Word: spacecrafts
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...necessary fixes on the Hubble, the space agency has several factors going in its favor. Unlike every other satellite NASA has flown to rescue, Hubble was designed to be serviced in orbit. Before it was launched, more than 16,000 photographs were taken of every square inch of the spacecraft to ensure that astronauts wouldn't be surprised once they started working. Handrails, footholds and handholds were strategically placed around Hubble, and every bolt was made the same size so that spacewalking mechanics wouldn't have to handle extra tools...
...solar panels refuse to unfurl after the work is done, the Hubble could be worse off than before the mission. Says Princeton astronomer Edwin Turner: "It's a tremendous gamble. If it succeeds, it will be a really impressive feat. Or they could leave us with a nonfunctional spacecraft." And a sharply diminished faith in NASA's ability to explore the last frontier...
...NEARLY ENOUGH TO MAKE CROPS GROW or give anyone a Saint-Tropez tan, but for the first time ever, there was sunlight in the middle of the night. This seemingly divine miracle was actually the product of a thin, 65-ft. plastic mirror mounted on the unmanned Russian spacecraft Progress, which, from its 225-mile-high perch, reflected light on a sleeping Europe. The umbrella-like mirror, called Banner, did not quite turn night into day, but it did project a weak 2 1/2-mile-wide beam that danced across the Continent for six minutes. A French observer described the flashing pulse...
Less controversial was the proposal that terrestrial defenders should know the exact nature of their target before acting. Responding early to a worrisome asteroid, they would send a "precursor mission," an instrumented spacecraft, to fly by or orbit the object and determine its size, shape and composition. One such "practice" mission, code-named Clementine, has already been budgeted by the Defense Department in coordination with NASA. It will fly an instrument package past the approaching asteroid Geographos in 1994 to test the kind of sensors and navigational devices that someday may be needed to help cope with a real threat...
...million for the telescope network and $10 million to $15 million annually to operate it. Adding research on defense technologies and possible space-based sensors would run the annual costs to "a few tens of millions." And "a few hundred million dollars could develop and test the robotic spacecraft missions" needed to scout any threatening object. An effective way of reducing later costs, says Eugene Shoemaker of the U.S. Geological Survey, would be to put aside a handful of the missiles now being dismantled by the U.S. and Russia and modify them for the intercept program. "It's not huge...