Sep 13 1985
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
Kennedy Space Center (KSC) selected Boeing Aerospace Operations, General Electric Co., Grumman Technical Service Inc., Hughes Aircraft Co., Messerschmidt-Bolkow-Blohm (MBB)/Erno (the West German firm that produced Spacelab), and McDonnell Douglas Technical Services to serve as prime assessment teams to observe payload processing activities, the Spaceport News reported. KSC made the selection in connection with the initiation of a competitive procurement for a single payload ground operations contract (PGOC) during the Space Transportation System's operational period.
NASA expected to request proposals from the companies near the end of 1985 or the beginning of 1986 and would award a contract during fall 1986.
This contract along with those for shuttle processing and base operations were the last major contracts to streamline operations as the Space Transportation System matured. The PGOC contract would consolidate operations, minimize interfaces, and focus clear responsibility on a single payload contractor at KSC.
Under the new arrangement, NASA would consolidate work then performed by four KSC contractors into a single contractor with prime responsibility for processing of payloads at KSC, primarily for the Space Shuttle. Other contract duties would include sustaining engineering, communications, instrumentation, and telemetry operations, and miscellaneous support. (Spaceport News, Sept 13/85, 1)
An air-launched antisatellite missile (ASAT) hit its target in the Air Force's first ASAT test against a target in space, the Air Force Systems Command Newsreview reported. An F-15 from Edwards Air Force Base launched the two-stage ASAT missile 35,000 to 40,000 feet above the Western Test Range at Vandenberg Air Force Base, then two boosters carried the ASAT into space. When the ASAT's infrared sensors locked on to the target, which was about 350 miles over the Pacific, small rocket motors guided the weapon to its kill.
The Air Force in 1979 launched the ASAT's target, an Air Force satellite known as P78-1, which gathered scientific data on the space environment but which had outlived its usefulness.
In 1984 F-15s launched two live-fire tests but not at targets. The first was an ASAT launch to a point in space; the second tested the ASAT sensor's ability to home in on a star's infrared emissions.
Air Force plans called for nine more target tests against specially instrumented balloons and satellites that had completed their missions.
The Washington Post later reported that, according to Robert MacQueen, director of the high-altitude observatory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, the Solwind satellite destroyed in the test was providing “very useful data” on solar activity until the moment it was hit. MacQueen said he was surprised and upset at seeing a fruitful experiment being used as a military target and said it was “deplorable” that the Pentagon “had taken a scientifically useful thing and sacrificed it in this way.” The satellite carried seven experiments for the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and other government agencies. One NRL experiment used a corona-graph that sent to earth during each of the satellite's orbits, or roughly 15 times a day, images of activity on the sun's surface.
Several months previously, NRL scientists had to draft what one source said “they thought was a routine paper to justify continued operation of their coronagraph.” Although the scientists acknowledged problems with the spacecraft system, the source said, they wrote that it should continue.
NRL scientists were told in"July that “the satellite would be turned off sometime"after August 1, but they weren't told how,” the source said. The Washington Post reported on September 6 that Solwind was the likely target for the ASAT test because the original target, an instrumented balloon, was plagued with technical problems.
A Pentagon spokesman said the satellite was intended to operate for three years at most and that recent data from the satellite had “marginal value.” The Washington Post reported that another Defense Department official said the Solwind research satellite was originally scheduled as a target in the weapon's seventh test, which probably would have come in 1987. The satellite's solar research program was expected to be ending by then, scientists associated with the program said.
Although Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger described the satellite as “burned out,” an Air Force spokesman said the fact that the satellite was still sending signals back to earth played a key role in its selection as a target. “We had to have an active telemetry system to verify it had been hit,” the spokesman said. “A dead satellite would not have given us that.” (AFSC Newsreview, Sept 27/85, 1; W Post, Sept 20/85, Al, Sept 21/85, A9)
During a recent ceremony, the U.S. Naval Academy named a new Space Systems Research Chair in memory of two naval astronauts- Roger B. Chaffee, who was a Lt. Commander in the Navy, and Clifton C. Williams, who was a Major in the U.S. Marine Corps. The faculty chair was designed to enhance space education programs for the Navy. The astronauts' widows, Jane Williams and Martha Chaffee, joined Rear Admiral Charles Larson, Academy superintendent, and Commodore Richard Truly, commander of the Naval Space Command, for the plaque unveiling ceremony.
Both Williams and Chaffee were among the third group of astronauts NASA named in October 1983. Williams served as backup pilot for the Gemini 10 mission. He was killed in a T-38 crash October 5, 1967. Chaffee was assigned as one of the pilots for the first three-man Apollo flight. He was killed in the Apollo 1 spacecraft fire January 27, 1967, at Kennedy Space Center along with astronauts Virgil I. Grissom and Edward H. White.
The Naval Space Command and the Naval Academy signed earlier in the year an agreement to establish the Space Research Chair. The principal objective of the new Academy professorship, as stated in the agreement, was to provide a means for future officer candidates at the Academy to further their understanding of space systems and their naval applications. “It will provide the mechanism by which midshipmen and faculty members will become exposed, involved, and committed to scientific activities at the forefront of the technologies related to space systems,” the agreement said.
Rear Admiral William Ramsey, director of the Naval Space Systems Division, also participated in the Space Chair dedication ceremony. He presented the Defense Superior Service Medal to three Navy astronauts present at the dedication-Commodore Truly, Captain Robert Crippen, and Commander Robert Gibson-commending them for “exceptionally superior achievement” as astronauts. Truly served as pilot on STS-2 and commander of STS-8; Gibson served as pilot for STS41-B; Crippen had flown on STS-1, STS-7, STS41-C, and 41-G. (JSC Roundup,"Sept 13/85, 2) "September 13: New car buyers in 1988 might find a Navstar Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver among their list of options, the Air Force Systems Command Newsreview reported.
“It would essentially be a small TV screen that shows your position on a map,” said 1st Lt. John Schoenewolf, GPS cargo manager for the Eastern Space and Missile Center. A small cursor, or mobile electronic dot, would pinpoint a car's location to within 300 miles, he added, and map cassettes could be purchased separately.
Before the satellite electronic car map became a reality, along with other GPS applications both military and civilian, the Air Force between 1986 and 1988 would have to launch 28 satellites, the most ambitious launch rate attempted in space-launch history.
“We plan to launch the satellites for the GPS system at a rate of one every seven weeks aboard the shuttle.” Schoenewolf said. “We will need a total of 18 to start operating the system, and the target year is 1988 to begin operating.” The East Coast Navstar GPS launch facility opened in August at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to help make possible the accelerated launch rate. At the facility's ribbon cutting ceremony, Maj. Gen. Donald Henderson said the facility and GPS itself “will revolutionize the way we perform precision navigation.” He noted the satellite system would be the largest constellation ever established and would have an influence on everything that floats, drives, flies, or submerges. (AFSC Newsreview, Sept 13/85, 5)
Researchers in the Workload and Ergonomics Branch of the Armstrong Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory were working to adapt machines to pilots rather than the traditional other way around, the Air Force Systems Command Newsreview reported. “The success or failure of a modern Air Force aircraft and mission depends on whether the pilot has the ability to handle the unpredictable situations typical in a wartime environment,” said Maris Vikmanis, supervisory industrial engineer for the lab. He explained that laboratory researchers studied how pilots performed in different environments, including combat, to provide information to aircraft designers so that future aircraft would be better adapted to pilots.
But he pointed out there was more to it than simply assessing new aircrafts' cockpit designs. “Not only do we have to observe how the pilot performs in the aircraft cockpit, we also have to tap into the pilot himself,” Vikmanis explained. “We must know how much effort the pilot is expending, his mental capability, and his workload limitation.” In analyzing cockpit design, researchers checked into how well a pilot could see and reach cockpit controls and displays.
Only in existence as an aerospace research field since 1979, workload research measured both the pilot's performance and his internal state of wellbeing. By combining experiments in the laboratory and in flight, lab researchers measured human performance/workload using three different methods.
First, researchers used a computer-based performance test to measure a pilot's physical and mental action. By having the pilot perform up to 11 different tasks, researchers could characterize various aspects of human behavior.
Second, pilots answered, after flying a simulator or an actual aircraft, subjective questions about their experience.
A third method measured human performance/workload from a physiological viewpoint by collecting and analyzing variable responses of the human brain, heart, muscles, and visual system.
Lab scientists and engineers used the test data to prepare a workload scale, which focused on problems the pilot, aircrew, and the aircraft itself might encounter in the future.
NASA was applying similar methodology to the Space Shuttle and its crew, particularly to examine the effects on astronauts of microgravity as an element of stress. (AFSC Newsreview, Sept 13/85, 7)
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