Aug 30 1976
From The Space Library
The Peoples Republic of China launched its sixth satellite, referenced as China 6, from its facility at Shuang-Cheng-Tze into a highly elliptical orbit with 2147-km apogee, 193-km perigee, 69.1 ° inclination, and 108.7-min period. An announcement from the China press agency Hsinhua said the satellite was functioning normally, but gave no details on the spacecraft or its mission. (NTT, 31 Aug 76, 7; SBD, 8 Dec 76, 203; SSR, 31 Aug 76, 31; SF, Feb 77, 78)
Return of the USSR's Luna 24 to earth with a load of material drilled from nearly 2 m below the surface of the moon might be a dress rehearsal for a round-trip Mars probe to offset world headlines gained by Viking 1, said the Christian Science Monitor. The question why the Soviets would expend more effort on moon samples when they already had three sets (two from previous probes, Luna 16 and Luna 20, and one from the U.S. Apollo program) would be answered if the Luna 24 mission were being used to perfect techniques for obtaining Mars samples, a move "which would vault the Soviet Union back into the lead in planetary research," said the CSM. The USSR had landed unmanned spacecraft on the surface of Venus and obtained information for a short period, and had sent to the moon in 1973 an unmanned vehicle Lunokhod 2 that crisscrossed the Lemonnier crater for 6 mo, reporting back data on magnetic fields and laser direction-finding. The CSM noted that; although the USSR automated machines worked well, the Soviets still lacked boosters to propel cosmonauts to the moon. (CSM, 30 Aug 76)
The 26-m "Venus dish" at NASA's Goldstone tracking station near Barstow, Calif., normally used to communicate with interplanetary spacecraft, was serving as a research tool to study conversion of solar energy from satellites to electricity for use on earth, Goldstone researchers reported. In the tests, the big antenna represented an energy satellite collecting and converting sun energy into microwaves; more than a km and a half away, a set of receiver panels called a "rectenna" played the part of a ground station. The 7.6-m-high receiver panels contained more than 4500 aluminum T-shaped rectenna elements about 100 mm high, working like a TV antenna to gather and filter the microwave energy, converting it to AC or DC that could be fed directly into a utility. Results had been promising, with collection and conversion of microwave beams to usable electricity at an efficiency of 82%. (NASA PAO, 76-H-685, caption)
Scientists all over the world had been invited to propose experiments for the second Spacelab mission, NASA announced, asking that they submit by I Oct. their letters of intent to propose, with actual proposals due by 3 Dec. Final selection of experiments would be made in Aug. 1977; proposals would be evaluated in the areas of space science (including life sciences), applications, and space technology.
Primary intent of the second Spacelab mission would be to evaluate the laboratory's system and subsystem performance, but space and resources would be available for experiments. Second objective of the mission would be to demonstrate the broad capabilities of Spacelab for scientific research, especially in astrophysics (astronomy, high-energy astrophysics, and solar physics). Proposals should designate a principal investigator as the point of contact with NASA, to manage the efforts of any other persons involved in the experiments.
As the second mission payload would not include a pressurized module as the design for Spacelab 1 did, instruments would be mounted on pallets exposed to space with a remote manipulator system available if needed. Experiments would be controlled remotely by persons at the payload-specialist station in the Space Shuttle orbiter's aft flight deck. Power, data distribution, and thermal control would be available from flight subsystems in a pressurized igloo on the forward pallet. Spacelab, a reusable space laboratory, was under construction in Europe by the European Space Agency for NASA. Marshall Space Flight Center was the lead center for Spacelab development, as well as for the Shuttle main engine, external tank, and solid-fuel rocket booster. (NASA Release 76-152)
A slowdown ordered by the 14 000-member Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization 25 Aug. had caused disruptions in air travel nationwide, airline officials told the New York Times. Eastern Airlines experienced 1-to 2-hr delays in rush-hour traffic at La Guardia Airport, and similar snarls were reported by other carriers at other airports, the most severe at Los Angeles. Union president John F. Leyden had asked members to start handling traffic "by the book" and adhere rigidly to rules that required planes to stay about 5 to 10 km behind aircraft ahead of them, omitting efforts to expedite traffic flow as is normally done. The controllers were protesting delay in completion of a Civil Service Commission study of controller job classification, which held hope of higher pay levels, and a CSC announcement that its investigation had found both undergrading and overgrading in the jobs. (NYT, 30 Aug 76, A-9)
Information from space satellites orbiting more than 900 km above the earth was being regularly evaluated in U.S. attempts to measure crops in the Soviet Union, the Peoples Republic of China, and other countries, officials of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture said. The information had been incorporated with other data in a project known as the Large-Area Crop Inventory Experiment (LACIE) that had been going on since 1974 and would be completed by mid-1978. The disclosure of crop-watching appeared in a weekly issue of Foreign Agriculture published by the department's Foreign Agricultural Service. (W Star, 30 Aug 76, A-5)
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