May 31 1985
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
When a gap occurred in ancient records dealing with the appearance of Halley’s Comet-its appearance in 164 B.C.-pertinent information was found on ancient clay tablets originating in Babylonia and residing in the British Museum, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) Universe reported.
The museum had about 1,200 astronomical texts from Babylonia, but they were in disarray and few scholars had looked at them. Museum representative C.B.F. Walker said that information from the tablets relating to Halley constituted "the first significant addition to our knowledge of past history of the comet" in more than a century. The information was impressed into the clay in the cuneiform alphabet, an ancient system that employed wedge-shaped symbols.
JPL's Dr. Don Yeomans said that since recorded history mentioned all ancient sightings of the comet except the 164 B.C. appearance, archeologists and astronomers had joined forces to discover such a reference, resulting in the find at the British Museum.
"It filled in a blank," Yeomans said. "The information showed that we were extremely close to where we thought it [Halley's 164 B.C. visit] would be." For the International Halley Watch, of which JPL was the lead organization, Yeomans was discipline specialist in the area called "astrometry," the science of predicting where, when, and how the comet would appear and what the world could expect from it.
Yeomans served in a similar capacity for the planned mission to the comet Giacobini-Zinner with the international cometary explorer (ICE) spacecraft. (JPL Universe, May 31/85, 1)
FRANCE
French President Francois Mitterrand opened today the Paris Air Show, stating that the French-led European high-technology program known as Eureka was "off to a good start" after gaining approval from West Germany and other European partners, FBIS Paris AFP in English reported. France and W. Germany had previously disagreed over a U.S. invitation to participate in the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) defense research project. West Germany had endorsed the project, but France had rejected it, fearing it would render France's independent nuclear deterrent impotent and give the U.S. an unassailable lead in advanced technology.
In speaking of Eureka, a space research program primarily for civilian uses and the development of ultramodern technology in such fields as lasers and high-speed computers, Mitterrand repeated his contention that the Eureka and SDI projects were not competing for the same goals, but added that Bonn's participation in both would necessitate choices in its budget and assignment of scientists.
He also said France was determined to develop a European fighter plane by the 1990s and that the European Hermes space plane project was of major importance and could tie in with the European Ariane-5 rocket program. (FBIS Paris AFP in English, May 31/85)
NASA announced that Frederick Hauck would command Space Shuttle flight 61-F scheduled for no earlier than May 15, 1986, to deploy the Ulysses (International Solar Polar) spacecraft and David Walker would command the Galileo mission 61-G scheduled for no earlier than May 21, 1986. The Galileo spacecraft would explore the environment of Jupiter and its moons.
Hauck first flew as pilot on Space Shuttle flight 7 in June 1983 and was commander in November 1984 of mission 51-A, for which Walker was pilot.
Other 61-F crew members would be Roy Bridges, pilot, and mission specialists David Hilmers and J. Mike Lounge. Other mission 61-G crew members would be pilot Ronald Grabe and mission specialists John Fabian and James Van Hoften.
The Ulysses mission would be the first to use the liquid-fueled Centaur upper stage; the Galileo mission would also use the Centaur upper stage. (NASA Release 85-82)
The U.S. Air Force's Aeronautical Systems Division's 4950th Test Wing unveiled a generic testbed, the airborne digital avionics test system (ADATS), for flight testing newly developed aircraft avionics systems, the Air Force System Command's Newsreview reported. The wing's flight test engineering division developed the test pallet in a continuing effort to enhance its mission capabilities at reduced costs.
Air Force personnel could easily load and unload the test pallet from C141 and C-130 aircraft and would use it to flight test aircraft components that used a Mil-Std-1553B data bus (a format for transferring digitized information to and from various systems and sensors in an aircraft).
The avionics test system pallet provided or simulated all electronic signals the test item received from the aircraft in which it was designed to fly. To accomplish this the pallet had navigation, air data, and time-measuring systems. A mission computer on the pallet controlled the test item and the ADATS's functions. Flight-test engineers instructed the ADATS through a computer console during each test.
Before ADATS, test wing electronic technicians typically built a dedicated test pallet for each test item. With ADATS, only software needed changing. Future planned upgrades for ADATS included a global positioning system for better navigation accuracy, a radar altimeter, and Doppler velocity sensor. Other planned improvements should permit ADATS to satisfy most digital avionics flight-test requirements through the year 2005. (AFSC Newsreview, May 312/85, 4)
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