Jul 7 1978
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
NASA announced that a USAF launch team, members of the 6595th Space Test Group, and a team from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory had launched NASA's SEASAT-A at 6:12pm June 26 from Vandenberg AFB on a USAF/General Dynamics Atlas F/Lockheed Agena. Launch sequence went smoothly, with orbit insertions at launch plus 57min over the east coast of Africa. The satellite, called SEASAT 1 in orbit, had deployed its solar panels and communications and sensor antennas during the second and third orbits, and extended its synthetic aperture radar antenna about 10pm. Spacecraft and booster problems had delayed launch since May; program officials had feared additional postponements would jeopardize the use of SEASAT 1 in ocean monitoring programs to confirm the accuracy of the data it returned. Lockheed Missiles and Space Co. had built the spacecraft for NASA and integrated its sensors. (JPL Universe, July 7/78, 1)
KSC reported that NASA's 4-engine Jetstar aircraft had completed the second of five flight tests of the microwave scanning beam landing system (MSBLS) installed at the orbiter landing facility. The first three flight tests were to verify the system's ability to land the unpowered Space Shuttle orbiter safely on the 15 000ft runway; the final two would be to commission (declare operational) the runway-landing system. Because orbiters could approach KSC from either the northwest or southeast, the center would have to commission the system twice. Each of the first tests had taken about a week, as the Jetstar had made daily 2hr passes over the runway at different altitudes and azimuths. Precision laser tracking system instrumentation that could locate an aircraft at distances of 14mi and altitudes of 100 to 20 000ft had locked on to special instrumentation in the Jetstar, continuously tape recording the Jetstar's position while the MSBLS tape recorded the same data. The tapes had been fed into a computer and compared; any positional errors in the MSBLS could then be corrected, aligning the landing system. (Spaceport News, July 7/78, 2)
JSC had updated data from the two Voyager spacecraft, the JSC Roundup reported, to show them on course and (as of July 1) 425 875 313mi (Voyager 1) and 408 475 978mi (Voyager 2) from earth. Voyager 1 was 152 714 714mi from Jupiter; Voyager 2, 172 112 418mi; Voyager 1 was 651 024 027mi from Saturn; Voyager 2, 651 229 423mi. Voyager 1 would encounter Jupiter on March 5, 1979; Voyager 2 on July 9, 1979. JPL had been managing the Voyager program and providing deep-space tracking. Roundtrip communications had taken 76min or Voyager 1 and 72min for Voyager 2. (JSC Roundup, July 7/78, 4)
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