Europe's heavy-lift Ariane 5 rocket made its first successful launch October 30, placing two test satellites into orbit, but the launch was not without problems that would have been costly to a commercial launch.
     Ariane 502 lifted off from the launch facility at Kourou, French Guiana, at 8:43am EST (1343 UT). The launch was delayed by nearly 45 minutes while minor electrical problems with the booster were corrected.
     The booster carried into orbit two test satellites, Maqsat B and H. The two satellites were designed to record the environment satellites encounter during an Ariane 5 launch. They also carried additional experiments for use while in orbit, including an orbital debris experiment and a student-built camera.
     The launch was the first successful launch of the 50-meter (165-foot) tall booster which has cost the space agency an estimated $8 billion over several years to develop.
     It was the first launch attempt since its maiden flight in June 1996, when the booster veered off course and had to be destroyed less than 40 seconds after launch. The accident was blamed on a bug in the guidance software on board the rocket.
     The launch was not flawless, however. ESA later reported that the main engine shut down 10 to 20 seconds early, perhaps due to an unexpected roll of the booster. The booster was thus traveling 720 kmph (480 mph) slower than planned when its released its payload, putting it into the wrong orbit.
     While an exact orbit was not required for the test satellites, it would have been costly had the booster carried a communications or other satellite. the orbit could have been corrected by the satellite's own engines, Ariane engineers report, but the fuel used would have decreased the lifetime of the satellite.
     The booster shutdown may also explain why the main stage of the Ariane 5 reentered thousands of kilometers away from its planned location. The stage reentered over the coast of New Guinea, on the other side of the Pacific from its planned location off the coast of Ecuador. Two NASA planes flying out of Hawaii that planned to observe the reentry were unable to do so as a result.
     Despite the problems, European officials were very optimistic about the outcome of the launch. "This is another good example of what European cooperation can do", said European Space Agency director-general Antonio Rodota. "But it's only the beginning, there is still a lot of work ahead of us before this launcher can be made available to users all over the world."
     A third qualification launch of the Ariane 5 is scheduled for early 1998 before ESA turns operations of the booster over to Arianespace, the company which sells commercial launches of the booster. It is expected to enter into commercial service in the second half of 1998.

More than a month after its last success transmission, time is running out for the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft as mission controllers make their final attempts to restore contact to the spacecraft.
     JPL reported October 29 that it would continue to try to contact Pathfinder through November 4. If contact was not restored at that time, they would fall back to a contingency plan to try and contact the lander only or a weekly or monthly basis.
     "The normal extended mission would be over, but there is still a small chance of reestablishing a link, so we'll keep trying at a very low level," said project manager Brian Muirhead.
     The last successful transmission from Pathfinder took place on September 27. Engineers did detect a signal from Pathfinder as late as October 7, but were unable to restore communications.
     Although the exact cause of the failure is unknown, a combination of a failed battery and cold temperatures is the leading explanation for the silence from the spacecraft. Engineers hypothesize that the main battery on the lander went dead after the September 27 transmission. The spacecraft can still generate power from its solar panels, but the battery loss means its internal clocks would have been reset, causing it to lose track of when it was supposed to contact Earth.
     Since then, temperatures at the landing site are believed to have fallen by tens of degrees as autumn begins at the landing site. Without battery power, the temperature in the spacecraft may have fallen some 20 to 40 degrees C (about 35 to 70 degrees F). That, in turn, could have caused the radio transmitter to change frequency and may also keep the flight computer from booting up properly.
     "Under this scenario, the thought is that perhaps the computer is not booting up fully," said mission manager Richard Cook. "The team is sending resets to the lander at various times of the day before we attempt to send other commands," in the hope of successfully starting the computer.
     There is some hope in the long-term that contact could be restored next Martian summer, when temperatures warm up again.
     Even if contact is not restored, Pathfinder exceeded nearly everyone's expectations. The lander worked on the surface for nearly 3 times its planned 30-day lifetime, while the Sojourner rover surpassed its 7-day lifetime by a factor of 12. All the main goals of the mission had been met in the first weeks after landing.
     The last remaining goal of the extended mission was for the lander to return the last portions of the "Super Pan", a high-resolution 360-degree color panoramic image of the Martian landscape. About 83 percent of the image had already been returned when contact was lost.

NASA will resume aerobraking of Mars Global Surveyor next week at a slower rate than before an incident October 6 which stopped the aerobraking process.
      "After sufficient time to study the observed motion, we concluded that it is possible to perform additional aerobraking at a slower rate, without putting undue stress on the solar panel in question," said Glenn E. Cunningham, Mars Global Surveyor mission manager at JPL October 30.
     Aerobraking was halted October 12 after an incident 6 days earlier when one of the two solar panels on the spacecraft moved past the fully-extended position it was designed to be locked into, and also appeared to flex unexpectedly. The panel was the same one which failed to lock into position after launch last November.
     Engineers on the ground traced the problems to a "yoke", a structure that connects the solar panel to the main body of the spacecraft. The yoke, made of a aluminum honeycomb material sandwiched between two layers of graphite epoxy, may have fractured on one surface when the solar panel failed to lock in place after launch.
     The pressure from aerobraking, in turn, may have caused the surface to begin to pull away from the honeycomb layer beneath. The panel flexing seen on October 6 took place when the atmospheric pressure was twice as high as predicted.
     The spacecraft will move out of its 35-hour elliptical orbit on November 7 and resume aerobraking, but at only about one-third of the original rate. "This is a pressure that we currently believe is safe but we will continue to work with ground tests, analysis and close monitoring of in-flight spacecraft data to assure that it is safe," Cunningham said.
     The slower rate will mean the aerobraking will take up to 8 to 12 months, considerably longer than originally planned. The final orbit of the spacecraft will also be different. "In the meantime, we will continue collecting science data and work in the next several weeks toward selection of the best possible orbit to fulfill the science objectives of the mapping mission," said Cunningham.
     Mars Global Surveyor, which arrived at Mars September 11, was scheduled to enter its final orbit and begin full science operations in early 1998. Scientists have been using the delay in aerobraking to collect data from instruments that were not planned to be used until that time.

Missions to gather samples of the solar wind and to study the cores of three comets will be the newest missions in NASA's Discovery program of low-cost space science spacecraft, the space agency announced October 20.
     The Genesis mission will collect samples of the solar wind and return them to Earth for analysis. Scheduled for launch in January 2001, the spacecraft will collect samples of the solar wind, including isotopes of nitrogen, oxygen, noble gases, and other elements. The samples will be returned to Earth in August 2003 and recovered in the Utah desert.
     The Comet Nucleus Tour (CONTOUR) will fly by three comets and return images of their nuclei. The spacecraft will also provide spectral data that will provide clues to their composition and also study the dust flowing through the tails of the comet. The spacecraft, scheduled for launch in July 2002, will fly by the comes Encke, Schwassmann-Wachmann-3 and d'Arrest by 2008.
     The two mission selected came from a list of five finalists announced earlier this year. "This was a very difficult selection, given the first-class science proposed by all five teams," said Dr. Wes Huntress, associate administrator for space science at NASA Headquarters. "We picked two based on our distribution of resources and the excellent fit of the timetables for these missions with other robotic space science explorers."
     The other three finalists were Aladdin, a mission to return samples of the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos by firing projectiles into them and flying through the debris cloud created by the impacts; Messenger, the Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging mission, which would have gone into orbit around the innermost planet; and VESAT, the Venus Environmental Satellite, which would have studied the atmospheric chemistry of Venus.
     Genesis and CONTOUR will be the fifth and sixth Discovery-class missions. They follow the Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) and Mars Pathfinder missions, which have already been launched, and the upcoming Lunar Prospector and Stardust missions.
     In a separate announcement, NASA reported that the launch of Lunar Prospector had been delayed to January 5. Originally scheduled for launch in September, the launch has been delayed while its Athena-II (formerly LMLV-2) launcher goes through an extended series of tests.

Two Russian cosmonauts spent more than six hours inside the depressurized Spektr module October 20, connecting two solar panels to a computer control system outside the damaged module but failed to connect a third.
     Cosmonauts Anatoly Solovyov and Pavel Vinogradov struggled with cables and floating debris inside the module while working to connect the solar panels to a computer system in another module that would allow the crew to control their motion, improving their efficiency and that amount of power generated by them.
     The spacewalkers had to end their repairs when they oxygen supplies ran low while trying to connect the cable from the third of three solar panels to an airtight door at the end of the module. They had previously connected cable for the other two working solar panels mounted on the module. A fourth solar panel was damaged beyond repair in the June collision of a Progress spacecraft with the module.
     "Don't be too depressed, you've done good work," flight director Vladimir Solovyov, no relation to the cosmonaut, told the crew after the spacewalk.
     The cosmonauts were hampered by a great deal of debris floating in the module when they first entered it. Vinogradov grabbed the debris, which appeared to be experiments which escaped from the refrigerator on the module, and sealed them in several bags before proceeding with the repairs.
     The computer system was brought online two days after the spacewalk. With the two solar panels now able to track the Sun, and thus generate more electricity, Russian officials report power on the station has increased by 15-30 percent.
     The increased power should let the crew, including American astronaut David Wolf, perform more experiments. Many of the scientific experiments planned to be performed on the station were delayed when the June accident cut power to the station up to half.
     Russian officials are planning several spacewalks for the coming weeks. On November 3 Solovyov and Vinogradov will remove the damaged solar panel on Spektr, and replace it with a new panel on a separate spacewalk November 6. The spacewalkers will also deploy a replica of the Sputnik satellite, built by children, on the November 3 spacewalk.
     David Wolf, who spent the October 20 spacewalk inside the Soyuz spacecraft should an emergency evacuation be necessary, will likely participate in a spacewalk later in November to retrieve experiments mounted on the exterior of the module. A fourth spacewalk involving Spektr is also under consideration.

Michael Foale feared for his life on the station for one second when the Progress spacecraft crashed into Spektr in June, but otherwise enjoyed his more than four months on the trouble-plagued station earlier this year, he told reporters at a press conference October 29.
     "I would say that 99 percent of the time I was basically having a good time," Foale said. "This may seem surprising to some people."
     Foale said his only moment of concern was the instant when the Progress spacecraft collided with Spektr. When it was clear the accident wasn't immediately life-threatening, Foale said he concerned himself with helping his Russian crewmates stabilize the situation on Mir.
     "One of the things I learned during this whole flight is that the Russians are just so resourceful and resilient," Foale said. He said, though, he was concerned about Vasily Tsibliev, the station commander, who become despondent after the accident, fearing that he would be blamed for the situation.
     Otherwise, Foale said, "we were alive, things were not so bad for us." Foale said he had good relationships with Tsibliev and Alexander Lazutkin, who was also on the station at the time of the accident.
     Foale said the U.S. had made the right decision to continue the series of joint Mir missions with Russia, and said the station and the Soyuz spacecraft available for any evacuations were in good condition.
     "The mission changed my life," Foale said. "I've been strengthened by it."

Launches by Atlas, Pegasus, Titan, and Long March rockets placed satellites into orbit in late October, but one of those satellites failed to function after launch.
     A Pegasus-XL launched the Air Force STEP-4 small satellite on October 22. Pegasus was launched from Orbital Science Corporation's L-1011 aircraft, flying off the Virginia coast. The spacecraft carried three experiments to study the atmosphere, in particular ozone and water vapor levels, radiation, and propagation of radio signals through the ionosphere.
     However, Air Force satellite controllers were unable to establish contact with the satellite after launch, and now believe it is unlikely contact will be restored with the satellite. The cause of the failure is still unknown.
     An Atlas IIA booster launched a Defense Department communications satellite on October 24 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Defense Satellite Communications System DSCS-3 satellite lifted off at 8:46pm EDT (0046 UT October 25). The launch had been delayed by over an hour due to low clouds and leaking liquid oxygen from an unsealed hatch.
     The previous day, a Titan IV-A booster launched a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The launch of the Titan IV had been delayed since July due to a leak of nitrogen tetraoxide fuel from the booster. The launch was the last Titan IV-A to be launched from Vandenberg; future launches will use the upgraded Titan IV-B similar to the one which launched Cassini October 15.
     A Chinese Long March booster launched the Apstar 2R communications satellite October 16. The satellite will be used for communications and television broadcasting from the Middle East to East Asia. The satellite replaces an earlier version that was destroyed in a Long March accident in 1996.

The X-33 test vehicle, designed to demonstrate technologies for a full-scale reusable launch vehicle, marked two major successes in late October when it passed a major design review while a version of its engine was tested on a supersonic aircraft.
     NASA announced October 31 that the X-33 passed its Critical Design Review (CDR), a critical review of the design of the vehicle that it had to pass before assembly of it could begin.
     "We've had an excellent review of the program, and we're ready to go ahead with all remaining fabrication and assembly for the X-33," Gene Austin, NASA X-33 program manager, said.
     The X-33 had been under close scrutiny in the aerospace industry in past months after reports leaked out about the weight and stability of the vehicle. Engineers reported that the X-33 has gone through a weight reduction program, and modification had been made to the vehicle's fins, in preparation for the review. NASA also said the spacecraft would use "densified propellants" to allow it to carry additional fuel.
     "We are now ready to focus on vehicle fabrication and launch site construction," said Cleon Lacefield, X-33 program manager for Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works. "We are on schedule for the flight demonstration program to begin in mid-1999."
     Also on October 31, NASA reported that the first flight of an SR-71 carrying a scale model of a linear aerospike engine similar that which will be used on the X-33 was a success.
     The flight of the Linear Aerospike SR-71 Experiment (LASRE) used a one-tenth scale model of the aerospike engine for the X-33. The flight Friday was merely a qualification flight to test the integration of the engine pod on the plane; later tests will fire the rocket for several seconds at aircraft speeds ranging from subsonic to Mach 3.
     The aerospike engine is similar to a typical rocket engine except for the lack of a typical engine nozzle. An aerospike engine uses the airflow around it to help create the nozzle, ensuring peak performance in a variety of conditions not possible with a fixed nozzle.
     The X-33 is a technology demonstrator for reusable launch vehicle technology. It is scheduled to fly up to 15 test flights from Edwards Air Force Base, California, starting in mid-1999. The X-33 will not fly into space but travel at up to Mach 15 and nearly 100 km (60 mi.) high on suborbital trajectories. If a success, Lockheed Martin may build a scaled-up version, the VentureStar, for deploying payloads into orbit.

Solar power satellites, the focus of considerable research during the 1970s but later discarded due to their high price tag, may become a more feasible source of power in coming years, analysts said in Congressional hearings October 24.
     The hearings were triggered by a NASA report released earlier this year which showed that "economically competitive" solar power satellites could be developed in the next 10 to 15 years. Such systems would cost $5 to $7 billion dollars and generate 400 megawatts of power at about $10 per watt. In comparison, current ground based systems generate power for $3-4 per watt plus fuel costs.
     The proposed "Sun Tower" satellites would be assembled in orbits about 12,000 km (7,400 mi.) above the Earth. The satellites would consist of long rods with discs attached that would generate the power from sunlight. the cost of systems assume a greatly reduced launch cost of about $125 per pound.
     Gregg Maryniak, president of the SUNSAT Energy Council, said solar power satellites would eliminate the problems of storing energy, since power would be collected continuously. The same solar power platforms could also be used for wireless broadband communications and to relay electrical power from hydroelectric power plans on Earth between continents.
     The concept got a sympathetic hearing from committee members, some of whom saw the concept as a better investment for the space agency than missions to Mars. Subcommittee chairman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) suggested that solar power satellites, and not a Mars mission, should be NASA's next mission after the space station.
     "Planting a flag on Mars is not a good investment," Rohrabacher said, adding that solar power systems is "what NASA, as an agency, should be all about."

New Moons for Uranus: Astronomers have discovered two new moons orbiting the gas giant Uranus, the International Astronomical Union reported October 31. The two dim moons, only 20th and 22th magnitude, were first seen in September by astronomers led by Philip Nicholson of Cornell Unievrsity using the 5-m (200-inch) telescope at Palomar Observatory in California. The moons, which are an estimated 160 and 80 km (100 and 50 mi.) in diameter, are in highly eccentric and inclined orbits, which makes them difficult to observe. The moons have not yet been named but, following tradition, will be named after characters in works by William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.

Funding Problems for NASA: Reports are circulating that NASA's 1999 budget may be trimmed by as much as $1 billion, down to $12.5 billion. Worse, "out year" analysis of budget proposals past 2000 show NASA budgets slipping as low as $10 billion. a level which would make it difficult for the agency to continue many of its major programs. In a statement by Rep. Dave Weldon (R-FL) read at the NSS Space Summit October 29, the pro-space congressman said there is a "bi-partisan" effort underway to shore up funding for NASA, but that considerably lobbying efforts may be needed to stave off the budget axe. Stay tuned...

Brazil Prepares Space Launch: Brazil is aiming to become the newest member of the space club in early November with the launch of its first rocket. The VLS-1 rocket is scheduled for launch some time before November 10 from the Alcantara Launch Center in northeast Brazil. The launch of the $6.5-million rocket was scheduled for October 26, but delayed due to technical problems. The rocket will launch a domestic surveying satellite.

Marshall Head Retires: Marshall Space Flight Center director Dr. Wayne Littles announced his retirement plans October 28. Littles, who has led the center since February of last year, will retire on January 3. A search for a replacement is underway, and some rumors suggest a woman astronaut may be named to the post.

China, US Reach Launch Accord: The United States and China reached an agreement October 27 regarding the Chinese launches of satellites into low-Earth orbits. A 1995 accord dealt with launches of communications satellites into geosynchronous orbits, but not with the growing market for low-Earth satellites. The deal was announced during the visit of Chinese president Jiang Zemin to the United States.

Laser Test: The military finally made its controversial test of a laser on a functioning satellite October 17, firing two low-power bursts from the MIRACL ground-based laser to the MSTI-3 satellite, which was approaching the end of its operational lifetime. However, the real success of the test -- whether American satellites are vulnerable to intentional or inadvertent laser beams -- may never be known. Ground controllers were sending information to the spacecraft at the time the laser fired, which prevented it from returning information about the effects of the beam. "We did receive data back; we did not receive as much back as we wanted," an Air Force spokesman said.

In Brief: Cassini is alive and well as it starts its nearly seven-year journey to Saturn. Early tests of the spacecraft have shown it to be in excellent health and on course. The European Space Agency confirmed its Huygens probe is also working. The Spacewatch telescope in Arizona also captured an image of Cassini as it moved against the background stars at a distance greater than that of the Moon... You wouldn't think of the New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly magazines as space magazines, but a recent trip to the newsstand could have convinced you otherwise. The New Yorker (October 20&27, 1997 issue) ran an extended article on the problems with Mir, concluding that its problems would help bring us closer to a mission to Mars. The Atlantic Monthly (November 1997 issue) had a cover story by Freeman Dyson on the future of space exploration, boldly predicting the colonization of the solar system within the next 100 years... What message is Hollywood sending us about space? In "Gattaca", only genetically perfect people can be in a futuristic space program, at least until an "in-valid" tries. In Disney's "Rocketman", even a doofus like the main character can go to Mars. What hope is there for an ordinary person?