August 1978
From The Space Library
The USAF reported that NavStar 2, within seconds of reaching orbit after its May 13 launch, had been tracked by one of SAMSO's stations. "About one hour after launch we made initial contact with the satellite," said 2nd Lt. Joe Fury, satellite operations controller. "Controllers then tested the satellite's systems to assure their operation before beginning other on-orbit checks to make the spacecraft function." In its initial 6-hr orbit, the NavStar had "talked" with ground controllers around the world, each of whom fine-tuned the satellite as it passed overhead.
Two days after launch NavStar 2's internal rocket motor, activated by a command from a satellite controller, had shifted it from an egg-shaped orbit into a circular 12-hr orbit; as it arrived there, the NavStar was spun up to 89rpm to stabilize it. For 1.5da, controllers sent computer-coded signals to gradually slow the spin rate to zero. After stabilization, controllers had deployed the two folded solar-array panels and began to warm up the navigation payload to receive computer data transmitted to the satellite, giving it the intelligence it needed to carry out its military mission. Three wk after launch, controllers had positioned NavStar2 in a 10 900-nautical-mi drift orbit, slowly moving it toward the final position most suitable for the NavStar program. By the mid-1980s the NavStar system of 24 satellites would give users highly accurate data on position, velocity, and time in all weather, anywhere in the world. (AFSC Newsreview, Aug 78, 3)
The USAF reported that the E-3A airborne warning and control system (AWACS), "leader" of the USAF command and control structure, had arrived at Wright-Patterson AFB for low-level flight tests conducted by the 6750th Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory to evaluate effects of aircraft noise. Tests with the E-3A would complete the 1978 measurement phase of NOISEMAP, a computer program to assess environmental impact of aircraft noise that had included the F-15, A-10, C-141, and KC-135. The assessments would serve in making alternative aircraft assignments and flight schedules, deciding on appropriate noise suppressors, and discovering potential noise problems for aircraft under design. Civil engineers had used the program in fixing sites for new buildings, determining requirements for adding noise-reduction materials to existing structures, and in orienting trim pads to minimize aircraft-noise impact on the community.
AWACS was a modified Boeing 707 used as an airborne command post to coordinate fighters, close air-support aircraft, and strategic bombers in a combat arena. Its friend-or-foe antenna could identify enemy craft in a battlefield setting, allowing the 17-member AWACS crew to relay information to friendly aircraft. (AFSC Newsreview, Aug/78, 7)
The AFSC Newsreview reported that the USAF had awarded Harris Corp.'s Electrical Systems Division, Melbourne, Fla., a $4.7 million contract to design and produce transportable weather-satellite receiving terminals. The company would build and deliver one operational prototype and three production units to support SAMSO's Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP).
The terminals (called Mark IV, a follow-on to the Mark III weather terminals currently in operation) would give military commanders precise weather information accumulated from DMSP spacecraft orbiting the earth every 101min. The terminals, half the size of present terminals, could fit on C-130 aircraft or M-55 trucks and be operational within 6hr, as opposed to the present 48hr, automatically tracking a satellite appearing over the horizon and receiving visual and infrared imagery in real time.
An operator using magnification and other techniques could choose and enhance a specific area of coverage, or could process the entire 4500-nautical-mi-long 1600-nm-wide satellite image. The Mark IV project officer, Capt. James Fowler, said that the operator, after choosing the area most suitable for the mission, could produce a hard-copy print in 2min and transmit the photo to four remote laser-image processors 10mi from the terminal. "This capability, unique to the Mark IV system, will provide battlefield unit commanders with weather data within 20 minutes after the satellite's pass," he said. The prototype Mark IV terminal had been scheduled for delivery in Feb. 1979; production units were to be in the field by Oct. 1980. (AFSC Newsreview, Aug/78, 1)
The USAF reported that a wind-tunnel test at Arnold Engineering Development Center using a new type of model and new testing techniques had demonstrated selection of an optimum aircraft-wing shape. Previous efforts to determine the best wing shape for a particular aircraft had compared features of several (sometimes many) models representing educated guesses; even after selecting one shape, testers could not be certain there was not another more efficient.
The latest test had used simulated flight conditions with a new computer-controlled wing model able to change shape automatically. Three-dimensional images made by a stereo photographic technique defined the actual wing shape during each flight change, making it possible to consider numerous shapes. The model, one of the most complex tested in AFDC's 16-ft transonic wind tunnel, was a product of General Dynamic's Convair Division, San Diego, that had been redesigned and reassembled by AFDC's operating contractor ARO, Inc., after its arrival at AFDC. (AFSC Newsreview, Aug/78, 12)
Air Force Magazine, in an article on Goddard Space Flight Center, called it the jack-of-all-trades among NASA's space centers. It was NASA's communications hub, with a system of landlines, undersea cables, and satellites reaching around the world and connecting the 21 sites of the Spaceflight Tracking and Data Network (STDN) that had served all NASA's spaceflight activities. GSFC also had one of the world's largest assemblies of scientists, who theorized either scientific or applications satellite missions and made investigations into disciplines such as astronomy, planetary atmosphere, solar activity, and near-earth physics. About a third of scientific experiments on U.S. spacecraft were conceived, designed, and/or built by Goddard scientists.
The Goddard-developed earth-resources survey programs used orbiting Landsats capable of scanning the planet (except for the polar regions) every 9da. The photographs they provided had allowed detailed study of the earth faster, cheaper, and more accurately than aerial photography. Its impact on agriculture worldwide could be enormous; Landsat would make possible, for example, an inventory in Calif.'s Imperial Valley of more than 25 separate crops in nearly 9000 fields scattered over 458 000 acres. Landsat data would identify specific crops and indicate their condition, permitting very accurate agricultural production forecasts.
NASA planned to launch in the early 1980s a pair of Goddard developed satellites containing space-tracking equipment to replace all but six of the present ground-based tracking stations, supplying data 85% of the time with greater efficiency and manpower savings. GSFC scientists were also making experimental and practical applications of laser technology. One program would eventually establish laser-satellite systems on each continent, to measure the most minute movements of the plates forming earth's crust. (AF Mag, Aug/78, 68)
Transportation USA, in a story on 75 years of powered flight, quoted the Dec. 17, 1903, telegram from Orville and Wilbur Wright to their father in Dayton, O.: "Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Success four flights Thursday morning. All against 21 mile wind. Started from level with engine power alone. Average speed through air 31 miles. Longest 59 seconds. Inform press. Home for Christmas." Newspapers had not been impressed; not even the Dayton Journal had mentioned the achievement. Ridiculed by the press and snubbed by their government, the two brothers had taken their craft to Paris and London; when stories of their successes and honors reached the U.S., the two were finally prevailed upon to come home.
Aviation had then become big business. The value of airline property and equipment, not counting general aviation, had reached $125 million at the end of World War II; by the end of 1955, the investment had multiplied tenfold to $1.4 billion. By 1965 it had reached $5 billion, and in 1977 $17 billion. In 1977 U.S. airlines carried 242 million passengers, and general aviation another 100 million. The FAA predicted that in 1987 U.S. airlines would carry upwards of 500 million passengers annually, and that privately owned aircraft would carry 200 million. The future might see aircraft using energy other than petroleum; of particular interest was hydrogen, having pound for pound 3 times the energy output. If storage were not a problem, hydrogen might make an excellent aviation fuel.
The article concluded: "We've come an unbelievably long way in the past 75 years-from a fragile craft airborne for 59 seconds to walks on the moon. No telling where our lust for flight may take us in the next 75 years. The sky's no longer the limit." (Trsp USA, Summer 78, 3)
ESA reported it had scheduled 3mo of propellant-mockup tests of the European launcher Ariane to begin at the French Guiana Space Center launch site [see June 16]. Tests would check general conditions for launcher-assembly compatibility of ground facilities (platform, tower, etc.) with the vehicle, and for technical functioning of the fueling and draining facilities and systems both on the ground and on the vehicle. The latter three of four qualification flights scheduled from June 1979 to Oct. 1980 would launch Amsat (telecommunications for international radio amateurs), Firewheel (science /Germany), Meteosat-2 (meteorology/ESA), APPLE (communications/India), and Marots-A (maritime communications/ESA). (ESA newsletter Aug/78, 3)
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