Nov 14 1977
From The Space Library
Despite NASA's failure to win FY 1979 funding for a new Mars mission, such a mission remained the major planning element in the agency's planetary programs office, Aviation Week reported. A Mars rover/orbiter mission had strong support from the Natl. Academy of Sciences, to lay the groundwork for a sample-return mission using either Martian- bit rendezvous or direct ascent from earth to Mars. At a KSC briefing,. Thomas Young, NASA's director of planetary programs, said the highest priority missions NASA might implement "in the near term" would include the Venus-orbiting imaging radar (VOIR), a lunar polar orbiter, a Saturn orbiter probe, and a rendezvous with comet Halley or Encke, or both, or possibly with an asteroid.
"As we go through the budgetary process, on one side I wish Mars would go away," Young said. "But when you stop and think about rivers, volcanoes, enormous Mars icecaps, the chemistry potential for life, and the atmosphere, you realize that understanding Mars is so important toward understanding where earth has been and is going that you've got to treat it in a responsible manner." He said NASA planning should benefit from the 2.4m-diameter space telescope, aimed primarily at bodies outside the solar system but sure to provide significant data on objects nearer earth. (Av Wk, Nov 14/7'7, 55)
Av Wk reported the Intl. Telecommunications Union's frequency board had distributed to its 100-plus member nations the technical details of a USSR plan to launch 7 geostationary Volna satellites for global maritime and air communications service. Members questioning possible interference with existing or projected systems had until Jan. 9 to respond. The 7 spacecraft would work in separate systems: numbers 2, 4, and 6 would each operate in 4 frequency bands, 2 allocated exclusively for mobile maritime service and 2 for mobile aeronautical service. Numbers 1, 3, 5, and 7 would also use these bands, plus a 240-400mc band now used by the US Navy for its maritime service which the Volnas would use for land-mobile service. The Volna proposal did not include fixed shore terminals, although USSR officials had said the system would be a national rather than international system. (Av Wk, Nov 14/77,20)
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