May 24 1977
From The Space Library
The Washington Star reported that the USAF had launched a "spy satellite" from Cape Canaveral at 2:13pm May 23 as part of a series to monitor rocket tests in the USSR and PRC and give early warning of any missile attack. Defense/Space Daily said the "experimental payload" launched on an Atlas Agena was either a test of improved early-warning equipment or part of a more advanced early-warning system. Orbit parameters deleted from NORAD and NASA records but reported by the UK Royal Aircraft Establishment were 40 800km apogee, 30 200km perigee, and 9° inclination. The USAF had not announced the launch, visible to residents of the area, before liftoff and issued only a brief statement afterward. (W Star, May 24/77, A-3; DIED, May 25/77, 138)
NASA announced it would launch no earlier than May 25 GOES-B, second in a series funded by NOAA to meet DOC requirements for a Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite system. Sms 1 and Sms 2, prototypes funded by NASA and still in orbit, had been launched in May 1974 and Feb. 1975; Goes 1, first operational spacecraft funded by NOAA, was launched Oct. 1975. GOES-B would augment existing coverage of earth weather and would become part of the global atmospheric research program (GARP). (MOR E-608-77-04 [prelaunch] May 24/77)
ESA announced it had postponed launch of its experimental comsat OTS (orbital test satellite) originally scheduled to go June 16. The spacecraft had left Amsterdam's Schiphol airport May 9 headed for prelaunch checkout at ETR; it had not been mounted on its launch vehicle at the time when one of the solid-fuel booster rockets fell off and damaged the first stage [see May 19]. An inquiry into the April 20 malfunction of a Delta carrying ESA's GEOS had already delayed the OTS launch for at least a wk. (ESA release May 24/77)
MSFC announced it had completed modifications of the Saturn test stand used in the 1960s for static-test firings of the first stages of the Saturn l and 1B and scheduled for structural tests of the Space Shuttle solid-fuel rocket booster. The tests would use a short-stack SRB (lacking two center segments, measuring 18.3cm less than the actual boosters) to simulate prelaunch, flight, and recovery reactions. Each Shuttle launch would need two SRBs each simultaneously generating 11.79-million newtons (2.65 million lb) of thrust at liftoff; separating at burnout from the external tank, the casings would parachute into the ocean for recovery and reuse in as many as 20 flights. (MSFC Release 77-95)
NASA reported that Dr. Herbert Frey, a NASA-Univ. of Md. scientist working at GSFC, had prepared a paper for presentation June 2 at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington, D.C., suggesting that asteroid bombardment more than 4 billion yr ago that created earth's ocean basins had resulted in the development of life on this planet.
Building on the work of other scientists, including that of GSFC's Dr. Paul Lowman on earth's crustal evolution, Dr. Frey used data from Apollo lunar landings and photography from spacecraft studies of the moon, Mercury, and Mars to show that during the reference period all the inner bodies suffered heavy asteroid impacts which must have affected earth as well. The impacts led to geological changes on earth that resulted in plate tectonics and the formation of seabeds. If the presence of life had eventuated from catastrophic bombardment by asteroids, the paper noted, then life elsewhere might also depend upon such events. (NASA Release 77-105)
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