Oct 28 1985
From The Space Library
Astronaut John Fabian resigned from the NASA astronaut corps in the summer of 1985. It was the eighth astronaut resignation over the previous 16 months, the Washington Post reported, suggesting the way of life that was the hallmark of astronaut service might have begun to wear thin. Besides Fabian, NASA lost over those months Joseph Allen, Terry Hart, William Lenoir, Jack Lousma, Thomas Mattingly, Donald Peterson, and Richard Truly, all veterans in the prime of their careers whose combined experience covered 12 of the 21 Space Shuttle missions flown.
Are these resignations something we worry about?” said NASA Administrator James Beggs. “Yes, especially the younger ones like Allen [45] and Fabian [44], who still have a lot of tread left on them. We've now begun to lose the guys we've educated and trained to the most difficult things we do, like spacewalks, and if this trend starts to increase, it's going to disturb me,” he concluded.
Stripped of its glamor, astronaut service was demanding work that kept its members away from home, the Post said. One female astronaut, who just began training for a flight late in 1986 said she had seen her husband twice in the previous two months, “The last time it was for 12 hrs,” she said, “and for six of those we were both asleep.” Astronaut training ranged from studying the physics and biology of spaceflight to making parachute jumps and three-day survival visits in Panama's jungle. Classroom hours were equivalent to time spent by Ph.D. candidates. Physical fitness was a must, but astronauts had to exercise on their own time.
Once assigned a mission, the astronaut's training pace quickened. At Johnson and Kennedy Space Centers there were around-the-clock computer simulations of astronaut tasks and potential problems in space. Astronauts also visited other NASA centers and contractors' facilities to become familiar with the equipment they would use on their missions.
NASA officials said there was nothing they could do to slow the training pace, because they believed it was the reason the U.S. had not had a fatal accident in space. NASA Administrator Beggs indicated that the way to keep astronauts happy and in the corps was to keep them busy and assigned to a mission.
That didn't keep Fabian from resigning, however, the Post pointed out. “I'll miss flying and I'll miss the people, but I don'twant to be known to posterity as the oldest astronaut to fly in space,” Fabian said. (W Post, Oct 28/85, Al)
NASA announced that the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), launched January 25, 1983, worked almost perfectly for 300 days until it depleted its liquid helium coolant and that it had achieved mission objectives, which were to produce an unbiased all-sky survey using a number of broad infrared photometry channels, to study selected galactic and extragalactic sources, and to map extended sources.
For infrared astronomy, IRAS represented as great an improvement over ground-based telescopes as the Palomar 200-in. telescope had over Galileo's telescope. Because fewer than 1,000 infrared sources were cataloged before the IRAS launch, the sensitivity of IRAS produced a survey of a large unexplored area in the electromagnetic spectrum. The IRAS All-Sky Survey catalog contained about 250,000 sources, including some 20,000 new galaxies and 16,000 small extended sources. IRAS surveyed more than 96% of the sky, 16% more than was required for mission success. Information in the IRAS databased revolutionized the infrared study of the sky and provided a rich data source to observers in other wavebands.
The IRAS program resulted from a cooperative effort among the U.S., The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom in the areas of operations, spacecraft design, infrared technology, and scientific collaboration. During the next four years, scientists would continue to examine and analyze the more than 200 billion data bits in the IRAS database and, by developing specialized processing techniques, possibly increase the sensitivity of the survey. (NASA MOR E-885-83-01 [postlaunch] Oct 28/85)
During October: NASA announced that its Marshall Space Flight Center (MSRC) awarded a 14-month $140,000 contract to Perkin-Elmer Corp. to study concepts and technologies needed for a next generation telescope with ten times the capability of the Hubble Space Telescope. This study, the first step toward preparing to launch a space telescope array in the first decade of the next century, would define a technology development plan for the array and provide NASA with cost and schedule data.
Perkin-Elmer would initially examine the probable science such a telescope would perform as well as the concept of an array of telescopes working together as one. Perkin-Elmer said it would develop two telescope concepts based on the best use of the proposed space station and technology advancements needed to implement them. The first would emphasize assembly and optical alignment in orbit using the space station as an assembly base. The second concept would focus on modularization, ground assembly and checkout, and minimal on-orbit assembly.
The study would also explore the possibilities of adapting, for visible light purposes, interferometer techniques used by radio astronomers to obtain high-resolution maps of deep space objects. In addition, Perkin-Elmer would define and recommend technologies needed for maximum use of the space station for assembling, testing, and servicing the next generation facility for optical astronomy.
Perkin-Elmer built the Hubble Space Telescope scheduled for launch August 1986 on Space Shuttle flight 614 (NASA Activities, Oct 85, 14)
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