Jun 1 1977
From The Space Library
NASA announced it had appointed Gerald D. Griffin, deputy director of Dryden Flight Research Center since 1976, to be deputy director of Kennedy Space Center as of July 1. He would replace Miles Ross, who resigned from NASA in May. Griffin had worked at NASA Hq for 3yr, as asst. administrator for legislative affairs, then as deputy associate administrator for operations in the Office of Space Flight. At Johnson Space Center, Griffin had been a flight controller during the Gemini program, a flight director on all 11 Apollo missions, and lead flight director on Apollo 12, 13, and 17. Among his awards were NASA exceptional service medals for his work on Apollo 12 and IS, the presidential Medal of Freedom group achievement award for Apollo 13, and the Hq creative management award. (NASA Release 77-109; DFRC Release 20-77)
DFRC announced it would drop-test at the Natl. Parachute Test Range, El Centro, Calif., the parachutes for recovering the reusable solid-fuel rocket boosters on the Shuttle. The tests would be a series of air drops to evaluate design, deployment, performance, and structural integrity of full-scale parachutes loaded with two configurations of droptest vehicles offering various limit and overload conditions for the drogue and main parachutes at reefed and full open-canopy shapes; Engineers from Marshall Space Flight Center, which had responsibility for developing the Shuttle boosters, and from Martin Marietta, developer of the parachute system, would use the results to evaluate the adequacy of the system. (DFRC Release 21-77; MSFC Release 77-98)
The Washington Post reported that biology instruments on both Viking landers on the surface of Mars had been shut off, according to a spokesman at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who added that they had detected no signs of life, although combinations of soil and chemicals like those on the landers were under test in laboratories across the U.S. trying to duplicate the unexpected results of the instruments on Mars. Those results were still being studied, and one test "leaves the question very much open." Don Bane of JPL said the two landers were continuing other operations such as meteorology and telephoto transmission. (W Post, June 1/77, A-10; NASA Release 77-111)
The W. Post reported that the latest test of a satellite-destruction weapon conducted by the USSR despite an appeal by President Carter had apparently ended in failure. In a test May 23, first by the USSR in about 5mo, the Soviet interceptor spacecraft had missed the target satellite by about 50mi, according to U.S. intelligence sources. The officials said that, without knowing the objectives of a test, it would be hard to assess results, but the consensus was that the operation had failed. Five USSR tests in the past 18mo had failed to destroy a target satellite; the attempts had not been aimed at any U.S. satellites but were confined to their own. Both nations had used observation satellites to monitor each other's military activities, including strategic-weapons testing, missile-base construction, and similar indicators. Still in the research stage was a U.S. system to knock out Soviet satellites, with first flight tests at least 3yr away and first deployment estimated in about 5yr. (W Post, June 1/77, A-21)
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