A host of new problems have beset the Russian space station Mir, including a computer failure, freon leaks, a faulty remote satellite, and delayed spacewalks.
     Mir lost its primary power system early January 2 when the main computer system on the station failed. The computer failure shut down the attitude control system, depriving the station of power from its solar panels.
     Russian officials reported the station was operating on backup power from its batteries, and expected to have power restored by Saturday, after a faulty module in the computer system was replaced with a spare unit.
     An ABC News report claimed the computer failure went unnoticed for several hours. The crew was asleep at the time of the failure and Russian mission control was operating with a skeleton crew during the New Years' holiday, according to the report.
     The computer problem was the latest in a series of problems on the station. Sources outside of NASA and the Russian Space Agency have reported that a large freon leak took place from one of the air conditioners on Mir in late December. NASA Watch reported the leak was large enough to make ground controllers ask the crew to take samples of the air on the station, even though the crew has of yet no way to test for freon in the station's atmosphere.
     The air conditioner shutdown has caused temperatures on Mir to rise, exceeding 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) in the core module at the end of December. Complicating matters was a failure of both Elektron oxygen generators and the Vozdukh carbon dioxide removal system, forcing the crew to resort to burning lithium perchlorate candles to generate oxygen. The Vozdukh system, was brought back online by January 2nd, according to late reports.
     The failure of the air conditioner also meant the station's air was not being dehumidified as much as necessary. This, in turn, has been causing excessive condensation of water in some of the colder parts of the station. The condensation is approaching "dangerous levels" in those areas, according to MIRNews.
     All the recent problems with Mir have prompted Russian officials to delay a pair of spacewalks scheduled to take place in early January. A December 23 announcement pushed back a spacewalk to replace the deal on the hatch to the Kvant-2 module's airlock from December 30 to January 6. On the 30th, another delay was announced, pushing the spacewalk back to the 8th. That spacewalk will be performed by cosmonauts Anatoly Solovyov and Pavel Vinogradov.
     A second spacewalk, which will include American astronaut David Wolf with Solovyov, was delayed, first to the 12th and then to the 14th of January. That spacewalk will be dedicated to retrieving scientific experiments mounted on the hull of the station.
     In addition to the problems with Mir, a small remote camera satellite designed to take images of the exterior of the station failed shortly after it was deployed December 17. The Russian-German Inspektor satellite detached from the Progress M-36 spacecraft it was carried into orbit by, but failed to orient itself properly and did not respond to commands.
     The satellite was expected to burn up in the atmosphere after a few days, but some reports indicate the spacecraft is in a stable orbit, but does not threaten the station.
     In a bit of good news for the Mir crew, an unmanned Progress resupply ship successfully docked with Mir December 22. The Progress M-37 spacecraft launched from Baikonur, Kazakhstan on December 20 at 3:45am EST (0845 UT). The spacecraft carried 2.5 tons of supplies for the station, including a replacement seal for the Kvant-2 airlock.

NASA and its shuttle contractor, United Space Alliance, are considering cuts that may lay off over 600 workers at the Kennedy Space Center early next year.
     Officials at NASA and USA have not officially confirmed the reports that layoffs are planned, but second-hand and anonymous reports of layoffs continue from a number of sources.
     The layoffs, which would account for up to 10 percent of USA's work force at the center, are apparently the result of budget cuts in NASA's contact with USA for shuttle operations. That contact is expected to be cut by $100 million, to $1.1 billion, in 1998.
     The budget cuts may also mean one of the two shuttle launch pads may be mothballed, in another attempt to cut costs.
     The rumored layoffs have attracted the attention of Congressman Dave Weldon (R-FL), whose district includes the Kennedy Space Center. In a "Community Fax Alert" released December 22, Weldon called the layoffs "not a done deal," saying that the "justification for the reductions has been totally absent so far."
     "Frankly, I find NASA's leadership and management of the Space Shuttle program in Washington and Houston sorely lacking," Weldon said, calling on the space agency to explain the effects on the shuttle program of each job cut.
     The extent of the layoffs may not be clear for some time to come. One anonymous source within NASA told the Orlando Sentinel newspaper that layoff numbers leaked so far may be part of a numbers game between NASA and USA as they haggle over the number of jobs that should be cut for the planned budget cutbacks.

This month's launch of the shuttle Endeavour on the next-to-last Mir docking mission will be delayed an additional two days, NASA officials reported December 19.
     The launch, now scheduled for January 22, was pushed back because extra time was needed to prepare the shuttle in the Vehicle Assembly Building before its rollout to Pad 39A on the 19th. The extra time was spent sanding away unneeded insulation on the shuttle's external fuel tank.
     Endeavour's launch on mission STS-89 had already been delayed five days earlier in December at the request of the Russian Space Agency. The Russians wanted the additional time to allow the crew to complete a set of experiments and still be able to perform two spacewalks outside the station before the arrival of the shuttle.
     STS-89 will mark the eighth of nine Mir docking missions planned by NASA, and the first docking by a shuttle other than Atlantis, which is undergoing an overhaul. Endeavour will being astronaut Andy Thomas to Mir, replacing David Wolf, who will return to Earth on Endeavour. Thomas will be the last American astronaut to stay on Mir.

An American commercial remote sensing satellite was launched on a Russian booster Christmas Eve, but may have failed shortly after launch, according to late reports.
     EarlyBird 1, a remote sensing satellite built by CTA Space Systems (now part of Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC)) for EarthWatch, Inc., was launched December 24 at 8:32am EST (1332 UT). A Russian Start-1 rocket, a version of the SS-25 ICBM, carried the satellite into orbit from the Svobodny cosmodrome in eastern Russia.
     While the launch went well, placing the satellite into a nearly circular orbit, contact was lost with the satellite in the days after launch. OSC has requested help from amateur radio enthusiasts especially those in the southern hemisphere, to look for signals from the satellite, according to reports on the AMSAT-BB and HEARSAT mailing lists.
     EarthWatch has announced that contact was lost with the satellite on December 28, but company officials did not seem especially concerned about the blackout. "Such interruptions, while unplanned, are not uncommon in the early orbital operations of satellites," the company said on its Web site.
     EarlyBird 1 will provided the highest-resolution commercial imagery yet. EarthWatch plans to offer black-and-white images with a resolution as high as 3 meters (10 feet) per pixel, and color images with a resolution of 15 meters (50 feet) per pixel.
     "With EarlyBird 1, the people of the world will soon have easy and inexpensive access to the most refined representation of our planet ever assembled," said Donovan B. Hicks, EarthWatch president and CEO. "This launch also shows what can be accomplished when we pool our global technological resources, and is a vivid reminder that the Cold War is over."
     EarlyBird 1 is the first in a planned constellation of remote sensing satellites. The company is developing QuickBird, a new generation of remote sensing satellites with sub-meter resolution capability.

Ariane, Delta, and Pegasus rockets successfully launched their commercial payloads in late December launched, but a failure in an upper stage of a Proton rocket kept an Asian communications satellite from reaching the proper orbit.
     The AsiaSat 3 satellite did not reach geosynchronous orbit after its December 24 launch on a Proton from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The Blok-DM upper stage burned for only one second of a planned 110-second burn, stranding the satellite in an unstable lower orbit.
     AsiaSat 3, built by Hughes, was to provide communications services through southern and eastern Asia and Australasia. The launch had been scheduled for December 22 but was delayed due to poor weather conditions.
     A Delta II booster launched five Iridium satellites from Vandenberg Air Force Base December 20 at 8:16am EST (1336 UT). The successful launch means 46 satellites of the 66-satellite Iridium constellation are now in orbit, although at least two are not functioning. The global wireless phone service plans to be in operation by late 1998.
     An Ariane 42L rocket launched an Intelsat communications satellite December 21. Launch of the Intelsat 804 satellite took place at 7:16pm EST (0016 UT Dec. 22) from Kourou, French Guiana. The launch had been delayed one day because of minor problems with a key computer system. Intelsat 804 will provide voice, data, and video services from its position above the Indian Ocean.
     An Orbital Sciences Corporation Pegasus XL rocket launched eight Orbcomm communications satellites December 23. The launch took place at 2:10pm EST (1910 UT) from OSC's L-1011 aircraft flying over the Atlantic Ocean east of the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The eight Orbcomm satellites will join two others launched in 1995 to form the first part of a 28-satellite constellation that will provide data and messaging services worldwide. The remaining 18 satellites are scheduled for launch by mid-1998.
     The Pegasus launch had been scheduled for early December but was delayed when the Federal Aviation Administration revoked OSC's launch license. The FAA required modifications made to the rocket to allow it to vent extra fuel once it reached orbit, to prevent pressure building up in the fuel tank and exploding, creating orbital debris.

The space shuttle and its crews are under considerable risk of damage from collisions with orbital debris, a National Research Council report concluded December 16.
     "Although NASA is taking steps to protect the shuttle from orbital debris, there still is a real risk that a collision could cripple the shuttle or threaten the safety of the crew," said Frederick Hauck, former astronaut and chairman of the NRC committee which studied the orbital debris problem.
     Of particular concern to the NRC committee was space debris too small to be tracked by ground radars, but large enough to damage the shuttle. The report estimated that more than 95 percent of the debris capable of seriously damaging the shuttle was too small to track.
     The committee recommended that NASA explore new options to shield critical portions of the shuttle, and to consider the possibility of in-flight inspections to look for damage, and methods to repair the damage while in orbit. The NASA-funded study also called on the space agency to work with the Department of Defense to find ways to improve their detection methods to resolve smaller objects and provide more warning of possible collisions.
     NASA officials working on the orbital debris problem expressed surprise at the findings, which to them suggested actions the agency was already undertaking. "`We are already well underway with all those efforts," Nickolas Johnson, NASA's chief orbital debris scientist, told UPI. "We advised the NRC committee of that but must not have done a very good job of communicating."
     Johnson said risk assessments prepared by NASA show a less than 1-in-700 chance of a damaging impact with orbital debris. NASA guidelines call for keeping the risk of "critical failure" from a debris impact below 1-in-200.

The Galileo spacecraft kicked off its two-year extended mission with its closest flyby yet of Europa December 16, while scientists reported on recent results obtained by the spacecraft.
     Galileo flew to within 200 km (124 mi.) of the icy surface of Europa shortly after 7am EST (1200 UT) December 16. The flyby was the closest the spacecraft has come to Europa since Galileo arrived at Jupiter in December 1995.
     The flyby was also the first of the Galileo Europa Mission (GEM), a two-year extended mission which began December 8, the day after the spacecraft completed its original two-year regular mission.
     Seven more Europa flybys are planned through February 1999, in the hopes of gathering new information that will give planetary scientists clues whether an ocean of liquid water exists beneath the moon's icy crust.
     After the Europa flybys, Galileo will make four close passes of Callisto, the outermost of Jupiter's four large Galilean satellites. In late 1999, Galileo will make one or two close passes Io, the innermost Galilean moon, provided the spacecraft is still operating.
     Galileo mission scientists presented results from the previous close flyby of Europa, on November 6, during a December 16 press conference to announce the successful flyby. The images show a region of Europa's surface which had been subjected to "intense geological deformation" where chaotic areas of bright, new ice broke apart and revealed darker areas underneath.
     "Galileo already has returned a wealth of new information in its two-year scientific exploration of Jupiter's atmosphere and system of moons," said Wesley Huntress, NASA's associate administrator for space sciences. "But the best yet may still be ahead of us as Galileo continues its mission at Jupiter with a focus on the moons Europa and Io in the next two years."

Theories regarding the death of Sun-like stars may be due for revision after an analysis of images of other dying stars obtained by the Hubble pace Telescope.
     Astronomers studying planetary nebulae -- the clouds of gas and dust formed in the final stages of the life of a Sun-like star -- expressed surprise at the intricate, complex detail seen in the nebulae.
     Images of the nebulae obtained by Hubble's Wide Field/Planetary Camera showed a variety of unexpected features, including jets of gas, pinwheel patterns, glowing "red blobs" of stellar materials, and disks and donuts of dust surrounding the stars that produce the nebulae.
     Astronomers presenting the images could not explain why such complex features had formed. "Hubble's colorful views are a feast for the eyes," said Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). "Their beauty is matched only by the mystery."
     "The first time we looked at the Hubble's breathtaking pictures, we knew that our older and simpler ideas of how these objects are formed had to be overhauled," said Howard Bond of STScI. "The basic question is: how do these nebulae shape themselves?"
     Planetary nebulae, so named because many appear similar to planets when first observed, are formed when red giant stars eject mass from their outer layers. Astronomers had though such mass ejections would be in the form of simple, spherical shells, but such a process would not create the intricate patterns seen in the Hubble images.
     "The lovely patterns of gas argue that some highly ordered and powerful process orchestrates the ways stars lose their mass, completely unlike an explosion," said Bruce Balick of the University of Washington.
     Future plans call for observations of the nebulae at infrared wavelengths using Hubble's NICMOS infrared camera. "Hubble's ability to see very fine structural details -- usually blurred beyond recognition in ground-based images -- enables us to look for clues to this puzzle," Balick said.

The Australian government is approving legislation that may make the country a major player in the commercial space business by establishing a regulatory framework for several proposed commercial operations.
     The new legislation will cover both the licensing of commercial launch providers and requirements for liability insurance necessary under international treaty.
     John Moore, the Australian Minister for Industry, Science, and Tourism, hoped the new legislation would make it clear to the international community that the country was serious about hosting commercial launch services.
     "Existing international space launch capabilities cannot meet the predicted demand for satellite launches," Moore said in mid-December. "Australia has much to offer international launch operators, including its technologically advanced infrastructure, skilled workforce, natural landscape and geography, particularly its position within the Asia-Pacific region."
     According to Moore, four companies have expressed an interest in using Australia as a commercial space launch site. The leading company is the American aerospace firm Kistler, which is interested in using the Woomera launch site in South Australia for its reusable K-1 launch vehicle under development.
     Three other companies -- International Resource Corporation, Space Transportation Systems, and United Launch Systems -- have expressed interest in using Russian launch vehicles from various sites in northern and northeastern Australia. These efforts are not believed to be as far along as Kistler's plans.
     Kistler is reportedly seeking the Woomera launch site due to regulatory difficulties in obtaining a launch site in Nevada. The need to reform the regulatory environment within the United States has been pointed out repeatedly in recent years by many space activists.

Apollo 1 Recognition: Two members of the Apollo 1 mission were posthumously awarded with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in a White House ceremony December 17. The families of astronauts Ed White and Roger Chaffee received the medals from President Clinton in a belated recognition of the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 1 accident January 27, 1967. The families were accompanies by Betty Grissom, widow of Apollo 1 commander Gus Grissom, who had already received the medal.

Mir Cosmonauts Paid In Full: Cosmonauts Vasily Tsilbliev and Alexander Lazutkin will receive their full pay for their trouble-filled six-month stint on the Mir space station in 1997. Part of their pay had been held in reserve after their August return while Russian officials investigated the mission to determine what role, if any, the crew played in Mir's problems. A commission finally determined that the cosmonauts shared some blame for the June collision of a Progress spacecraft with Mir's Spektr module. Tsilbliev told the ITAR-TASS news agency last month he has no plans to fly in space again; instead, he has been named the deputy director of a space center in charge of preparing cosmonauts for upcoming missions.

But Will He Pay Off The Station's Debt? Congressman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), chairman of the House Science Committee, got an unexpected surprise shortly after a Christmas: a $250,000 jackpot from a lottery ticket he purchased before the holidays. Sensenbrenner, one of the wealthiest members of Congress, doesn't need the money, but given his statements in Congressional hearings in recent months, don't expect him to donate the winnings to help pay of NASA's growing space station overruns.

Post-Christmas Stocking Stuffer: VR Cam is planning the release this month of a "Mars VR" CD-ROM packed with virtual reality explorations of the Red Planet and other information. Set for release at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco, the CD-ROM will be available for MacOS and Windows 95 computers for $30. More information is on the Web at http://www.vrcamera.com/cdrom/cdrom.html.

In Brief: Indonesia has dropped plans to fly a guest cosmonaut on Mir, the Russian news agency ITAR-TASS reported last month. No reason was reported for the decision, which came just two months after Indonesia made plans for a mission, although the financial problems in the Far East and instability within Indonesia itself may have played a role... Arthur C. Clarke was one of two-dozen people awarded knighthoods by Great Britain December 31. The 80-year-old Clarke told Reuters he was "flattered" to be included in Prime Minister Tony Blair's honours list. Clarke added that although poor health will keep him from traveling to England to meet the Queen, he is looking forward to a visit by Prince Charles to Sri Lanka, Clarke's home since the 1950s... Hollywood is already beginning to promote its two summer cosmic blockbusters. Trailers for "Deep Impact", scheduled for a May 8 release, are already appearing in theaters and promotional materials for it and "Armageddon", scheduled to hit the big screen July 1 are also coming out (A poster for Armageddon seen in one theater featured a digital clock counting time backwards to its release date). To help tell them apart, "Deep Impact" is comet vs. Earth, "Armageddon" is asteroid vs. Earth...