THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 18, 1994 TAG: 9408180521
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STAFF & WIRE REPORTS
DATELINE: CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
Environmentalists will do the unthinkable next week - spill oil into the North Sea - to test whether space shuttle Endeavour can track the mess from on high with its powerful radar.
Endeavour and its crew of six were set to blast off at 6:54 a.m. today on a 10-day environmental mission; good weather was forecast.
On Tuesday, weather permitting, German oceanographers will spill more than 100 gallons of crude and diesel oil off the coast of Denmark.
University of Hamburg scientists want to see how well Endeavour's $366 million radar - the most sophisticated civilian space radar - identifies the spilled oil. Ten gallons of algae byproducts will be dumped at the same time to test the radar's ability to distinguish between that and the oil.
The oil will be collected within 24 hours and the algae byproducts within two hours, said Heinz Stoewer, managing director of the German space agency.
About 6.9 million tons of oil are spilled illegally each year, Stoewer said. Dumping often occurs at night; that's where radar comes in handy - it can scan in both darkness and daylight.
Joining the Endeavor crew for his second space mission is Norfolk native Peter ``Jeff'' Wisoff. Wisoff last flew on the shuttle (also the Endeavor) in June 1993. He and fellow astronaut G. David Low took a five-hour spacewalk and manhandled two balky satellite antennae back into their original positions.
The satellite, a European mini-space laboratory, was retrieved by Endeavor after some 10 months in orbit.
The Wisoff-Low walk was acclaimed by NASA officials as proof of the need for humans in space. The pair also practiced procedures later used by other astronauts to repair the nearsighted Hubble Space Telescope.
Included on this latest Endeavor mission is an experiment designed at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton. Langley's boxy, yard-long device is dubbed MAPS, short for Measurement of Air Pollution From Satellites. The instrument will measure concentrations of carbon monoxide in the lower reaches of Earth's atmosphere.
Carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless gas produced in large concentrations by the burning of fossil fuels, forests and grasslands. Indirectly, carbon monoxide can contribute to the buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, which may dramatically warm Earth's climate.
MAPS has flown three prior times on shuttles: in November 1991, October 1984 and again in April 1994. Preliminary results from the most recent mission show low carbon monoxide levels in the Southern Hemisphere and a gradual increase in carbon monoxide levels moving from the Southern to the Northern Hemisphere.
This second MAPS flight of 1994 takes place during the burning season in South America and Africa, as farmers burn vegetation to clear crop lands. Scientists will be able to determine where the largest concentrations of the gas are produced and how the gas moves through the atmosphere. MEMO: Staff writer James Schultz contributed to this report.
ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Wisoff
by CNB