Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 8, 1994 TAG: 9404080196
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-11 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Long
Kovarik, now an assistant professor of media studies at Radford University, has become a science writer in the years since. He has written two of the articles in a nationally distributed 210-page magazine celebrating the landing's 25th anniversary this year.
``One Giant Leap for Mankind'' (Rococo International Inc., $5.95) also contains an introduction by Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon; interviews with 11 of the Apollo astronauts who either orbited or visited it; a history of the space program dating back to the 1950s; articles on other space ventures; and projections of the space program's future.
Kovarik's contributions are on future cooperation in space between the United States and Russia and how the accidental discovery of the thinning ozone layer by a satellite led to environmental protection measures.
He scooped the world's news media on the first story. Vice President Al Gore didn't formally announce the joint U.S.-Russian space station venture until Sept. 2, but Kovarik, whose deadline preceded the announcement, ferreted out the information on Internet, a computer network on which government documents outlined much of what was being planned by the two countries.
``Most of what goes on in government is rather open,'' said Kovarik, who teaches news and feature writing and other classes at Radford. ``There's an awful lot to this stuff, but it's basically E-mail.''
Once he began talking to space enthusiasts on Internet, he learned where to look. He came up with a transcript of a presidential press conference mentioning the signing of agreements to permit U.S.-Russian cooperation in space, and a memo out of Gore's office about Gore and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin discussing the specifics.
``It's kind of like reading tea leaves,'' Kovarik said. ``But still we didn't know what those agreements said and I was right on deadline. ... I called up the vice president's office and I couldn't get anything out of them.''
Finally, he came up with a document in which Gore said the U.S. was going to exercise the Russian option in regard to the space station, and fired off the article.
``And the only way I could have known for sure that this was OK to do was to have gotten this report,'' he said. ``There's not a lot of magic in this. There's just an awful lot of sifting.''
Kovarik's research showed that cooperation went on even during the Cold War, often at some real risk for those on the Russian side. In one instance, astronaut Frank Borman obtained Russian confirmation by telegram that the Russian lunar vehicle Luna XV would not interfere with the flight path of Apollo XI around the moon.
Cooperation on the space station not only will cut costs for both countries, Kovarik wrote, but may keep otherwise-impoverished Russian scientists from helping Third World nations develop nuclear missiles.
For his ``Mission to Planet Earth'' article, Kovarik visited the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. He gives a first-hand picture of how data comes in from the ozone-mapping spectrometer orbiting 600 miles above Earth.
The discovery of the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica came from a satellite meant to provide information about jet streams and atmospheric waves. The data was not believed at first, Kovarik learned. ``They got this stuff and they said, `There must be something wrong with the satellite.'''
Later a British scientist doing ground work in Antarctica provided independent corroboration. Scientists found that the layer, which protects Earth's life forms from cancer-causing ultraviolet-B rays, was thinning out over North America as well.
The cause was determined to be the use of chlorofluorocarbons, chlorine-based compounds for air conditioners and pressurized aerosol sprays. The discovery led to the signing of a protocol in 1987 to phase out these and other compounds that destroy ozone in the upper atmosphere.
Kovarik feels there are similar discoveries to be made out there, but ``NASA is having to limp by on a very weak budget at a time when we really need 'em.''
Kovarik, who also wrote ``Seeds from Space'' and other parts of the ``Life Search: Voyage through the Universe'' series for Time-Life Books, also has taught at the University of Maryland, where he earned a doctorate in public communications, and at Virginia Tech. He has been at Radford for about four years.
His news background ranges from a ``muckraking weekly'' in the Richmond area and a Chesterfield County weekly to the Charleston, S.C., News & Courier and Baltimore Sun.
He also worked with columnist Jack Anderson's investigative team after being called on to translate a letter in Spanish from someone in prison. He followed up with telephone calls to authorities about the matter and was still working on it when someone asked him what he was doing at a desk in Anderson's Washington, D.C., office.
``Well, I've been working here for the past couple of days now,'' Kovarik replied. Anderson found it amusing. ``So he hired me as a researcher. That lasted for about a year and that was nice.''
Roland Lazenby, director of news and periodicals at Radford, pointed Kovarik to Rococo International when Kovarik was looking for a summer writing job. Rococo publishes sports periodicals, and Kovarik told its representative that sports was not his field.
He was asked what he did write. It turned out that his environmental expertise fit what the one-shot moon-landing anniversary magazine needed and he got the assignments.
``Honesty really pays,'' Kovarik said.
The magazine also has an article about televising from the moon by Steve Brunner, vice president of Medalist Sports, who visited Blacksburg and Wytheville earlier this year to announce that Medalist would be part of the Tour DuPont four-state bicycle race.
by CNB