Sep 2 1976
From The Space Library
Something found by Viking l on the surface of Mars behaved as if it were alive, said 6 biologists on the science team at JPL, who nevertheless refused to confirm the presence of life on Mars until results from Viking 2 were in. Viking 2 was on its way to a landing scheduled for 3 Septa on Utopia Planitia (the Utopian plains) above which the air was found by Viking 1's orbiter to contain 5 to 10 times as much water as that over the Chryse area where Viking 1 landed. A surface sample of Chryse itself dug by a mechanical arm was found to contain a surprising amount of water that boiled off when it was heated by an instrument on the Viking 1 lander. Four other instruments, 3 built to look for life, received samples of the' Mars soil: one to look for photosynthesis, the second to look for signs of metabolism, the third to detect "breathing" or "sweating" characteristic of earth-type life forms. All 3 instruments appeared to detect what they were looking for, but the biologists explained the results as an exotic chemistry not connected with biology.
Having quoted odds of a million to 1 against finding life on Mars, the biologists now said they could never state with 100% certainty that Viking had found life until they could return a Mars sample to earth, which some were afraid to do: Nobel prizewinner Dr. Joshua K. Lederberg of Stanford University had told associates that Martian life forms brought to earth might threaten the 2 million species of life here by competing in unknown ways for food, water, or air needed to survive. (Thomas O'Toole, W Post, 3 Sept 76, A-2)
Marshall Space Flight Center announced that the Space Div. of Rockwell Intl. Corp. at Palmdale, Calif., had received delivery of three dummy main engines for the Space Shuttle-known officially as flight mass simulators-for mounting on Shuttle Orbiter 101, which would be used for approach and landing tests at Dryden Flight Research Center and for ground vibration tests at MSFC. The simulator engines, resembling the real main engines in size and weight, could be adjusted in weight and center-of-gravity and gimballed to provide various positions for testing. Orbiter 101, after vibration testing, would be returned to Palmdale for replacement of the simulators with flight engines and placed in flight status. (MSFC Release 76-162)
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that a team of fishermen, engineers, physicists, oceanographers, biologists, and computer specialists had used a satellite to find fish off the coast of Louisiana in a government-industry cooperative program begun by NOAA last year. Water turbidity, measured by Landsat sensors as variations in color, would reflect the distribution of fish; the fishing vessels, working with spotter aircraft, confirmed the presence of fish in most areas predicted by the Landsat data. This technique of locating concentrations of fish would aid in 'better understanding of coastal fishery ecology and better resources assessment and management, NOAA said. On 19 July, Landsat-1 had passed over a selected study area, sending multispectral scanner data to Goddard Space Flight Center; the data tapes were hand-carried to NASA's Earth Resources Laboratory in La. for processing. Less than 21 hr after the scan, the spotter pilots and fishing-vessel captains were being called to check their findings with predicted locations. The satellite reports were valid, NOAA said. Installation of an operational system would require 3 to 5 yr to develop special computer programs and facilities. (NOAA Release 76-196; JSC Release 76-50; JSC Roundup, 10 Sept 76, 4)
Soyuz 21 cosmonauts Boris Volynov and Vitaly Zholobov, who landed safely 24 Aug. from a 48-day mission to Soviet space station Salyut S, returned to Moscow from the Baykonur cosmodrome near Tyuratam where they had been resting after their flight. The two received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, Volynov for the second time. The news agency Tass reported that Salyut 5 was flying in a "controlled automatic regime." In a Pravda interview, Academician Georgy Petrov emphasized the importance of orbiting stations, which he said would serve in preparing for space flights to other planets as well as in studying the earth from outer space. Petrov predicted the building of space stations with changeable crews of 20 to 30, serving for periods of time up to decades, and later the establishment of "super-large multipurpose orbital complexes with crews consisting of a hundred members and more." A special role would be that of stations for moon study in selenocentric orbits, from which crews would land on the moon's surface in "small expeditionary spacecraft." (FBIS, Tass in English, 1-6 Sept 76)
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