Sackings Come to Light NASA Spells out Plans

Home , Mariner Mark II, Zbigniew Bujak

N_A_TU__ RE__ v_o_L_.~ __ ~__ AP__ R_IL_I_~_3 ______NEVVS------'~4t Polish academics Solar System exploration More sackings NASA spells out plans Washington then recedes into deep space. Mariner come to light THE Solar System exploration committee would carry cameras and remote sensing ALTHOUGH martial law in Poland was of the National Aeronautics and Space instruments to study the gas and dust suspended at the end of last year, several Administration (NASA) has published boiling off the comet's nucleus, and cases are still pending in the courts for of its recommendations for a "core sensors to measure the gas and carbon dust fences committed during this period. For programme" of planetary missions to be composition. Three suitable targets have the most part, under martial law, the heads flown before the end of the century. New already been identified - comets Enke, of institutes or laboratories tried to features of the programme include using Tempel2 and Honda-Mrkos-Pajdasakova minimize the hardship suffered by derivatives of commercial Earth-orbital (HMP) - which could be encountered in academics and scholars arrested for conti spacecraft for inner planet missions the mid-1990s after first flying by a main nuing trade union activities by granting ("Planetary Observers") and a new, belt asteroid. them unpaid leave of absence for the dura modular spacecraft named Mariner Mark • Titan Probe/Radar Mapper. Proposed tion of their captivity. (Those •'merely'' in II which can be modified for a variety of for launch on some date between 1988 and terned as a preventive measure at the start missions to the outer planets, comets and 1992, this mission would examine the of martial law were officially assured of job asteroids. The first four proposed missions orange-coloured atmosphere that shrouds reinstatement.) are: Saturn's largest moon, and its surface, Recently, however, Western biologists • Venus Radar Mapper. To be launched which is cold enough for methane pools or have been made aware of the case of a in 1988, and included in the Reagan possibly oceans. The Titan probe could young Polish colleague, Jerzy Bal, who has Administration's 1984 budget proposal, parachute instruments through the been dismissed from his post at the Warsaw this mission will provide a radar map of the atmosphere and send back radar images of Medical Academy while still in pre-trial planet's surface with a resolution of the surface. The mission, if upgraded, detention. The evidence against Bal ap approximately one kilometre. The space would also utilize a full-scale Saturn orbiter parently consists only of denunciation by craft will also carry a radar altimeter to to study the planet's atmosphere, informers, so it seems unlikely that he will provide topographic information and a magnetosphere, satellites and rings. NASA receive more than a suspended sentence. In gravity sensor. says the combined probe and orbiter would that light his dismissal before his case has • Mars Geoscience/Climatology Orbiter. be an ideal candidate for international even been heard seems unnecessarily This mission, for launch in 1990, would be collaboration. severe. the first to use the Planetary Observer Excluded from the core programme on Unfortunately, Jerzy Bal had the bad spacecraft. Its purpose is to orbit Mars for the grounds of cost, but still under study by luck to be arrested in connection with what one martian year gathering information on the committee, are missions such as the is rapidly developing into a show trial. He the planet's surface composition, magnetic return of samples from Mars, rovers was arrested last December as a suspected fields (if any) and seasonal cycles of exploring the martian surface and a member of the Interfactory Workers' carbon dioxide, water and dust that interact buoyant station floating in Titan's Solidarity Committee (MRKS), the most between the surface and atmosphere. atmosphere. radical of the grass-roots underground • Comet Rendezvous/ Asteroid Flyby. The committee plans to publish the full Solidarity groups set up in the early days of The new spacecraft, Mariner Mark II, is details of the augmented planetary martial law. More than 200 people were ar recommended to rendezvous with a short exploration programme at the end of the rested on suspicion, of whom 21 were de period comet as it approaches the Sun and year. Peter David tained pending investigation. Nine of them have so far been brought to trial, but pro ceedings were halted in March, after a showdown in which the defence counsel, Andrzejewski, was dismissed for contempt for calling the proceedings a "kangaroo court". Comments in the army daily newspaper Zolnierz Woinosci make it clear that the proceedings are designed as an in direct trial of Zbigniew Bujak, the head of the five-man underground Solidarity leadership, and are closely linked with the forthcoming trial of the five "intellectual advisers" of Solidarity from the dissident workers' Defence Committee (KOR) which formally handed over its civil rights commitments to Solidarity in September 1981. Under these circumstances, the medical academy may well have been panicked into wishing to dissociate itself from Bal, although his friends in Warsaw stress that during police searches of his flat, no evidence was found to link him with MRKS. It would be unfortunate, however, if the pusillanimous attitude of the medical academy were to set a precedent for other academic institutions whose staff fall foul of the security authorities. A three-dimensional computer-generated model of the 15-km high Arsia Mons volcano on Mars Vera Rich based on data from Viking Orbiter. Photo: NASA, Apri/1983.