In a series of five spacewalks spanning more than 30 hours, a team of astronauts on the shuttle Discovery last month successfully completed an extensive set of upgrades and repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope, including an unexpected patching of the telescope's insulation.
     During the five spacewalks, astronauts Mark Lee, Steve Smith, Gregory Harbaugh, and Joe Tanner replaced two of Hubble's instruments, replaced a guidance sensor, and made upgrades to electronics, tape recorders, solar panel drive electronics, and more.
     "Well guys, I guess we really left our mark on the telescope," Harbaugh said after the end of the fourth and last of the previously-scheduled spacewalks.
     Although the four spacewalks scheduled before launch to upgrade the telescope took place with few problems, mission controllers decided to add a fifth spacewalk on February 16 after an inspection of the telescope showed damage to its foil insulation.
     The insulation showed signs of peeling and cracking, and was tearing away from the spacecraft in some areas. Engineers believe the foil has been weakened either by thermal cycling is the telescope goes in and out of the Earth's shadow twice per orbit, or by a combination of exposure to ultraviolet radiation and corrosive atomic oxygen.
     After developing some makeshift patches in the shuttle, using strips of spare insulation, wires, tape, and alligator clips, Harbaugh and Tanner applied some of the patches to damaged areas near the top of the telescope near the end of the fourth spacewalk.
     Smith and Lee then added more patches to the telescope around the sensitive equipment bays during the additional fifth spacewalk. The repairs took about three hours, but the two spacewalkers spent an extra two hours waiting for a balky reaction wheel to start up.
     Had the reaction wheel not started up, the astronauts would have had to replace it with a space carried on the shuttle, perhaps necessitating another spacewalk.
          With the upgrades and repairs complete, astronaut Steve Hawley used the manipulator arm on February 19 to release Hubble back into orbit. The shuttle had boosted the orbit of the telescope by several miles during the course of the repair mission to counteract the effects of atmospheric drag.
     The shuttle landed at the Kennedy Space Center at about 3:30am EST (0830 UT). The landing had been delayed by one orbit due to cloud cover at the landing site.
     The next Hubble repair mission is slated for 1999. On that mission astronauts will replace the solar panels with new models and add a new instrument to the telescope. Mission planners will also likely address the problem of the cracking insulation on the telescope for that mission.

The launch of the first elements of the International Space Station will likely be delayed until the middle of 1998 due to delays in the assembly of the Russian-built Service Module, Russian and American officials reported last week.
     At a February 24 press conference, Russian Space Agency head Yuri Koptev reported that the launch of the FGB, the Russian-built but American-funded first module of the station, would be delayed from November of this year until June 1998.
     While the FGB is on schedule, another Russian element, the Service Module, is at least seven months behind schedule. The Service Module provides propulsion for the station and without it the FGB would reenter the atmosphere about a year after launch.
     "We have a delay of 12-14 months in building [the Service Module], but it may be cut to seven months if it gets government funding," Koptev said.
     The Service Module has been the subject of scrutiny within the U.S. and Russia over the last several months as reports of delays in its construction were confirmed.
     NASA first acted coolly to Koptev's unilateral decision to delay the launch of the FGB. "NASA respects the opinion of Mr. Koptev but no final decisions have yet been made at all," spokesman Rob Navias said.
     By midweek, though, NASA administrator Dan Goldin had all but confirmed that Russian problems would delay the launch of the first segments of the station. "It is my sense that first element launch is going to slip," he told a House appropriations subcommittee on February 26.
     "It is my assessment we will not see the Service Module before December 1998 and perhaps even later," he said. The Service Module was originally slated for launch in April 1998.
     Goldin said alternatives to the Service Module are still being considered should the module fall even farther behind schedule.
     The delays have renewed calls for reconsidering Russia's role in the International Space Station project. "The entire program has been placed in jeopardy," Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), chair of the House Science Committee, said after visiting Russia the week before the announcement of the delayed launches.
     "The problem is with the service module, which if not finished on time will unravel the whole project," he said. "From what I have been able to see, there has not been a lot of progress on the service module in the last year."
     A team of American experts will visit Russia in March to study the problems with the project, and Goldin will follow with a trip in April. "Promises no longer count, it's action," Goldin said.

A small fire briefly flared on the Russian Space station Mir on the night of Sunday, February 23, but no injuries or serious damage was reported from the incident.
     The fire took place in an oxygen-generating unit on the Kvant-1 module on Mir. The fire burned for about 90 seconds before cosmonauts put it out using foam fire extinguishers.
     A crack formed in a lithium perchlorate "candle" which is burned to generate extra oxygen when more than three cosmonauts are on the station. The crack allowed the hot contents of the candle to leak, triggering the fire in the hardware casing where the candle was located.
     The six men on the station were advised to wear goggles and masks for a day until ground controllers confirmed there were no traces of toxic chemicals in the station's air. The crew was allowed to remove the goggles and masks on the 25th.
     Heat from the fire destroyed the device where the candle was located, and burned off the insulation from nearby wires. All station systems were operating normally, though, and American astronaut Jerry Linenger, a physician, confirmed that he and his crewmates on Mir had no injuries.
      "The crew did a great job handling the fire, and the ground support has been excellent on both sides," said Frank Culbertson, NASA's director of the Shuttle-Mir program. "It is unfortunate that this incident occurred, but we are thankful that there were no injuries."
     At the time of the accident there were six people on the station. Russian cosmonauts Valery Korzun and Alexander Kaleri had been on the station for six moths, and Linenger had been on the station since the most recent shuttle docking mission in mid-January
     Russian cosmonauts Vasily Tsibliev and Alexander Lazutkin and German guest cosmonaut Reinhold Ewald joined the Mir crew earlier last month. Korzun, Kaleri, and Ewald will return to Earth on March 2, while Linenger will remain on the station until mid-May.

A Canadian astronomer has published research which claims that a planet discovered around another star nearly 18 months ago does not exist at all.
     David Gray, an astronomy professor at the University of Western Ontario, reported in the British journal Nature February 27 that periodic variations in the star 51 Pegasi are caused by oscillations in the star itself, and not by a planet closely orbiting the star.
     "This new research explodes the theory that there must be a planet near 51 Pegasi. A planet could not produce the phenomena that I observed and recorded around the star," Gray said.
     According to Gray, the spectral lines seen in the star not only move, but they change shape, something Gray says cannot be explained by the presence of a planet in orbit around the star.     
     "While the presence of nearby planets can make spectral lines move, it is well established in astronomy that they cannot make them change shape."
     Gray's work has been challenged by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, the two Swiss astronomers who announced the discovery of the planet in October 1995, and Geoffrey Marcy and Paul Butler, two American astronomers who confirmed the planet discovery.
     "The 'oscillation' conclusion by Dr. Gray is unconfirmed, is difficult to understand in terms of oscillation physics, and seems premature," they wrote an in article published on Marcy and Butler's extrasolar planets Web site.
     They pointed to several pieces of evidence, including a lack of similar oscillations seen in other similar stars and observations by another astronomer which do not confirm Gray's work as evidence that Gray's conclusions are incorrect.
     Mayor and Queloz discovered the planet by observing a periodic variation in the location of spectral lines see in the star, 40 light-years from the Earth. This variation is an example of a Doppler effect as the star "wobbles" under the influence of a massive planet orbiting nearby.
     Using the size and period of the variations, they determined the planet was about half the mass of Jupiter but orbited only a few million kilometers from the star, taking only four days to complete a full orbit around the star.
     Since then a number of other astronomers, including Marcy and Butler, have discovered planets around other stars in a similar fashion. Some of those discoveries may also be suspect, according to Gray. "They may be hot telescope subjects in the next year," he said.

The Galileo spacecraft mission to study Jupiter and its moons has been extended until the end of 1999, NASA reported February 27, with an emphasis on observations of Europa, a moon with a possible liquid-water ocean under its surface.
     The two-year extension to the mission will include eight flybys of Europa and one flyby of Callisto. Galileo will also perform a flyby of Io as the last part of its mission.
     The cost of the mission extension is estimated to be $30 million. The money for the extension will come from cost savings in mission operations. "The money will come from the existing NASA budget with no increases," Bill O'Neil, Galileo project manager, told Florida Today.
     Europa is the subject of the greatest interest because it may have an ocean of liquid water under its icy crust. Results from the first flybys of the moon have been promising, and planetary scientists hope additional flybys will help resolve whether such an ocean -- which could possibly harbor life -- exists.
     "There is so much we're learning from the Galileo data that additional coverage is really going to help answer some of the fundamental questions we have about Europa," Brown University planetary geologist Robert Pappalardo said.
     The Io flyby is scheduled for the end of the mission since the spacecraft will have to pass through strong radiation belts, which could damage the spacecraft. No Io flybys have been performed during the mission.
     Galileo, which arrived at Jupiter in December 1995, was to take data when it passed within 900 km (560 mi.) of Io, but problems with a tape recorder and conflicts with the data collected from the Galileo probe prevented data from being collected.

Senator John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, will retire from Congress at the end of his term in two years, he announced at a press conference February 20.
     On the same day, the 35th anniversary of Glenn's flight, Glenn also announced plans for a new nationwide "Space Day" to mark the past achievements and future plans of space exploration.
     At a press conference at a Washington, D. C. junior high school, Glenn announced plans for Space Day, an annual event that will "raise public consciousness and stimulate public enthusiasm for space exploration," according to Mel Brashears, president of Lockheed Martin Space and Strategic Missiles Sector.
     "Space Day will give us a moment to celebrate and reflect together on the great achievements and future opportunities in space," Glenn said.
     The first Space Day will be on May 22, 1997, designed to closely coincide with the 36th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's speech calling for a manned mission to the moon within the decade. Kennedy's speech actually took place on May 25, 1961.
     Lockheed Martin has signed on as a corporate sponsor for Space Day, but specific plans are still in the works. A Web site has been set up at http://www.spaceday.com with more information about Space Day.
     Glenn also announced he planned to step down from the Senate when his term expires in January 1999. Glenn, a Democrat from Ohio who made an attempt at the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984, has served in the Senate for four terms, since his election in 1974.

The SOHO satellite has provided observations which provide a special perspective on the Sun in relation to the rest of the galaxy, thanks to an instrument that can mask out the Sun's light.
     NASA released on February 14 images of the region of the sky around Sun taken during the period December 22-27 using LASCO, a visible-light coronagraph that blocks light from the Sun itself, making the background stars visible.
     The images show the Sun moving across the constellation Sagittarius, and also show a previously-unknown comet pass, but not reappear from, behind the Sun.
      "This is an especially dramatic sample of the data that scientists are now starting to gather routinely from SOHO," said George Withbroe, director of the Sun-Earth Connection science program at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. "It really helps drive home the idea that the Sun is a typical star, although we certainly have a special relationship with it."
     The comet, named SOHO 6, first appeared in images December 22 moving towards the Sun. It disappeared behind the occulting mask of the instrument on December 23 and did not reappear. Scientists believe that the comet was likely vaporized by the heat of the Sun.
     The images also show the Sun moving across a field of stars in the constellation Sagittarius, something known to astronomers for centuries not never directly observed because the Sun's light makes the stars invisible unless blocked off as with this instrument.
     "I am happy to marvel at a new impression of our busy star that gives us life, and which affects our environment in many ways that we are only now beginning to understand," said Dr. Guenter Brueckner, head of the LASCO instrument team.

The Pioneer 10 spacecraft, the first to visit the planet Jupiter, will mark 25 years in space on March 2 as its mission winds down to a close.
     Launched March 2, 1972, on an Atlas Centaur rocket, the spacecraft flew by Jupiter in December 1973. The 260-kg (570-lbs.) spacecraft provided the first close-up images of Jupiter and returned the first data on the intense radiation environment around the giant planet.
     "When the spacecraft flew by Jupiter, it was exposed to radiation levels 100,000 times stronger than a lethal dose for a human being," said Ed Wheeler, a member of Pioneer 10's original design team. "The glass on its star tracker, a navigation instrument, turned black, but the spacecraft suffered only minor damage.
     The data on the health of the spacecraft was as important as the scientific data returned by Pioneer, as it provided key information for the design of the more sophisticated Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, both of which successfully returned thousands of images and information about Jupiter and its moons.
     Pioneer 10 was also the first to use the slingshot maneuver, using Jupiter's gravity adjust its trajectory, although it was not targeted as a specific planet.
     A seminar marking the 25th anniversary of Pioneer 10's launch is scheduled for Monday, March 3, in Washington, DC. Members of the Pioneer 10 will meet to discuss the history of the project and the role Pioneer 10 played in opening robotic exploration of the outer solar system.
     People unable to attend the conference will be able to participate online via a World Wide Web site. Seminar speakers will answer questions from those attending online. The Web site is at http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/pioneer10/ .
     The seminar will also mark the final month of the project. With its RTG power source dying out, only two instruments remain working on the spacecraft. Funds for the project are scheduled to run out at the end of March.

Three launches of Ariane, Atlas, and Titan rockets, including the first launch of an upgraded Titan 4B, successfully placed their payloads into orbit in late February from launch sites in Florida and South America.
     A Titan 4B rocket successfully launched an Air Force missile-warning satellite on the afternoon of Sunday, February 23, from Cape Canaveral. The Defense Support Program (DSP) satellite was successfully placed into geosynchronous orbit 37,000 km (23,00o mi.) high.
     The launch was the first for the Titan 4B, an upgraded version of the Titan 4. The new version uses improved solid-fuel rocket boosters to increase its maximum payload by 25 percent.
     The next Titan 4B launch is scheduled for October, when one will launch the Cassini spacecraft on a seven-year trip to Saturn. The launch of the DSP satellite was seen as a key test for the booster; had the launch failed the Cassini launch date may have been in jeopardy.
     On February 28, an Ariane 44P booster launched the first in a new series of Intelsat communications satellites. The Intelsat 801 satellite was launched at 8:08pm EST (0108 UT March 1), near the end of its launch window. The launch had been delayed from the previous day due to unfavorable winds, and was nearly delayed again due to winds.
     The Intelsat satellite is the first of six enhanced spacecraft that will provide additional telephone and video circuits and will work with existing Intelsat comsats. The 801 spacecraft will go into geosynchronous orbit over the Indian Ocean.
     An Atlas IIAS rocket launched a Japanese communications satellite from Cape Caneveral on February 16. The JCSAT-4 satellite was launched at 8:42pm EST (0142 UT February 17) into geosynchronous orbit. The launch of the satellite, built by hughes, was delayed one day due to poor weather.

See the Space Calendar for many more astronomy and space events and anniversaries.

Science News: A University of Texas geologist has reported found "egg-shaped" microscopic features similar to those found in Martian meteorite ALH84001 in a meteorite from the main asteroid belt. Professor Robert Folk told the Austin American-Statesman newspaper February 27 that this may mean bacterial life is far more commonplace than previously thought. It might also mean that the features are not evidence of life at all, even on Mars... A bolt of lightning 150 light-years long may exist near the center of our galaxy, according to University of California at Irvine physics professor Gregory Benford. The lightning come from clouds of hydrogen and other chemicals moving at up to 1,000 km/s through the galaxy's magnetic field. It's something stranger, perhaps, than anything in Benford's many science-fiction novels...

Foreigners Keep Out? The White House blocked a February 14 visit to Cape Canaveral by an Israeli company interested in launching rockets from the Cape. Israel Aircraft Industries want to use Florida facilities to launch its Shavit rockets, but the White House hasn't given its approval yet for those launches. Meanwhile, American launch firm Orbital Sciences Corporation wants foreign companies who use American launch facilities to pay an extra fee for their use. While American firms pay only the marginal cost for their use of government launch facilities, OSC wants foreign companies to pay extra to help maintain the facilities over the long term.

SFF Plans Meeting: The Space Frontier Foundation announced February 21 that it will conduct a high-level policy symposium focused on "the importance of Cheap Access to Space to the nation," according to a SFF press release. NASA has given the SFF a $100,000 grant to run the conference, scheduled for early May in Washington. "It is time to get all the major players in space transportation on the same page," said conference chair David Anderman. "NASA has recognized this need, and we intend to work closely with them to make it happen."

Other News: The March issue of Government Executive magazine has a good article on the current downsizing efforts at NASA, and the possible threats to the safety of the shuttle program those efforts are causing. The article, by noted aerospace writer Beth Dickey, is available online at http://www.govexec.com/features/0397s1.htm and will soon be accompanied by an online discussion area... Microsoft has announced that will work with Aerial Images, a North Carolina firm, to market images taken from former Soviet reconnaissance satellites. Samples of the images will be posted on a Microsoft Web site in the near future, with full-sized images available for $30. Does this mean that Microsoft will be changing its ad slogan to, "Where do you want to go today? We know where you went yesterday."