Oct 31 1986
From The Space Library
Parallel contracts for the Advanced Stirling Conversion System were awarded by NASA's Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio, to Mechanical Technical, Inc. and Stirling Technology Company, for $253,385 and $246,576, respectively. Research was to be funded by the Department of Energy, as ground application took precedence over any potential space uses. The system would include a free-piston Stirling engine, a liquid-metal heat pipe receiver, and a means to provide power to a utility grid. The external combustion engine has only two moving parts and works by heating air, or another gas, in a cylinder, with a power source at one end, such as focused solar energy, which expands the gas and moves the piston. Electric power to the utility grid would be transferred from the engine directly, via a linear alternator, or indirectly with hydraulic output to a ground-based fluid pump coupled to a generator. (NASA Release 86-156)
NASA announced plans for extending operations to five of its ground tracking stations located at Ascension Island in the southeast Atlantic, Santiago (Chili), Guam, Hawaii, and western Australia. Closing dates for these stations was moved up and was conditional on the February 1988 launch by the Space Shuttle of a second Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS); a TDRS was destroyed during the Challenger accident. Two TDRS's could provide 85 percent coverage of an orbiting spacecraft, compared with the 50 percent coverage provided by ground stations. (NASA Release 86-157)
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