Jun 24 1977
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
ComSatCorp (Communications Satellite Corporation) announced that the U.S. Navy's navigation technology satellite launched June 23 from Vandenberg AFB had been the first satellite to use a nickel hydrogen battery for energy storage. Nts 2 had carried two 7-cell storage batteries said to be rechargeable, highly reliable, and longer-lived than the nickel-cadmium batteries used by satellites, having three times the amount of energy stored per unit of weight and five times the cyclic lifetime of the nickel-cadmium type. The Naval Research Laboratory had sponsored development of the new batteries by ComSatCorp Laboratories in Clarksburg, Md. (ComSat Release 77-19)
MSFC announced arrival June 24 at the Natl. Space Technology Laboratories of a huge steel structure to simulate the Space Shuttle orbiter in main propulsion-test article firings later in 1977. The article would include the simulator with an aft fuselage, an external tank, and three Shuttle main engines; first test would take place in Dec. The simulator, about 29m (95ft) long and weighing about 110 000kg (243 000lb), had moved from the Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans to NSTL in Miss. on the barge Pearl River, having traveled from Calif. to Michoud via the Panama Canal on the NASA barge Poseidon [see May 10]. (MSFC Release 77-118; NASA Release 77-132)
NASA announced that Skylab 4 commander Gerald P. Carr would leave JSC June 25 to join a Houston firm, Bovay Engineers, Inc. Carr, one of 19 astronauts selected in Apr. 1966, had shared a spaceflight duration record of 2017hr (84 days) with Dr. Edward G. Gibson and William R. Pogue, and had retired from the U.S. Marine Corps in Sept. 1975 to become a NASA civilian employee. His departure left 27 astronauts on the active list at JSC: (NASA Release 77-129)
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