in charge of the deep space probe,"
said Commander David Walker. "We're fortunate enough to
be part of the team that gets to send it up there. The
rest of the NASA team will make sure that it gets to
Venus and does its job."
UPDATE: NASA, KSC Release # 24-89, March 1989
Magellan marks the first U.S. planetary mission since
Pioneer Venus 12 in 1978. It also kicks off a core
program of solar system exploration involving NASA and
organizations from the United States and the
international community.
Project ZEUS: One of the payload experiments on this
Shuttle Mission includes the Mesoscale Lighting
Experiment, a NASA sponsored effort involving several
universities. Its objective is to study the visual
characteristics of large scale lighting in the upper
atmosphere.
Note: Part of the Project Zeus effort to study laser
beam diffusion in the upper atmosphere.
In addition, asdocument signed by Truman claimed to be a classified
executive order to Secretary of Defense James Forrestal,
authorizing him to establish a board of experts,
answerable
only to the President, and to be known as Majestic-12
(MJ-12).
Their job was to investigate the crash of a Flying Saucer
near
Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947.
The documents appeared to be proof that the Roswell
saucer,
long the subject of rumor and speculation, had really
happened.
The second document supported the first and was a top
secret
briefing for the newly elected President on the members of
MJ-12 and their progress in the investigation.
Shandera waited for over two years to make the documents
public
on May 29, 1987. His associates in the revelation were
William
Moore, coauthor of The Roswell Incident, and crashed
saucer
expert Stanton Friedman. Moore's and Friedman's theories
stood
to be vindicated if the documents were real!
The three claimed to