When the space shuttle Atlantis lifted off this week from Florida, it was transporting the Air Force Academy’s Miniaturized Electrostatic Analyzer, a project known as MESA and developed by the academy’s physics department to measure plasma density, temperature, and spacecraft charging, to the International Space Station. This MESA sensor replaces one “that just came down … [but] the major difference this time we will be able to use telemetry to get data live from the instrument,” said Dr. Geoff Mcharg, director of the academy’s Space Physics and Atmospheric Research Center. The basic object is to collect weather data around the space station. (Academy release)
A three-month continuing resolution that ended in December inflicted less pain on the Department of the Air Force than it had expected, as procurement and construction continue in the new year. The federal government operated under a stopgap spending measure that stretched from the beginning of the fiscal year on…