Jun 2 1977
From The Space Library
NASA announced it had selected Boeing Services Intl., Seattle, Wash., for final negotiations leading to award of a cost-plus-award-fee contract to provide ground-systems support for launch operations managed by KSC and for USAF operations at the Eastern Test Range and Cape Canaveral, to include operation and maintenance of launch systems and facilities; estimated cost of the 3yr contract would be $80 500 000. (KSC Release 77-113; NASA Release 77-113)
U.S. interplanetary spacecraft had confirmed that the planet Jupiter was emitting high-energy electrons over a vast region of space, Walter Sullivan reported in the NY Times. The spring meeting of the Am. Geophysical Union in Washington, D.C. heard Dr. John A. Simpson of the Univ. of Chicago and others describe the Jupiter emissions as similar to pulsars-electromagnetic radiation appearing as pulses sweeping through space like airport beacons-but carrying the "signature" of the planet's spin rate, picked up every 10hr as a rotation was completed. Dr. Simpson said Jupiter was not a direct analogy of pulsars but would offer common features that might provide clues to an understanding of both.
Observations of the Jupiter emissions had come from Pioneer 10, which had passed Jupiter in Dec. 1973 and was now beyond the orbit of Saturn, and from Pioneer 11, which had first passed Jupiter in Dec. 1974 and was scheduled to approach Saturn in Sept. 1979. The volume of Jupiter's magnetosphere had been estimated as 5 times that of the sun's; Io, innermost moon of Jupiter, had an orbit within the magnetosphere and its radiation belt (a greatly intensified version of earth's Van Allen belt), and the unusual brightness of Io on emerging from Jupiter's shadow had been attributed to particle activity. The 2 Voyager spacecraft to be launched this yr toward Jupiter and Saturn would be programmed to investigate further when they arrived nearby in March and July of 1979. (NYT, June 2/77, B4)
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