Mar 29 1977
From The Space Library
NASA announced it had ended an aerial survey of the Pacific Ocean along the west coast of the U.S. that was an operational prelude to the use of SEASAT-A, the oceanographic satellite scheduled for launch in May 1978. The survey had used high-flying NASA aircraft to test four sensors from SEASAT-A: a synthetic aperture imaging radar, a wind-field scatterometer, a scanning multifrequency microwave radiometer, and a radar altimeter. The mission was a rehearsal in research cooperation that scientists would need when SEASAT became operational. (NASA Release 77-62)
The future of Japan's space program was not a sure thing, the Wall Street Journal said. Those who had claimed that a program of launching satellites for resource-rich, technology-poor nations would increase Japan's technological growth and ensure a supply of raw materials had met with complaints that the program wasted tax money and that Japan should have relied on the U.S. and NASA to orbit the payloads. Japan's space agency would have to convince official and public skeptics of the program's value, the paper said. (WSJ, Mar 29/77, 44)
A yr-long (Dec. 1978-Nov. 1979) international program of global atmospheric research using Soviet and U.S. satellites would attempt to construct a model of the atmosphere, Tass reported. (FBIS, Moscow Tass in English, Mar 29/77)
Soviet satellites might help predict the cotton harvest in South Transcaucasia, Tass reported, through enhanced photographs of the regional cotton crop. (FBIS, Moscow Tass in English, Mar 29/77)
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