Sep 3 1985
From The Space Library
Discovery and its five-man crew on Space Shuttle mission 51-I landed at 9:16 EDT today at Edwards Air Force Base after a seven-day mission [see Aug. 27], the Washington Post reported. During the mission, the crew deployed AUSSAT- 1 for the Australian government, ASC-1 for the American Satellite Corp., and Leasat 4 for Hughes Communications (reports indicated Leasat 4 had lost its UHF communications link). In addition, the crew successfully retrieved and repaired the Leasat 3 originally deployed on STS 51D.
Later Hughes issued a statement saying “Leasat 3 is under full control by Hughes' ground command, and telemetry data continued to confirm the good health of the satellite. The liquid propulsion systems are intact and the solid propellant perigee kick motor temperatures appear to be rising gradually toward acceptable levels,” the JSC Roundup reported.
Jesse Moore, NASA associate administrator for space flight, said after the mission that “I would have to characterize this mission as near to perfect as you can get. It was a perfect mission from the outset, one that shows America's space program at work.” Moore added that he hoped there would be only two more Space Shuttle landings in California before pilots could resume landing in Florida. NASA switched to Edwards Air Force Base landings after brakes failed and a tire blew out in an April landing on Kennedy Space Center's concrete runway. (W Post, Sept 4/85, A7; JSC Roundup, Sept 13/85, 1)
NASA announced that, when its International Cometary Explorer (ICE) intercepted the dust-filled tail of Comet Giacobini-Zinner on September 11, it would be the world's first spacecraft encounter with a comet. When it moved into the comet's bow shock approximately 45 minutes before the predicted rendezvous with the tail at 7 a.m. EDT, ICE would have traveled for more than seven years and covered more than 1 billion, 500 million miles, participating in three distinct scientific missions instead of the one planned.
When launched August 12, 1978 from Cape Canaveral, ICE was known as the International Sun-Earth Explorer (ISEE-3). The 1054-lb. 16-sided spacecraft became the first spacecraft to orbit at the sun-earth libration point (that point in space where a satellite is suspended in a gravitational equilibrium between the sun and the earth-moon system) and the first to traverse the earth's distant geomagnetic tail. ISEE-3 also was the first spacecraft to make multiple swings by the moon and the first to use a lunar gravity-assist maneuver for targeting-escape trajectory. It made more gravity-assist maneuvers (five) than any other spacecraft.
After the spacecraft completed most of the objectives of its original mission, it remained in good operational condition and had approximately 75% (150 lb.) of its total propellant reserves (200 lb.). Engineers at Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), under the leadership of Dr. Robert Farquhar, developed a plan that would divert ISEE-3 from its libration point orbit, take it past the moon five times, and propel it out toward Comet Giacobini-Zinner. Although the spacecraft was not designed for cometary investigation (it had no cameras or dust detectors), GSFC scientists believed it was well-suited for measurements of a comet's plasma properties, a chief objective of cometary exploration. In addition, the trajectory developed by Farquhar and his colleagues brought the spacecraft within range of a March 1986 upstream intercept of Comet Halley.
That 1986 upstream pass, following an October 31, 1985 distant pass, was important because ICE would providedata on the solar-wind state upstream from Halley andearth-based telescopes would then observe the effect of the solar wind on Halley's tail.
The spacecraft would return in July 2012 to the vicinity of earth, where a lunar gravity-assist maneuver could place the spacecraft into an earth orbit from which it might be retrievable. (NASA Release 85-121)
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev today told a U.S. Senate delegation that the USSR would make “radical proposals” to reduce strategic and intermediate-range offensive nuclear arms one day after the U.S. agreed to prohibit the militarization of space, the Washington Post reported. Gorbachev told the eight visiting senators, headed by Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.), that the Soviet Union opposed research on military space defense programs, such as President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), that went beyond what was done in laboratories.
Clarifying the Soviets' position, Gorbachev said that any research outside of a laboratory was considered verifiable and subject to limits defined in the Antiballistic Missile Treaty ratified in 1972 by both countries.
During the discussion on SDI research, according to notes taken by Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), Gorbachev said, “You can't verify what's going on in the brain . . . and that's what we refer to as fundamental or basic research.
“But as soon as you go beyond the laboratory, to mock-ups, models, contracts with defense contractors, here surely verification can be done.
“We want a ban on that phase of research that approaches design and manufacture,” Warner said his notes concluded. (W Post, Sept 4/85, Al)
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