Mar 29 1985
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
The Teal Ruby experimental space-based aircraft detection system, which had encountered technical problems, would fly on the Space Shuttle around March 1986, Defense Daily reported. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Director Dr. Robert Cooper said DARPA had run into expected problems with the Teal Ruby flight sensor caused by heat leaks in the cryogenic system. The leaks posed two problems: they prevented the temperature of the instrument from getting low enough to provide necessary high sensitivity and threatened the one-year nominal life of the system. Cooper said the DARPA had found all leaks except one.
Teal Ruby was the first large-scale demonstration of a two-dimensional, staring mosaic infrared detector array and lightweight telescope optics. Its goal was to establish the technology base for future space-based infrared surveillance systems capable of detecting aircraft and other low threshold targets against the earth's clutter background; it would develop a comprehensive radiometric background database and space qualify the advanced technologies embodied in its design. Teal Ruby would be the primary payload of the Air Force space test program satellite P80-1. (D/D, Mar 29/85, 167)
Budget
A defense budget frozen to the inflation level could kill the Air Force/McDonnell Douglas C-17 transport program, for which Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger had approved full-scale development in FY 86, Defense Daily reported. In a markup by the Senate Armed Services sea power and force projection subcommittee, funds would be included for the C-17 in the 3% and 4% real growth version of the budget.
The subcommittee also cut the budget request for the Lockheed C-5B, which would have to fill the gap if the C-17 was terminated. Weinberger had said earlier that the C-5B would be one of over 170 aircraft to be deleted if there were a budget freeze, but he had not mentioned the C-17 in his list of threatened programs.
Weinberger had previously approved a request of $453.68 million for the C-17 in FY 86 and $624.8 billion for FY 87. (D/D, Mar 29/85, 161)
Robert Cooper, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), in testimony before the U.S. House Armed Services Committee's research and development subcommittee, said the U.S. had developed a secret graphite coating that could shield spacecraft, satellites, and missiles from Soviet laser beams, the Washington Times reported. The new material could be highly effective at a modest weight penalty, perhaps 10% of a spacecraft or missile's payload, and could withstand as much as 100 times more laser energy deposited on it than the typical aerospace material. The CIA estimated that the Soviets could have a space-based laser capable of shooting at U.S. satellites by 1988 and one capable of shooting at targets on the ground possibly by 1990.
The development added a new dimension to the controversy over President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. Critics had argued that it would be difficult if not impossible for a space-based laser to destroy an ascending missile in its early and vulnerable boost phase before its multiple warheads had been launched. Development of the new class of lightweight shielding materials appeared to bolster this argument, increasing the possibility of missiles as well as spacecraft and satellites being made impervious to laser destruction.
When questioned about the Soviets using such a material to thwart a U.S. space-based defense system, Cooper replied, "I don't know what implementation it has for a Soviet space or missile system. I'm not sure they have the technology, or even could achieve it in the near term." (W Times, Mar 29/85, 1 A)
Tom Rogers, project director of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment's (OTA) space station study, said in testimony before the U.S. House space subcommittee that OTA in its controversial November 1984 space station report [see Space Station Program, Mar. 13] never meant to oppose development of a space station but only to suggest that its elements might be altered for more adequate attainment of space goals, Defense Daily reported.
"I want to make it clear that OTA remains convinced that there is a strong rationale for some long-term habitable infrastructure in a low earth orbit .. . In other words, OTA is very positive about the principle behind the President's call for a 'space station' and Congress's decision to fund a 'space station' line item in NASA's budget," Rogers said. However, he pointed out that OTA's concerns about the space station centered on its cost and the fact that there was no proper assessment of long-range U.S. space goals, which made it infeasible to determine what elements should make up the station.
"To be more certain that the facilities actually constructed are the ones most likely to lead to optimum space development, they must be constructed with an eye to the nation's long-range civilian space goals and objectives," Rogers testified. "Unfortunately, the only space goals discussed to date are those formulated by the space community itself; there has been little broad-based discussion and agreement on a set of long-range goals for the United States." He recommended particularly that, in parallel with NASA's Phase B station studies, "Congress seek independent studies suggesting goals and specific objectives for the nation's future activities in space, studies conducted primarily by people outside the space community." Rogers then outlined OTA's alternatives for the space station program. These included using the $3 billion in foreign funding as part of the $8 billion station cost, not as an addition; using private investment to pay for elements of the station; increasing use of the human-tended approach and automation/robotics to reduce station costs; examining alternative station designs costing less than "the canonical $8 billion"; developing the orbital maneuvering vehicle and any reusable orbital transfer vehicle "in close concert with those in the private sector who look forward to using them to provide satellite support services," thus reducing NASA's costs; and having contractors work to performance specifications rather than to detailed engineering specifications for other than "cutting edge" technologies. (D/D, Mar 29/85, 162)
NASA announced that its first Applications Technology Satellite (ATS-1), after more than 18 years of service, failed to respond to commands to correct its eastward drift from geostationary position over the Gilbert Islands in the western Pacific. Robert Wales, ATS project operations director at Goddard Space Flight Center (GFSC), said that the ground control station in Hawaii could no longer keep ATS-1 at its present location and it would likely drift out of useful orbital position during the next six months.
ATS-1, launched in December 1966 with an expected lifespan of three years, most recently had provided a voice and data communications capability to several information networks in the Pacific basin. The pan Pacific education and communications experiments by satellite (PEACESAT) program, the major user of ATS-1, would dissolve with the loss of the satellite. Program participants had transmitted educational, health, research, technology, and community services through ATS-1 to 23 autonomous terminals located in Hawaii, Cook Islands, the Mariana and Caroline Islands, Western and American Samoa, the Marshall Islands, Melanesia, New Zealand, and Australia.
Some of ATS-1's notable achievements were the first transmission in 1967 of full-earth, cloud cover pictures from geosynchronous orbit; first transmission in 1967 of real-time TV pictures (Apollo 4 splashdown); two-way communication tests with commercial airliners to determine aircraft orientation effects on satellite communications, a cooperative venture with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the airlines in 1967 and 1968; link-up between U.S. and USSR scientists during an atmospheric, sea, and ice condition experiment in the Bering Sea in 1971; transmission of electrocardiographs from Hawaii to New Zealand and from Alaska to the University of Washington; and presentation of medical conferences over the PEACESAT network.
The medical world had praised the Alaskan "doctor call" service provided by ATS-1 as the first innovative approach to rural medicine in the U.S. In the program, Public Health Service physicians could communicate daily through ATS-1 with trained health aides in the remote Alaskan bush country.
Loss of ATS-1 would leave one other comparable satellite, ATS-3, launched in November 1967, in operation. Positioned in geosynchronous orbit over the Pacific Ocean south of Mexico, ATS-3 covered the U.S., most of the Atlantic Ocean, and a large part of the eastern Pacific including Hawaii. (NASA Release 85-45)
National Space Commission In a speech today before the National Space Club, President Reagan urged a greater U.S. effort in the commercial development of space and announced establishment of a 14-member National Space Commission, which he said would "devise an aggressive space agenda to carry America into the 21st century," the NY Times reported. He said Thomas Paine, head of a consulting company on high-technology enterprises and former NASA administrator and president and chief operating office of the Northrup Corp., would lead the commission.
Other commission members were Laurel Wilkening, NASA scientist who would be vice chairman; Jeanne Kirkpatrick, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N.; Brig. Gen. Charles Yeager, retired; Neil A. Armstrong, former astronaut who headed Computer Technology Aviation; Kathryn Sullivan, first American woman to walk in space; Luis Alvarez, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory physicist; Paul Coleman, Space Research Association president and professor of geophysics and space at the University of California, Los Angeles; George Field, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory senior physicist; Lt. Gen. William Fitch, retired, former Marine Corp. deputy chief of staff for aviation; Charles Herzfeld, vice president and director of research and technology at ITT; J. L. Kerrebrock, head of the department of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Gerard O'Neill, president of Geostar Corp.; and David Webb, a consultant for space development.
President Reagan said the commission would develop long-term goals for civilian space enterprises, but he did not elaborate on the type of commercial space ventures he had in mind. He said only that, "Before the end of the century, many billions of dollars of commercial activity will be taking place in and because of space" and that the U.S. must use the incentives of individual freedom and the profit motive to encourage these commercial uses. (NYT, Mar 30/85, 1A)
Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) qualification tests had shown the Star 30C apogee kick motor, designed to place satellites in orbits around the earth and manufactured by Morton-Thiokol Inc., was ready for production, the Air Force Systems Command (AFSC) Newsreview reported.
Sverdrup Technology Inc., operating contractor of AEDC's propulsion test facilities, had conducted qualification checks in one of AEDC's high-altitude rocket development test cells at a simulated altitude of about 100,000 feet. Test objectives were to demonstrate component structural integrity and to determine ballistic performance. Sverdrup temperature conditioned the motors and then test fired them while they spun about their axial centerline to simulate spin stabilization during firing in space.
The Star 30C, designed to be carried by the Space Shuttle, was the propulsion system for the RCA G-STAR satellite. Once in space, it would ignite and carry the satellite to its designated orbit. (AFSC Newsreview, Mar 29/85, 6)
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