Sep 12 1985
From The Space Library
Arianespace officials blew up the European Space Agency's (ESA) Ariane V15 rocket, which carried the third in the European Communications Satellites (ECS-3) series and the U.S. communications satellite Spacenet F3, less than ten minutes after liftoff when the rocket veered off course and began falling, threatening inhabited areas, the Washington Post reported. The failure was Ariane's third in 15 launches. French President Francois Mitterrand, on a stopover on his way to French Polynesia, watched the failed launching.
Liftoff at the Kourou (French Guiana) launch site was on schedule at 8:26 p.m. Reports said Ariane was on course during the first minutes of its ascent, but then it suddenly went off course and lost altitude because of a propulsion problem in the third-stage motor.
Ariane's other failures were on May 23, 1980, on its second launch, and on May 9, 1982, on its fifth. (W Post, Sept 13/85, Al2; ESA release Sept 2/85)
NASA announced that Rockwell Internatl. Corp. made significant additions to the Space Shuttle orbiter Columbia to accommodate three research experiments that would measure orbiter aerodynamic and thermodynamic characteristics as it reentered earth's atmosphere. Researchers would use the flight data to develop future generation Space Transportation Systems.
The most obvious change was a cylindrical housing that replaced the fin tip atop the vertical tail. The new experiment pod, containing equipment for the shuttle infrared leeside temperature sensing (SILTS) experiment, was approximately 20 in. in diameter and was capped at the leading edge by a spherical dome. SILTS would obtain high-resolution infrared images of the upper (leeside) surfaces of Columbia's port wing and fuselage as the orbiter reentered the atmosphere, providing detailed temperature maps at the surface of the leeside thermal protection materials and indicating the amount of aerodynamic heating of surfaces in flight. Tape recorders would store experiment data.
Infrared cameras mounted inside the dome would view Columbia's left wing and fuselage through two windows protected during launch from debris by plugs that filled the window cavities and that fell away when the experiment began about 400,000 feet above earth at reentry. Injection of gaseous nitrogen into the cavities would cool the cameras during that period.
For the shuttle entry air data system (SEADS) experiment, a new nosecap had 14 penetration assemblies distributed about its surface, each containing a small hole through which local surface air pressure was measured from an altitude of about 56 miles through landing. This would allow precise postflight determination of the orbiter's attitude relative to the oncoming airstream and the density of the atmosphere through which the vehicle was flying.
The shuttle upper atmosphere mass spectrometer (SUMS) would complement the SEADS experiment by providing atmospheric density information at altitudes above 50 miles. SUMS would sample air at Columbia's surface through a small hole, located just aft of the nosecap, to measure the number of molecules of various gas species in order to determine the atmospheric density that, with vehicle motion information, would allow determination of orbiter aerodynamic characteristics at altitudes where the atmosphere was extremely thin. NASA originally developed the SUMS mass spectrometer for the Viking spacecraft that landed in 1976 on Mars and modified it to operate in the orbiter's reentry flight environment.
NASA' Langley Research Center developed the experiments as part of the orbiter experiments program managed by NASA's office of aeronautics and space technology. (NASA Release 85-127)
Planetary scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory outlined plans for two future $400 million missions, one of which NASA would select for funding, the Washington Post reported.
One mission entailed a spacecraft that in September 1991 would fly by the asteroid Hedwig and rendezvous in 1995 with Comet Wild 2. The other called for a spacecraft in 1995 to pass by the asteroid Freia and rendezvous in 1996 with Comet Tempel 2.
JPL scientists preferred the Hedwig and Wild 2 mission, in part because Wild 2 was a newer and brighter comet than Tempel 2. Plans for that mission called for a March 1991 spacecraft launch from the Space Shuttle with an ultimate encounter January 8, 1995, with Wild 2, when the comet was at the far end of its orbit 465 million miles from earth.
Scientists would program the spacecraft to match the comet's speed as it turned in toward the sun, which would then draw the comet and spacecraft toward it at the same speed for the next 850 days while the spacecraft's instruments measured the comet. (W Post, Sept 31/85, A23)
President Reagan announced today his intention to nominate William Graham to be NASA deputy administrator to succeed Hans Michael Mark, the Administration of Ronald Reagan reported.
Graham, with R&D Associates since 1971, had served there as director of computing operations, division manager, corporate program manager, and most recently senior associate. Before joining R&D Associates, he was a member of the technical staff, physics department, at the Rand Corp.; project officer of the Air Force Weapons Laboratory; and a member of the technical staff of the Hughes Aircraft Corp. research laboratory.
Since 1982, Graham had served as acting chairman of the President's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament. He had also been a member of the Defense Nuclear Agency Scientific Advisory Group on Effects, a consultant to the Defense Nuclear Agency, and consultant to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Graham received his B.S. degree from the California Institute of Technology and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University. (Admin. of Ronald Reagan, Sept 13/85, 1073)
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced it had proposed a regulation requiring that all new transponders installed in aircraft after January 1, 1992, be compatible with the new Mode S, ground-based radar beacon system to give controllers more accurate aircraft position and identification information.
In October 1984, the FAA ordered 137 Mode S ground stations from joint manufacturers Westinghouse/SDC-Burroughs and scheduled the first Mode S for delivery in the spring of 1987 to the FAA Technical Center in Atlantic City, N.J.
In addition to position and identification information, the Mode S had a “selective” address capability, which gave the system its name and provided a channel for automatically transmitting weather and other data between air-traffic control facilities and aircraft in flight.
The FAA already required that airplanes operating above 12,500 feet or in designated airport terminal control areas be equipped with a less sophisticated transponder. When triggered by the sweep of ground radar, this equipment sent back a signal that gave controllers a clean and enhanced target on their radar displays and also told them the aircraft's identity and altitude.
A limitation of the current radar beacon system, which Mode S would replace, was that ground equipment interrogated simultaneously all aircraft in a given area, often resulting in overlapping and garbled signals on radar displays. Mode S eliminated this problem by addressing each aircraft on an individual or selective basis.
The purpose of the proposed rule was to promote early installation of Mode S transponders, although existing transponders would not be obsolete; pilots could continue to fly with that equipment after January 1, 1992, until it needed replacement. (FAA Release 48-85)
NASA announced that it had selected Rockwell Shuttle Operations Co. for negotiations leading to award of the $685 million four-year Space Transportation System operations contract (STSOC) at Johnson Space Center (JSC). Follow-on awards could result in a total contract period of 15 years at a value of about $5.5 billion. JSC would manage the work under a cost-plus-incentive/award-fee contract that included incentive fee on sound cost management and an award fee on the basis of performance. Other team members included Bendix Field Engineering Corp., System Development Corp., Omniplan Corp., RMS Technologies, Inc., and System Management American Corp.
Under the contract, Rockwell would have responsibility for six major STSOC functions: project management; maintenance and operations; sustaining engineering; flight preparation requirements and analysis; flight preparation production; and direct mission operations, testing, and support. Work would be done for such facilities as the mission control center, shuttle mission simulator, shuttle avionics integration laboratory, software production facility, central computing facility, and the mockup and integration laboratory.
The selection represented NASA's consolidation into one contract of work previously performed by 16 firms under 22 contracts.
Other firms submitting proposals were Ford Aerospace and Communications Corp., Space Information Systems Division, Grumman Space Operations Corp., and Lockheed Space Flight Co. (NASA Release 85-128)
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