space news from July 11 AW&ST
Henry Spencer
Binariang SDN BHD [don't ask me what all that means...] picks Arianespace
to launch MEASAT-1, Malaysia's first comsat.
Latest Hubble result: a tentative detection of the long-sought intergalactic
medium, and a measurement of the helium in it (verifying a prediction of the
Big Bang theory), using the Faint Object Camera.
Pratt&Whitney signs cooperative agreement with NASA for test-firing of Russian
tripropellant engine injectors. The tests will start in Russia, and move to
Marshall next year to get higher operating pressures. The injectors are the
ones developed by NPO Energomash for the RD-700 series engines, which NASA
is eying for SSTO applications.
Russian satellite image (5m resolution) of North Korea's Taepo-tong missile
test complex.
Spot Image is skeptical of the high-resolution imaging market, saying that
established aerial-photography customers will be reluctant to switch to
satellites and that achieving the same responsiveness will be difficult.
[Well, difficult for Spot Image, anyway... :-)] Spot sees a continuing
market for its 10m images because of their wide field of view.
Cosmos 2277, a Glonass navsat whose main propulsion system apparently
failed, is nevertheless moving slowly toward its operational orbit. The
speculation in the West is that it has ion thrusters, meant for stationkeeping
or attitude control, which are being used instead.
New Mir crew goes up July 3, unusual in that it does not include a veteran
cosmonaut. There may be political reasons: the number two man, Talgat
Musabayev, is a citizen of Kazakhstan (although also a colonel in the
Russian air force). The old Mir crew is scheduled to return July 9;
Dr. Valeriy Poliakov will remain aboard for his long-stay mission.
Editorial observing that planetary-science enthusiasm for small satellites
is generally a good thing, but it has problems. For one thing, it's eroding
support for existing major missions, notably Cassini. For another, NASA
has yet to demonstrate that its $150M cost cap on Discovery missions will
work in practice, that it will be willing to accept constrained missions
with higher risk of failure, and that it can maintain the higher mission
frequency that convinced the science community to buy into the concept.
--
"It was blasphemy that made us free." | Henry Spencer
-- Leon Wieseltler | he...@zoo.toronto.edu