Jun 3 1977
From The Space Library
NASA reported that Pioneer 11 would cross the orbit of Jupiter on June 10 for the second time on its trip to the outer reaches of the solar system. It had first flown past Jupiter in Dec. 1974 when the planet's gravity had kicked it into a path that would go past Saturn in Sept. 1979. This was the first time a spacecraft had used the gravity of an outer planet to accelerate it toward a different planet; the Voyager spacecraft to be _launched this summer would also use this maneuver.
Pioneer 11 had covered two-thirds of its 2.3-billion-km (1.5-billion-mi) journey from Jupiter to Saturn; passing Saturn, it would head out of the solar system in the direction that the solar system takes through the galaxy, nearly opposite the path of Pioneer 10, now between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus, also on its way out of the solar system. Ames Research Center had managed the Pioneer project for NASA's Office of Space Science; TRW Systems, Inc., had built the spacecraft. (NASA Release 77-112; ARC Release 77-33)
DFRC announced that a malfunction during a June 2 test of the Space Shuttle orbiter's auxiliary power system would delay the orbiter's first manned captive flight from June 9 for 1 or 2 weeks, depending on successful completion of ground tests. (DFRC Release 22-77)
United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim and delegates from 14 nations had recorded messages to be carried with music and natural sounds on a copper phonograph record by the Voyagers scheduled for launch from Cape Canaveral Aug. 20 and Sept. 1, Today newspaper reported. Messages were from Australia, Canada, the U.S., Chile, France, Belgium, Austria, Sweden, Egypt, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Iran, Pakistan, and Indonesia. They included poems in French and Swedish, a passage from the Koran in Arabic, and various texts in Esperanto, English, Flemish, German, Spanish, Persian, Urdu, Indonesian, the Creole language of Sierra Leone, and the Efik language of Nigeria.
In his message, Waldheim said: "As the Secretary General of the United Nations, an organization of 147 member states who represent almost all of the human inhabitants of the planet Earth, I send greetings on behalf of the people of our planet. We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking only peace and friendship, to teach if we are called upon, to be taught if we are fortunate." NASA spokesman Timothy Ferris said the messages, aimed at extraterrestrial intelligences, would be "like a note in a bottle for the extraterrestrials; if they exist." Voyager 1, which would reach Jupiter in 1979 and Saturn in 1980, would pass out of the solar system several yr later. (Today, June 3/77, 10A; NYT, June 3/77, A4)
Scientists at the McDonald Observatory in Los Alamos, N.M., had discovered that the red-giant star Betelgeuse; familiar feature of the constellation Orion, was 3 250 000 times larger than earth's sun. Pictures taken at the observatory, using a new process with a special one-of-a-kind television camera tube produced by RCA, had shown the star expanding and throwing off matter into space at a prodigious rate; the photographs for the first time had viewed and measured the shell of matter around a red giant.
Betelgeuse and its shell had proved to be 400 times larger than the orbit of Pluto; it had measured nearly 3 trillion miles across (2800 billion miles). Earth's sun in comparison was 864 000 miles in diameter at its equator, and earth itself was only about 8000 miles in diameter at the equator. The pictures had verified a theory that red-giant stars were a primary source of raw material for making new stars, according to astrophysicist Maxwell Sandford of McDonald laboratory. The red giants would routinely lose matter to relieve internal pressures built up by consumption of nuclear fuel, and the pictures had shown the loss to be much greater than previously thought. (Today, June 3/77, 11A)
NASA belt-tightening measures that might cut pay for about 60 high-ranking JSC employees might have the same effect at KSC, Today newspaper reported. The Houston Post reported earlier that the JSC employees had heard their Civil Service job grades would be reduced, with possible loss of $5000 to $10 000 in annual pay to follow 2yr later. A JSC spokesman said the grade reductions had resulted from a slowdown in space programs requiring reorganization of the center. Similar grade reductions were a possibility for KSC, which had been told by NASA Hq to cut its operating budget from $119 million to $109 million. KSC Director Lee Scherer had ordered a freeze on new hiring to allow a complete review of operations and consideration of measures to save money. KSC's director of public affairs, Charles Hollinshead, said activities subject to possible funding cuts after Oct. 1 would be "things we can cut that don't impact the launch schedule [for expendable rockets] or Space Shuttle preparations." (Today, June 3/77, 16A)
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