Dec 11 1975
From The Space Library
A Black Brant VC sounding rocket, first of a series scheduled over the next 5 yrs in a Space Processing Applications Rocket (SPAR) project managed by Marshall Space Flight Center, was launched to an altitude of 225 km from the Army's White Sands Missile Range and traveled downrange about 80 km, providing about 5 min of near weightlessness during its coast phase. The rocket carried nine space-processing experiments in a 143-kg payload assembled at MSFC. The next flight had been scheduled for the spring of 1976. (MSFC Release 11 Dec 75)
NASA issued a request for proposals from industry on a space-station systems analysis study. The proposals would be due 26 Jan. 1976. Two $700 000 contracts would be issued in April for parallel 18-mo concept studies, one to be managed by Marshall: Space Flight Center, the other by Johnson Space Center. Contractors would study low orbit and synchronous-orbit facilities, to begin module construction in the mid-1980s. The space station would be used as a test facility and construction base to support the manufacture and assembly in space of various kinds of space structures-e.g., generation of electric power by large solar collectors and transmission to earth by microwave antennas. Other uses would be the retrieval and repair of automated spacecraft, or storage and transfer of fuel and other expendables. Elements of the station would be compatible with the Shuttle cargo bay, 18.3 m long by 4.6 m in diameter. (NASA Release 75-310; MSFC Release 75-262; JSC Release 75-99)
Kennedy Space Center awarded a $1279 000 contract to George A. Fuller Co., a division of Northrop Corp. of Chicago, for fabrication and erection of a structure for mating and demating the Space Shuttle Orbiter and its Boeing 747 carrier aircraft at NASA's Flight Research Center in Calif. KSC had been given responsibility for Space Shuttle launch operations and for Orbiter ground operations and support equipment both at KSC in Fla. and at FRC, which was to be Orbiter landing site for the first four missions. The contractor was to complete the structure-including hoist system, access platforms, and utility systems-within 328 days after notice to proceed. (KSC Release 290-75)
Fluorocarbon levels in the stratosphere over N. Mex. had more than doubled since 1968, reported Dr. David G. Murcray, professor of physics at Univ. of Denver. The average annual increase of about 14% approximated the annual increase in fluorocarbon use. Dr. Murcray's experiments, funded by the National Science Foundation and the Manufacturing Chemists Assn., used a balloon-borne high resolution infrared spectrometer to measure the wavelengths at which fluorocarbons absorbed light. "The measurements of the fluorocarbons made using this technique are of particular interest," said Dr. Murcray, "since I had made similar measurements in 1968." The 1968 measurements had been the only ones of the amounts of fluorocarbons present in the stratosphere made before 1974. In 1968, fluorocarbon 11 was measured at 20 parts per trillion; in 1975, at about 50. Comparable figures for fluorocarbon 12 were 50 to 60 parts per trillion in 1968 and 140 to 160 parts per trillion in 1975. (NSF Release PR75-101)
NASA announced selection of Boeing Commercial Airplane Co. of Seattle for negotiations leading to award of a $9.8-million contract to develop a computer software system that could substantially reduce design time and costs of aircraft and space vehicle design and ensure improved vehicle performance. The system, called IPAD (integrated programs for aerospace-vehicle design), would process installation of engineering information on computers at major U.S. aerospace companies, acting as the key communications and calculations integrator for many designers and increasing their effectiveness by speeding up computations and data management required in design. It would serve large engineering staffs from the design concept through detailed design, and would help to organize and assemble design data in support of manufacturing processes. (NASA Release 75-312)
The Soviet Union launched Intercosmos 14 into an orbit with 1707-km apogee, 345-km perigee, 105.3-min period, and 74° inclination. The satellite had been equipped to study low-frequency electromagnetic fluctuations in the magnetosphere, the structure of the ionosphere, and the intensity of micrometeorite fluxes. Tass reported that flags of nine socialist countries had waved over "one of the Soviet cosmodromes" where the launching took place; mentioned as participating in this particular mission were scientists from Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, as well as the U.S.S.R. Satellites of the Intercosmos series were considered "closest to purely earth problems" in that they had been connected with specific orders placed by geophysicists, physicians, meteorologists, and radiocommunications experts. Academician Boris Petrov, head of the Soviet Intercosmos, said the launch ended the first decade of cooperation between scientists and engineers of the socialist countries, who had made significant discoveries regarding sun and earth climate, influence of solar activity on magnetic weather, and dispersal of radio waves. Collectives of experts in all nine member countries of Intercosmos would take part "as usual" in processing information received from the satellite, working at the scientific flight headquarters near Norilsk, beyond the polar circle, where parallel ground observations would be conducted. (Tass, in FBIS 240 and 243, 12 Dec 75)
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