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#173146 54 Sat Oct 15 22:52:00 1994 [Voyage of the] Flying Wombat @ The Log Cabin, Seattle, WA
Date: 4 Oct 1994 05:20:31 -0400 Shuttle Astronauts Map Arrival of Autumn on Earth CAPE CANAVERAL, Oct. 3 (Reuters) - Astronauts saw the reds and yellows of a Northern Hemisphere autumn from space today as shuttle Endeavour's environmental radars mapped a Michigan forest at the start of its seasonal change. With a week remaining in the shuttle's 10-day mapping flight, NASA scientists already were raving about the images pouring back to Earth from the $384 million Space Radar Laboratory in the shuttle cargo bay. "Things are going spectacularly well. The radars are working perfectly," said Diane Evans, leader of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's science team. "We're seeing dramatic environmental changes between April and October," Evans said in a news conference today. Six men took Endeavour aloft from Florida last Friday to scan the planet with the most sophisticated radar instruments in civilian use, the second mission in six months to employ radars in Earth research. An erupting volcano in Russia's Far East and an oil slick off the coast of Portugal were among the sights the Endeavour crew saw and the radars studied during their first four days in orbit. About 1,800 researchers are conducting field experiments at 20 radar targets around the globe. Their chief goal is to document Earth's appearance in early autumn with thousands of still photographs while two radar instruments, one from the United States and the other from Germany and Italy, sweep the planet in wide swaths with microwave energy. A comparison of radar images from both missions may help to identify natural and human-induced environmental changes that can disturb the global climate. "We're trying to detect seasonal differences from the first mission we flew back in April," co-pilot Terrence Wilcutt said today. "If we know where the globe is changing, and if man is indeed causing that change, then we'll have a handle on what we need to do about it." Also today, NASA released radar images of the Klyuchevskaya volcano, which erupted in Russia's Far East several hours after the shuttle launch, and of Mount Rainier, a dormant volcano in Washington state. The radar mapping continued as the six crewmen began a round of half-day duty breaks. They broke into two teams and began tending the laboratory around the clock shortly after liftoff. NASA schedules free time periodically to prevent astronaut fatigue.
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