August 1973

From The Space Library

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Current revision

NASA'S SPHINX Space Plasma High Voltage Interaction Experiment spacecraft, to be launched early in 1974, underwent vibration tests and began simulation tests. Tests would continue until November, when the spacecraft was scheduled to be shipped to Kennedy Space Center. During its mission, SPHINX would travel in a highly elliptical earth orbit and would be exposed to space plasma (charged particles) ranging from 10 to 10 000 particles per cc. (Lewis News, 8/24/ 73, 3)

The Naval Research Laboratory was converting a number of Minuteman I missile 2nd stages into large-payload-capacity, high-performance sounding rockets for x-ray astronomy research, Naval Research Reviews re-ported. The surplus 2nd-stage motors were being adapted with specially designed nosecones and scientific payloads for forthcoming experiments. Instruments aboard the new sounding rockets, named the Aries, would be used by NRL scientists to determine ultraviolet background levels of the stars from above the earth's atmosphere. (Naval Research Reviews, 8/73, 27-8)

Office of Technology Assessment: Background and Status, a report to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, was published by the Library of Congress Congressional Research Service, Science Policy Div. No appropriations had been approved as yet for the OTA, which had been established "as an aid in the identification and consideration of existing and probable impacts of technological application" under Public Law 92-484 Oct. 13, 1972. The Senate Committee on Appropriations had requested $289 000 for OTA salaries and expenses under H.R. 7447, an FY 1973 supplemental appropriations bill. No funds had been requested by the House, and the requested appropriation had been deleted in conference. The Senate Committee on Appropriations had recommended a $3 980 000 FY 1974 OTA appropriation. The FY 1974 legislative branch appropriations bill (H.R. 6691) had been passed July 19, but the conference committee had not yet met to resolve differences between the House and Senate versions. OTA funding would not be allotted until the appropriation was available. (Text)

Appointment of Roald Sagdeyev as Director of the Soviet Space Research Institute was announced in Vestnik, monthly publication of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. Sagdeyev replaced Georgy I. Petrov, who went into voluntary retirement. Sagdeyev, a nuclear physicist, had been made a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences in 1964 and had become a full member in 1968. Before his appointment as Director, Sagdeyev had specialized in plasma physics at the Nuclear Physics Institute in Novosibirsk. (AP, W Post, 9/23/73, Al; 9/24/73, A21)

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