Jan 8 1974
From The Space Library
The first domestic communications satellite service, connecting East and West Coasts, was officially inaugurated by RCA Corp. from New York City at 2:40 pm EDT. Within minutes, conversations were relayed by Canada's Anik 2 satellite (launched by NASA 20 April 1973) on a circuit leased from Telesat Canada. Sen. Jacob K. Javits (R-N.Y.) in New York, Federal Communications Chairman Dean Burch in Washington, D.C., Alaska Gov. William A. Egan in Juneau, Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) in Anchorage, and Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) in Nome exchanged congratulations.
Operated by RCA Global Communications, Inc., and RCA Alaska Communications, Inc., for the parent RCA Corp., the system used earth relay stations near New York, San Francisco, Juneau, and Anchorage. These were to be joined by others in 1976, when RCA. hoped to have three satellites of its own. Transmission charges for coast-to-coast messages were less via satellite than by earthbound systems; a telephone circuit rented for $1700 a month rather than the $2298 charged by American Telephone & Telegraph Co. for a similar land-based private circuit. Quality also was better because a connection could be completed with fewer relay points, one relay to the satellite and another from the satellite to the ground. (RCA Release, 8 Jan 74; W Star-News, 9 Jan 74; WSJ, 9 Jan 74, 34)
The Library of Congress Congressional Research Service published United States and Soviet Progress in Space: Summary Data through 1972 and a Forward Look (74-35SP) , prepared by Dr. Charles S. Sheldon, Chief of the Science Policy Research Div. In its manned program the U.S.S.R. had launched a Salyut 2 space station 3 April 1973 but a failure-possibly a wildly firing thruster-had damaged the station, which reentered the earth's atmosphere May 28. Other later attempts to launch and man a space station also appeared to have failed. Two manned launches, Soyuz 12 and Soyuz 13, had been successful in September and December, the second spacecraft remaining in space eight days to conduct astrophysical, biological, and earth resources experiments.
By 30 June 1974 the United States expected to have spent $75 billion on combined military and civilian space programs since the beginning of the space program, spending about $4,7 billion in FY 1974. The Soviet Union did not publish space budget data, but its program was thought to be "at least of the same magnitude as that of the United States at its former peak" of $7.7 billion a year.
The U.S. had several major space research and development centers operated by the military and private industry as well as NASA. There was no reason to believe the Soviet aerospace industry was as fully equipped but missiles of similar capabilities and different design philosophies which had appeared in Moscow parades "suggest the existence of more than one design and development team for space work."
The U.S. had launch vehicles scaled to lift payloads weighing from 9 kg to 136 000 kg. The Soviet Union had started to use in 1957 its original intercontinental ballistic missile and still used the same basic vehicle with stages added to improve performance. The very large Soviet vehicle predicted by NASA officials had not been seen.
A Soviet lunar landing did not seem imminent but was still expected, as part of Soviet long-range plans, as soon as the problems of unreliable hardware were solved. U.S.-U.S.S.R. cooperation in space efforts was "the hope of well-intentioned people everywhere." Two motives for cooperation were to lessen tension and to save money. Although there was already exchange of information between scientists and engineers, "no assessment of the overall prospects can be made successfully without forecasting the future political climate." (Text)
8-31 January: NASA's Mariner 10 probe, launched 3 Nov. 1973, met a number of problems but continued its flight millions of kilometers from the earth toward a 5 Feb. flyby of Venus and 29 March flyby of Mercury.
Despite the loss of the prime power chain, causing automatic transfer to the backup system, Mariner 10's instruments continued scientific studies. Comet Kohoutek's tail was observed in the extreme ultraviolet range. On 13 Jan. hydrogen Lyman-alpha intensity, beginning 20° from the comet's nucleus, climbed rapidly as the nucleus region drifted toward the uv airglow spectrometer's field of view. The nucleus was scanned 16 Jan.
On 17 Jan., while the spacecraft was powered down for its second trajectory correction maneuver, shutting off several instrument heaters allowed the TV optics heaters, which had failed to function earlier, to turn on. Scientists had feared that below-freezing temperature might pre-vent camera operation during the Venus encounter. On 21 Jan., instruments for Comet Kohoutek and solar wind experiments were turned on.
On 22 Jan. the uv spectrometer measured hydrogen Lyman-alpha intensities out to 17° to map the comet's hydrogen cloud. Comet Kohoutek was scanned seven hours 24 Jan. by the UV spectrometer-the only instrument of its kind to observe the comet from outside the earth's own hydrogen cloud.
During the seventh and final roll calibration maneuver 28 Jan., telemetry indicated a rapid increase in the use of attitude control gas, the nitrogen gas supply dropping from 2.7 to 2.1 kg. The gyros were turned off and the spacecraft put into celestial control, with the sun and the star Canopus as references. Nitrogen-gas-use rate returned to normal and estimates of the supply indicated a comfortable margin for reaching Mercury and executing experiments. The backup electric power system was still in use, as studies of that problem continued.
On 31 Jan. Mariner 10 was 3 200 000 km from Venus and 38 800 000 km from the earth, traveling at 30 238 km per hr. (JPL Mariner Venus/ Mercury 1973 Bull Nos 14, 15; NASA PAO press briefing transcript, 31 Jan 74; IV Post, 10 ,Tan 74, A5)
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