Jan 26 1978

From The Space Library

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Current revision

NASA announced it had launched the international ultraviolet explorer (IUE) from KSC at 12:36pm EST on Jan. 26, 1978, aboard a Delta rocket. KSC had delayed the launch for 4hr to secure an access door on the Delta heatshield. The Delta had injected IUE into a transfer orbit with 46 342km (28 784mi) apogee, 167km (104mi) perigee, and 28.7° inclination. IUE was part of a joint program by NASA, ESA, and the United Kingdom's Science Research Council (SRC); more astronomers (200 from 17 countries) would use IUE than had used any previous satellite. The satellite's telescope, aimed by ground controllers, would examine the ultraviolet spectrum between 1 150 and 3 200A, a region inaccessible to study from the ground.

Studies would range from planets in earth's solar system to some of the most distant objects in the universe, including quasars, pulsars, and black holes in space. Astronomers would study a wide range of stars to learn how they were born, live, and die; the material between these stars from which they are formed and are still forming; strange objects emitting radio waves or x-rays, or both; the sedate nearby galaxies and the violent distant quasars; and earth's planetary neighbors and their satellites. IUE would complement and extend current NASA observations from the two orbiting astronomical observatories, OAO 2 and Copernicus, and ESA's TD 1 satellite. IUE's follow-on would be the 10-ton Space Telescope (ST) to be launched by the Shuttle in 1983.

The IUE spacecraft was an octagonal cylinder approximately 1.5m tall and 1.3m between opposing faces. Overall length of 4.2m included a telescope tube at the forward end and an apogee motor extending from the rear. Solar arrays on opposite sides of the spacecraft when unfolded in space would measure 4.3m (14ft) wide. Spacecraft weight was 14791b, of which 2721b was scientific instrumentation. After stabilization, the spacecraft would continuously point one of its two solar arrays at the sun.

Goddard Space Flight Center would have a constant view of IUE; ESA's Villafranca station near Madrid, Spain, a view at least 10hr per day. GSFC had designed, integrated, and tested IUE and provided U.S. ground-support facilities; ESA had built the solar array and the Madrid ground facilities. SRC, in collaboration with Univ. College, London, had provided four television camera detectors to transform spectral displays into video signals for transmission to the ground. The joint agreement had allocated 16hr of viewing time a day to NASA, 8hr to be shared jointly by ESA and the United Kingdom. The U.S. had spent $57 million on the spacecraft, Delta rocket, and other items; ESA had spent $21 million; SRC and Univ. College had spent $9 million. (NASA Release 78-8; MOR S-868-78-01 [prelaunch] Jan 19/78, [postlaunch] Feb 2/78; NYT, Jan 27/78, A-8; ESA Release Jan 20/78; Goddard News, Jan-Feb 78, 1)

NASA announced it would celebrate Jan. 31 the 20th anniversary of the first U.S. artificial earth satellite, Explorer 1, which had ushered the western world into the space age. Principal scientific achievement had been discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts surrounding the earth. Weighing 13.9kg (30.81b), measuring 15.2cm (6in) in diameter and 203.2cm (80in) long, and shaped like a stovepipe, Explorer 1 had been the product of two other organizations now elements of NASA: the development group of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) at Huntsville, Ala., and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of CalTech at Pasadena, Calif. In 1960 ABMA had become the nucleus of MSFC; JPL had gone under contract to NASA in Dec. 1958. ABMA had provided the modified Redstone booster and the basic satellite design, and JPL had furnished the solid-propellant upper stages of the carrier vehicle and had packaged and tested the payload.

Explorer 1's launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a Jupiter C vehicle at 10:48pm EST, Jan. 31, 1958, had come 45 days after DOD had given the Army the go-ahead to prepare a backup to the existing U.S. Navy Vanguard project. Explorer I had continued to transmit information on the space environment until May 23, 1958, when its batteries were exhausted; it had reentered March 31, 1970. Dr. James Van Allen had designed the scientific package that discovered the radiation belts named for him. The Explorer 1 launch had been part of U.S. participation in the International Geophysical Year. (NASA Release 78-13; MSFC Release 78-9; JPL Release Jan 27/78; NRC News Report, Feb. 78, 1; Spaceport News, Jan 9/78, 2; Jan 20/78, 3; JPL Universe, Jan 20/78, l; Marshall Star, Jan 25/78, 2)

Although the U.S. and USSR had signed separate treaties in 1963 and 1967 prohibiting test and deployment of nuclear weapons in space, western observers had interpreted the USSR's Cosmos series as an antisatellite development program, Farooq Hussain reported in a Nature article. Killer satellites had exploited the poor resistance of satellite components (particularly solar cells) to intense heating and radiation damage; they could aim at satellites' high energy-lasers or ion beams to cause arcing and discharge through instrumentation. Precision-guided missiles could destroy satellites either by colliding with them or by detonating conventional explosives close to a target. One explanation of recent Soviet tests had been China's development of reconnaissance satellites. The only U.S. test of an antisatellite had occurred in 1963 when a modified McDonnell Douglas Thor missile had been fired against a missile booster in low earth orbit.

Recent advances had indicated that killer satellites might carry high energy continuous-wave or pulsed lasers to destroy target satellites; both sides' had used ground-based lasers for several years to interrogate reconnaissance satellites. In Sept. 1977 the Air Force had awarded to Vought Corp., Dallas, Tex., a $58.7 million contract for development of a killer satellite. To avoid the cost of this arms race, the article said, both the U.S. and USSR had been willing to agree on limiting development of killer satellites. (Nature, Jan 26/78, 293)

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