6A
Tuesday, February 27, 1996
NATION/WORLD
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NASA loses $400 million with snap of a tether line
The Associated Press
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Like a child watching a helium balloon slip from his hand, scientists looked on in distress as a half-ton satellite being towed by space shuttle Columbia broke loose and floated into the black void, dangling 12 miles of frayed and curled cord.
"A lot of things were disappearing there," astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman, a Harvard-educated astrophysicist, said yesterday. "We all did have a lot of hopes. We got about halfway there in terms of being able to deploy the satellite and to just what people's appetites for the incredible scientific investigations that could be covered. Scientists have lost a lot, and I deeply feel for them."
It was a cruel blow to those who had devoted years to the electricity-generating project, all the more so because everything was going smoothly until the accident.
In a split second Sunday night, the cord and the instrument-packed satellite were gone forever, a $400 million-plus experiment now just space junk.
NASA flight director Chuck Shaw said it would be too dangerous to send the shuttle after the Italian satellite — the spaghetti-thin cord could wrap itself around the space ship.
- The junk poses no hazard to Columbia and its crew for the remaining 11/2 weeks of the mission. It will re-enter the atmosphere and burn up within a month, officials said.
Officials refused to speculate what went wrong. But Hoffman reported that the frayed end of the cord remaining aboard Columbia looked as though it had been charred and melted.
The cord — made of braided copper, nylon and Teflon — broke off inside a tower that was being used like a fishing rod to cast the satellite into space.
Italian scientist Marino Dobrowolny said the insulation may have been stripped away, exposing the copper wire. Data on the ground showed the equivalent of a spark or discharge, which may have occurred as the copper passed near metal on the deployment equipment, he said.
NASA immediately impounded all data associated with the U.S.Ittalian project and established an investigative board.
Columbia and its seven astronauts were safe the entire time. It could have been worse: If more of the tether had remained attached to Columbia, the cord could have whipped back and become entangled with the shuttle.
"I got up in the morning, and when I came up on the flight deck and saw the disappointed faces of my colleagues, I knew something wasn't quite right," pilot Scott Horowitz said in a space-to-ground news conference. "They said, 'Look out the window,' and the tether was gone.
When Hoffman shouted the alarm, there were a few milliseconds of an adrenaline rush, shuttle commander Andrew Allen said. But the astronauts realized they did not need to fear for their lives, given the location of the tether break and the speed at which the satellite was drifting away. Three of the crewmen were asleep at the time.
"It was kind of like one of those really bad sinking feelings. You're hoping to wake up to this beautiful sight of this tether all the way up there and then do all this science, and there it was gone."
Depending on the cause of the problem, this could be the end of space tethers for the foreseeable future.
Until the accident, the tethered satellite system had been working better than expected, generating up to 3,500 volts of electricity as the metal ball and the cord swept through Earth's magnetic field.
Knight-Ridder Tribune
U. S. and Italian scientists were overjoyed. The first time the tethered satellite flew in space, four years ago, the cord jammed at 840 feet and the combination generated a feeble 40 volts.
Then came Hoffman's startled shouts, not quite five hours into the experiment and only a half-mile of tether left to be unreeled. As he yelled, "The tether has broken," flight controllers and scientists stared in disbelief at their computer screens. Tether tension had dropped to zero.
"I felt bad," Dobrowolny said, "but then I recovered rather quickly because even though it was only five hours, we collected an enormous amount of data."
Nobie Stone, a NASA scientist on the ground, said the tether's success up to that point made the loss particularly painful.
"I have a black Lab at home, and if you take a piece of meat and you go by real fast and you get his attention, he looks at it but he really hasn't realized what he's missed yet," Stone said. "If you hold it in front of him, he begins to drool all over the place because he has some anticipation."
THE NEWS in brief
Moscow mayor, his 'team' to seek re-election
MOSCOW — Moscow's mayor said yesterday that he will seek a second term and plans to carry a whole team into office on his coattails, the Interfax news agency reported.
Yuri Luzhkov, one of Russia's most influential politicians, said he expected the mayoral elections to take place June 16, the same day as Russia's presidential elections.
Luzhkov, 59, was elected deputy
mayor in 1991 and became mayor a year later when his predecessor Gavrill Popov stepped down.
Critics say Luzhkov wields too much power over city contracts, privatization of property and other spheres. But many Muscovites admire Luzhkov as a tough boss who gets things done.
Luzhkov said he wanted the Russian capital, which has 10 million inhabitants, to remain on the course he has set.
giant Cathedral of Christ the Savior, a project spearheaded by Luzhkov.
Moscow is experiencing a building boom, from small storefronts to the
"That's why we will propose not only a candidate for the mayor's office, but a whole team seeking power in the city to provide the necessary services to residents," he said.
Israel vows revenge for deaths
The Associated Press
JERUSALEM — With Israelis' nerves stretched tight following two suicide bombings, Prime Minister Shimon Peres promised yesterday that Israel would destroy the militant Palestinian group Hamas, which claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Despite his assurances, Israelis were obviously jittery a day after the bombings killed 27 people — the highest toll in a day since 1978.
A reporter for Israel television said Abdel Hamida had paid the price for the hysteria that had overcome everyone.
Hundreds of Israelis gathered at the scene of the Jerusalem bombing yesterday, arranging memorial candles on the sidewalk to spell the word "maspik" — Hebrew for "enough."
Military funerals were held at Jerusalem's Mount Herzl Cemetery for five young soldiers killed in the blast.
Hundreds of police officers, convinced they were facing a new terrorist attack, rushed to the scene. But police later said the driver, Ahmed Abdel Hamida of California, apparently lost control of the car.
The charged atmosphere brought a new casualty. An Arab-American was shot and killed yesterday by Israeli civilians who feared he was a terrorist when his rented car crashed into a crowded Jerusalem bus stop.
Hundreds of people stood in the rain at services for 20-year-old Yonathan Barnea, an army sergeant who was the son of well-known newspaper columnist Nahum Barnea.
An Israeli woman was killed in the crash and 22 people were injured. It was not known whether the bystanders who opened fire faced criminal charges.
"You had no hatred, you had no hatred because I think that you grew up in a place where hatred was not a way of life," his father said in an eulogy.
A young American couple was among those killed in the Jerusalem bombing — Matthew Eisenfeld, 25, of West Hartford, Conn., and Sara Duker, 22, of Teaneck, N.J. After separate funerals, they are to be buried later this week in adjoining plots in Avon, Conn., a funeral home said.
Twenty-five people were killed when a bomb exploded on a crowded Jerusalem city bus during Sunday morning rush hour. Less than an hour later, another bomb exploded near the coastal town of Ashkelon, killing two people. The bombers were apparently among the dead in both blasts.
Peres said the bomber in the Jerusalem attack came from Hebron, the only Palestinian town in the West Bank still under Israeli control. Peres said the bomber was
known by security forces but his identity was not made public.
Both bombers apparently disguised themselves in Israeli army uniforms, Peres said, adding that the Ashkelon bomber even wore an earring. Traditional Palestinian society frowns on men wearing earrings.
Peres criticized Yasir Arafat's self-rule government for allowing Hamas, which opposes the peace process and has claimed several other deadly bombings, to operate openly in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
"The Palestinian Authority must decide whether there is room in the Gaza Strip for paramilitary
Knight-Ridder Tribune
About 35 Hamas members were rounded up yesterday in the PLO-ruled Gaza Strip, but none of them were leading figures or belonged to Hamas' military wing, Izzedine al Qassam.
organization that want to harm peace," he said. "The Palestinian Authority must decide to disarm the terrorists or risk endangering its authority."
Peres said he had asked the
"Even though I cannot promise that there will be no more victims, or that we will know no more grief, I am certain that we will bring about the collapse of this murderous organization," he said.
Immediately after the bombings, Israel imposed an open-ended closure on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israeli media reports said the closure could last for weeks, possibly until after Israel's general elections May 29.
The closure keeps 60,000 Palestinians from jobs in Israel and costs the Palestinian economy $4 million a day in lost wages and exports.
Peres came under sharp criticism
countries from which Hamas receives money to block the flow of funds, and said Israel would focus its own efforts on eradicating the militant group. He did not name the countries contacted.
for lifting a
previous closure Friday
despite warnings
that H a m a s
planned to carry
out attacks.
Israel began building a fence yesterday near the West Bank town of Qalqiluja, just a few miles from the Israeli town of Kfar Saba, to make it easier to enforce closures.
Terrorist
attacks are widely viewed as the factor that could persuade swing voters in the upcoming election that transferring land to Palestinian control endangers rather than improves their security.
.