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News briefs: September 12
Posted: Fri, Sep 13, 2002, 10:53 AM ET (1453 GMT)
- NASA is willing to consider reviving a crew return vehicle (CRV) and other ISS programs that have been victims of budget cuts, the Huntsville Times reported. Space agency officials told the NASA Advisory Committee this week that work on a CRV and other programs, such as advanced life support systems, could be restored in the next two years as the overall ISS programs gets back on a more solid footing. NASA is currently working with the Office of Management and Budget to draft the proposed 2004 NASA budget, which will be released early next year.
- Astronomers have found new evidence confirming the existence of a class of neutron stars with powerful magnetic fields. They believe two x-ray bursts from an object 15,000 light years away are proof that the object is a magnetar. Such objects may have magnetic fields billions of times more powerful than the Earth's. the research was published in the latest issue of the journal Nature.
- The Australian and Japanese governments have signed an agreement to permit the launch of an Australian satellite on a Japanese H-2A booster in November. FedSat, the first Australian-built satellite in three decades, will be included in the payload of the next H-2A launch, making it the first foreign satellite to be launched by the booster. FedSat is an experimental microsatellite with a variety of scientific, navigation, and other technology tests. The launch deal was anticipated for some time but was not formally completed until this week.
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