Oct 2 1986
From The Space Library
NASA announced that Aaron Cohen would be appointed as Director of the Johnson Space Center (JSC), Houston, Texas, and that Jesse W. Moore, in response to his own request, would be reassigned from that position to be Special Assistant to the General Manager, NASA Headquarters. Since 1962 Cohen had served NASA first in the Apollo Program, then in the Space Shuttle Orbiter project as Director of the Engineering and Development Directorate, and then as overall Director of Research and Engineering at the JSC. Moore came to NASA in 1978 as Deputy Director of the Solar Terrestrial Division, Office of Space Science. From there he was appointed Director of the Space Flight Division; Director, Earth and Planetary Exploration Division; and Deputy Associate Administrator and acting Associate Administrator for Space Flight. (NASA Release 86-138; NY Times, Oct 3/86)
A decision was reached by NASA to test the new booster rocket design for the Shuttle fleet by firing the rockets horizontally, and not vertically as the Rogers Commission had suggested. A NASA spokesman called this method of testing "the most demanding" and the one that "best satisfies the Commission's intent." (IVY Times, Oct 3/86; W Post, Oct 3/86; P Inq, Oct 3/86)
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory Successfully tested a new space radio-astronomy technique, Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), that combined data from radio telescopes on the ground with data from an antenna on NASA's [[Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System]]. The result was a better resolution of three quasars (among the most distant objects known and designated 1730-130, 1741-038, and 1510-089) than what ground-based radio studies at the same wavelength could provide. It was the first time an orbiting satellite had been used as a radio telescope. (NASA Release 86-140; W Post, Oct 3/86; LA Times, Oct 3/86)
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