole would do a good job as President.

No Blastoff in Akron: The Canton-Akron Indians of minor league baseball's Eastern League have dropped plans to change their name to the Akron Blast. Team owner Mike Agganis said the name honored Ohio's aerospace history, which include the Wright brothers, John Glenn, and Neil Armstrong. Others, though, found the choice of the team name and mascot name -- Kaboom -- insensitive: Akron was the hometown of Challenger astronaut Judith Resnik. A local poll found Akronites aligned 8-to-1 against the name. Among replacement names for the team: the Galaxy, Polymer Kids, and Akronauts. The team's new stadium in downtown Akron will include a Challenger Learning Center.

George Reinvents NASA: A three-page article about Dan Goldin and NASA appeared in the November issue of George, the political magazine with the fashion ads founded by John F. Kennedy Jr. That alone isn't that unusual, but if you read the article you'll learn a number of things. Things like who founded NASA (John F. Kennedy, in 1961), when the Hubble Space Telescope was launched (1991), and the new NASA logo (the "worm", which was actually replaced in 1992 by the old "meatball" logo just after Goldin took commands of the agency). One has to wonder if this is the typical level of accuracy for the magazine. Perhaps the fact-checkers at George are being overwhelmed by the odor from all those perfumed pages...