September 1983
From The Space Library
“Satellites That Serve Us” and “Spacelab 1: Columbia” articles appear in National Geographic Magazine
NASA announced that Richard H. Truly, commander of STS-8, was named the first commander of the Naval Space Command to be set up October 1 at Dahlgren, Va. Selected as a NASA astronaut in August 1969, Truly had been on one of the crews for Shuttle approach-and-landing test flights in 1977. His spacecraft was as pilot of STS-2 in November 1981. (NASA Release 83-133)
NASA said that astronaut Jack R. Lousma would leave the agency and retire from the Marine Corps October 1. A NASA astronaut since April 1966, he was pilot on Skylab 3 in 1973 and commanded shuttle orbiter Columbia on its third test flight in March 1982. (NASA Release 83-151; W Post, Sept 30/83, A-4)
Cosmonauts Vladimir Lyakhov and Aleksandr Aleksandrov on the Salyut 7-Soyuz T-9-Progress 17 complex continued geophysical observations using photography and spectrometry from orbit. They loaded used equipment on Progress 17 and undocked it September 17 at 3:44 p.m. Moscow time; Tass reported that it "ceased to exist" in the atmosphere the next day. The Cosmos 1443 module sent into the atmosphere August 14 also burned up September 18. On September 29 the crew marked three months in the complex. (FBIS, Tass in English, Sept 2, 13, 17-18, 23, 29-30/83)
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