June 1977

From The Space Library

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Current revision

John F. Yardley, NASA's associate administrator for space flight, was one of 92 persons honored by election to membership in the Natl. Academy of Engineering. His citation was for "contributions to engineering theory and practice and leadership of organizations that pioneered major space programs." (NAS News Report, June/77, 7)

Nature reported that a May 13 meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society in London had discussed Mars's moons Phobos and Deimos, the 100th anniversary of whose discovery would occur in Aug. Observations, both ground-based and from satellites, had revealed oddities: Phobos, the only satellite in earth's solar system that circled its central body faster than that body could spin on its axis, would appear to an observer on the planet's surface to rise in the west and set in the east, whereas its fellow Deimos would appear to rise in the east and set in the west like earth's moon. Also, the orbit of Phobos was coming nearer to the surface of Mars (a body approaching within 8700km would be pulled apart by differential tidal forces, the article said). A Soviet astrophysicist, I.S. Shklovsky, had claimed in the 1950s that the low density of Phobos indicated it was a hollow artificial satellite produced by an advanced civilization on Mars. Viking spacecraft images had shown that the moons were blackish gray rather than the red of Mars, indicating different composition; astronomer Joe Veverka of Cornell Univ. concluded that the moons had originated in the asteroid belt. Viking had found that the lOkm-diameter Stickney crater on Phobos covered 40% of the maximum diameter of Phobos itself. The two Mars moons had almost identical shapes (triaxial ellipsoids) and both rotated synchronously with their orbital periods and their long axes pointing directly at Mars (Nature, June 30/77,758)

Reductions made by the House subcommittee on defense appropriations in funding for the defense satellite communications system (DSCS) and the USAF/Navy Fleet Satellite Communications (FltSatCom) program would force the DOD to lease its communications channels from commercial carriers, A v Wk charged. The subcommittee had eliminated the DOD's entire $60-million request for R&D funds to proceed with a contract awarded in Feb. to General Electric for a qualification model and two flight-demonstration DSCS-3 satellites. It also had denied money for a fourth and fifth FltSatCom satellite to be built under a contract awarded to TRW in 1972; the Navy had been leasing capacity since March 1976 on the Marisat system managed by Comsat General. The subcommittee, headed by Rep. George Mahon (D-Tex), had advocated continued leasing despite DOD testimony that leasing would be more expensive, and had refused the funds requested for two other DOD satellite systems: it had rejected outright DOD's international global-positioning system to be built by Rockwell, and had reduced the $83.2 million requested by the USAF for a Hughes-built satellite data system by more than half, postponing procurement of a fifth spacecraft. (Av Wk, June 6/77,60)

JPL officials were considering an 8mo extension of the Viking mission through early 1979, instead of terminating it May 31, 1978, Av Wk reported. Viking mission director G. Calvin Broome had estimated he would need a team of about 180 for a continuation mission; he currently had about 300 people working on it, and had had as many as 700 at the height of the mission.

In the extended mission, the two landers would continue photographing the sites at Chryse Planitia and Utopia Planitia and transmitting data to earth; their biology instruments had been shut down earlier [see June 1]. The orbiters would also continue to photograph the planet, as the flight team had conserved sufficient gas supplies for propulsion and attitude control. (Av Wk, June 20/77, 79)

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