Jun 5 1973

From The Space Library

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Current revision

The U.S.S.R. launched Cosmos 562 from Plesetsk into orbit with a 473-km (293.9-mi) apogee, 270-km (167.8-mi) perigee, 91.9-min period, and 70.9ø inclination. The satellite reentered Jan. 7, 1974. (GSFC SSR, 6/30/73; SBD, 6/6/73, 208)

NASA's Pioneer 11 probe, launched April 5, was traveling at 120 000 km per hr (74 000 mph) and had covered 48 million km (30 million mi), one fifth of its 20-mo journey to the planet Jupiter. All experiments and spacecraft systems were functioning well. Instruments were sampling the sun's field and wind, measuring solar and galactic cosmic ray particles, measuring hydrogen and helium in interstellar space, and making sky maps of the zodiacal light (sunlight reflected from cosmic dust between the earth and Jupiter). Meanwhile, Pioneer 10 (launched March 3, 1972) had covered 560 million km (350 million mi) of its 1-billion-km (620-million-mi) flight path and was due to arrive at Jupiter in December. Good data were being returned from all scientific instruments. Pioneer 10 was defining for the first time the interplanetary medium far beyond the orbit of Mars and the Asteroid Belt. (NASA Release 73-107)

President Nixon accepted the resignation of Dr. John S. Foster, Jr., as Director of Defense Research and Engineering, and announced he would nominate as Dr. Foster's successor Dr. Malcolm R. Currie, Vice President for Research and Engineering of Beckman Instruments, Inc., in Fullerton, Calif. Dr. Currie had been with Hughes Aircraft Co. 1954- 1969, serving as Vice President from 1964 until he went to Beckman in 1969. The nomination was submitted to the Senate June 6 and confirmed June 15. (PD, 6/11/73, 736, 752, 753; CR, 6/15/73, D695)

An Atlanta Constitution editorial commented on Skylab as the Skylab 2 astronauts planned a spacewalk to repair the power unit on Skylab 1 (launched May 14) : "The Skylab is a significant step in the developing technology of space exploration. Three men are there now, brave men. Their sheer competence makes it all seem routine, but they are risking their lives daily in doing things that literally no men have ever done before." (Atlanta JC, 6/5/73)

NASA launched an Arcas sounding rocket from Antigua, West Indies, carrying a Goddard Space Flight Center payload to a 56.3-km (34.97-mi) altitude. The primary objective was to measure the ozone distribution in the upper atmosphere, monitor anomalous ultraviolet absorption, and to extend the data base for a climatology of stratospheric ozone in the tropics. The launch would collect data for comparison with data from a flyby of an Air Force RB-57 aircraft and the overpass of the Nimbus 4 satellite (launched April 8, 1970). The payload was ejected near apogee and descended on a parachute. The rocket and the instrumentation performed satisfactorily and the experiment was successful. (NASA Rpt SRL)

The appointment of French engineer Robert L. Mory as European Space Research Organization (ESRO) Sortie Lab liaison officer at Marshall Space Flight Center was announced by MSFC. Mory had been ESRO launcher coordinator for NASA launches of ESRO scientific satellites, a member of the commission to create ESRO in February 1963, and an ESRO member since April 1964. (MSFC Release 73-72)

Former NASA scientist-astronaut Dr. Brian T. O'Leary, Hampshire College astronomer, criticized manned space flight spending in a New York Times article: "The spectacular problems of the $2.5-billion Skylab mission and the failure of the first three Soviet Salyut space stations may have dealt a death blow to manned space flight. The enormous expense, the high risk, the much-ballyhooed and grossly exaggerated claims about the pertinence of manned earth orbital flights to the quality of life on earth are creating an ever-widening credibility gap between the public interest and a vested interest inherited from the space of the nineteen-sixties. The result is the squandering of public funds." He suggested "indefinite postponement of the space shuttle program, a reduction in excessive NASA management costs and the establishment of a moderate unmanned space program emphasizing space science and applications" on a less than $2-billion budget. (NYT, 6/5/73, 39)

U.S. patent No. 3 737 119 was granted to Princeton Univ. professor of aeronautical engineering Dr. Sin-i Cheng for a device to reduce super-sonic aircraft sonic boom and improve SST flight performance. The device would create an antiboom jet with the same pressure as the flow around the aircraft and direct the jet toward the shock wave below. (Jones, NYT, 6/9/73; Who's Who; Pat Off Pio)

A Washington Post editorial commented on the June 3 crash of the Soviet Tu-144 during the May 24-June 3 Paris Air Show: "With each new blow incurred by the cause of supersonic air transport . . . we wonder what it is beyond a kind of mindless national prestige contest that keeps the cause alive. Fairly or not, the flight risks of the new planes have now being sensationally dramatized." Spending billions to fly across an ocean or continent in three hours rather than six while "lacing the globe below with noise and God knows what other forms of ecological damage" was "one of the looniest notions of the 20th century-a triumph of technological and national zeal over good sense." (W Post, 6/5/73, A20)

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