Jul 15 1973
From The Space Library
The countdown for the July 28 launch of Skylab 3 began at Kennedy Space Center. A Saturn IB launch vehicle would boost the Apollo spacecraft and its three-man crew into earth orbit to rendezvous and dock with the Skylab Orbital Workshop (launched May 14), where astronauts would live and work 56 days in space. The countdown was the first for a manned Saturn launch in which the flight crew would not participate with the KSC launch team in a dress rehearsal. The rehearsal had been eliminated because of the performance record of the Saturn IB and V. The countdown would include a simulated T-zero, ignition, and liftoff with a fully fueled launch vehicle on Complex 39, Pad B. (KSC Release 163-73)
A 1-million-cu-m (36-million-cu-ft) balloon-launched for NASA from Fort Churchill, Canada, by the U.S. Office of Naval Research-reached its planned 46 000-m (150 000-ft) altitude, but failed to land in western Manitoba as planned when its descent system did not react to radio commands from the ground. The balloon, carrying a 408-kg (900-lb) scientific payload that included a cosmic ray detector to measure distribution of electrons and positrons in primary cosmic rays, continued to drift over the Pacific Ocean. It entered Soviet airspace July 18 and tracking data later indicated that it had landed in eastern Siberia. (NASA Release 73-195)
Janet Lee, 17-yr-old representative of the Republic of China (Taiwan) on the December 1972 NASA-conducted International Youth Science Tour of America, had written to tour coordinator Mrs. Lillian Levy saying she could sometimes see Skylab "flying over my head like a little sparkling star in the evening," NASA Activities reported. Mrs. Levy also had heard from tour participant Karl Muller of Mbabane, Swaziland: "It is very pleasing to see that Swaziland is enlisting the aid of satellites in agriculture. The idea of using satellites for detecting forest fires is particularly interesting, since Swaziland has the world's largest man-made forest." (NASA Activities, 7/15/73, 116)
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