Jan 3 1979
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(New page: George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) announced that the five "payload specialists" selected last July to operate experiments on the first [[Sp...)
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George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) announced that the five "payload specialists" selected last July to operate experiments on the first Spacelab mission in 1981 would begin training January 9 at seven cities in the United States and two in Canada. Selection and training of non-NASA scientists to fly in space was a "famous first" for NASA; the scientists chosen by their colleagues having experiments aboard the Spacelab would be the first noncareer astronauts and would include the first Western Europeans and the first non-U.S. citizens to fly on a U.S. space mission. Three payload specialists were Europeans: Ulf Merbold of West Germany, representing Max-Planck Institute of Stuttgart; Claude Nicollier of Switzerland, representing Europe's Space Technology Center (ESTEC); and Wubbo Ockels of the Netherlands, representing Groenigen University. U.S. selectees were Michael L. Lampton of the University of California at Berkeley and Byron K.
Dr. Lichtenberg of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Since October 1978, the five had been in Europe learning to operate experiments designed by European scientists. Two of the selectees would actually fly on Spacelab 1, and the other three would operate the experiment equipment on earth.
Spacelab 1 would carry 40 instruments, about equally divided between NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) experiments in terms of weight, volume, and power requirements; fields of investigation would include solar physics, space plasma physics, stratosphere and upper-atmosphere physics, biology, medicine, astronomy, earth observation, materials processing, and technology areas, such as thermodynamics and lubrication. After leaving MSFC, the trainees would visit Redondo Beach (Calif.), the Johnson Space Center (JSC), Philadelphia, Boston, and Montreal (Quebec) and Toronto (Ontario) in Canada; return to JSC in Houston; visit Palo Alto, Calif; and be back at MSFC in Huntsville on March 22. (MSFC Releases 79-1, 79-4)
MSFC reported that a delegation from the People's Republic of China (PRC) visiting the United States since November would arrive at MSFC January 5 to investigate peaceful uses of space technology. Following up a visit to the PRC last July by Presidential Science Advisor Dr. Frank Press, the Chinese delegation, accompanied by NASA representatives, had visited several NASA centers and U.S. aerospace industry establishments. Among items of interest to the visitors at MSFC would be the Space Shuttle orbiter Enterprise, currently undergoing tests.
The PRC representatives were to be in the United States until mid-January and had concluded an informal agreement on developing a civilian communications system for the PRC and on buying equipment to receive Earth resources data from Landsat remote-sensing satellites. NASA Administrator Dr. Robert A. Frosch headed the U.S. delegation, and Dr. Jen Xin-min, director of the PRC's Academy of Space Technology, headed the PRC delegation. (MSFC Release 79-2)
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