Fire breaks out in shuttle

Press, 26 April 1989, Page 10

Fire breaks out in shuttle

NZPA-Reuter Cape Canaveral A fire broke out in the United States space shuttle launch control centre at the Kennedy Space Centre yesterday, forcing the evacuation of the building only days before the shuttle Atlantis is due to blast off, N.A.S.A. officials said. A National Aeronautics and Space Administration spokeswoman, Pat Phillips, said the fire, which was contained and extinguished in a boiler room on the fourth floor, caused no damage to instruments . that control shuttle launches and is not expected to delay Atlantis’ liftoff on Saturday. The cargo on the $9OO million mission is the Magellan spacecraft, which has a radar system powerful enough to pierce the dense sulphuric acid clouds of

Venus and map its surface. The radar images could reveal much about Venus’ history and Earth’s evolution. No United States planetary spacecraft has been launched since the Pioneer probe of Venus in 1978. Magellan will be the first planet-bound vehicle to be dispatched from the space shuttle. When the 3175 kg payload reaches Venus in August 1990, it will fire into orbit and start a 243day mapping assignment. “The goal is to obtain radar images of at least 70 per cent of the planet,” said Stephen Saunders, Magellan project scientist at N.A.S.A.’s jet propulsion laboratory. He said the images could help

scientists understand how Venus was formed and might provide an answer to the puzzling question of how Earth and Venus evolved so differently, even though at the beginning of the solar system they

were almost identical. Mr Saunders said the Magellan pictures might answer questions about the extent of volcanic activity, and settle disputes over whether Venus once had oceans of water and whether it has shifting crustal plates similar to Earth’s. The radar is designed to produce images showing features as small as 135 m across. Magellan is the first of two planetary craft scheduled for launching from Atlantis this year. The Galileo probe to Jupiter is set to go in October.