Jan 18 1985

From The Space Library

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Revision as of 23:59, 16 February 2010

NASA announced that the Department of Defense (DOD) had agreed that Space Shuttle mission 51-C, scheduled for launch January 23, 1985, from KSC, would carry the Australian aggregation of red blood cells [see Jan. 14] and shuttle storable fluid management demonstration (SFMD) experiments. NASA had scheduled both for previous missions, but withdrawn them due to orbiter-weight and center-of-gravity considerations.

The SFMD, a joint NASA-Martin Marietta Aerospace/U.S. Air Force experiment, would test how weightless fluids behaved in transit from one tank to another to demonstrate the transfer of fluids planned for servicing and maintaining spacecraft in orbit. Space Shuttle crew would manually operate the experiment, consisting of 13-in.-diameter clear acrylic supply and receiving tanks, with a series of valves in which pressurized air would force fluid to and from transparent tanks, a video tape recorder and 35mm still camera photographing the operation and an accelerometer measuring any motion caused by the orbiter that affected the experiment. (NASA Release 85-10)

The expected January 23 flight of the orbiter Discovery would be the first of 15 Space Shuttle flights devoted wholly to military purposes, Science reported, increasing the visibility of the military role in the program. Discovery would carry a reconnaissance satellite designed to intercept a wide variety of electronic communications, radar signals, and telemetry from intercontinental ballistic missile tests. After several orbits, the Space Shuttle would discharge the satellite from its payload bay and a booster rocket would push it to an altitude of about 35,000 km, where it would "park" over the USSR.

NASA estimated about 30% of Space Shuttle flights over the next 10 years would be military missions, although NASA's civilian budget had paid almost all basic costs of the Space Shuttle and associated launch and servicing equipment (estimated at more than $15 billion). In addition, military needs had dictated that the Space Shuttle have unusually large wings, rugged thermal protection, an unusually large payload bay, and unusually powerful engines; however, the Pentagon had borne none of these added costs. Although some NASA expenditures were for items serving both military and civilian functions, such as improved engines for both the orbiter and a rocket booster and onboard experiments in flight aerodynamics, plasma physics, astronomy, biology, chemistry, and radiation, NASA paid for all these projects without any Department of Defense assistance. (Science, Jan 18/85, 276)

The Washington Post reported that Britain would accept a Reagan administration invitation to contribute an expected $300 million to build a permanent space station scheduled for launch in 1992, making Britain along with W. Germany [see Jan. 17] the first noncommunist industrialized nations to participate in the space station program. Geoffrey Pattie, British minister of state for industry and information technology who was in Washington to consult with lawmakers and Reagan Administration officials about scientific cooperation, technology transfer, and telecommunications policies, said Britain would announce the contribution at the European Space Agency's (ESA) Rome meeting [see European Space Agency, Jan. 18].

President Reagan had invited Australia, Canada, Japan, and the U.S.'s Western European allies to join in funding and building the modular space station and expected France, Italy, and Japan to announce soon their intention to participate. Pattie said Britain wanted access to technologies to design and build space stations as well as the results of research carried out in space laboratories; initial space station plans called for biological and physical sciences labs. While France and Germany were interested in rocketry research, Britain had focused its space expenditures on improving data transmission and expected the space station to enhance these technical capabilities. Pattie did note, however, that Britain feared the U.S. would impose export controls on some of this technology and that technology transfer questions required resolution during two years of space station feasibility studies. He emphasized the U.S. had to fashion "sensible" restrictions "instead of saying no to [exports of] everything, which is counterproductive to U.S. as well as European interests." (NYT, Jan 18/85, Al)

Observations by the international ultraviolet explorer (IUE) revealed what appeared to be a variable gas cloud surrounding the star Beta Pictoris. This was the first evidence of gas around the star as well as the large dust particles previously observed from the Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS) and ground-based telescopes, the JSC Roundup reported. Many astronomers considered Beta Pictoris, in the constellation Pictor in the southern hemisphere, a leading candidate for another planetary system.

Dr. Yoji Kondo, Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) IUE project scientist, and Dr. F.C. Bruhweiler of Catholic University jointly made the observations in December and said the coexisting dust and gas clouds were consistent with scientific theories of planetary system formation. "Many stars like Beta Pictoris show evidence of being surrounded by clouds of gas at ultraviolet wavelengths," said Kondo. "If such data imply that these stars also are surrounded by a protoplanetary gaseous cloud with a disk of dust particles, then many nearby stars may have evolving planetary systems. That's exciting," he concluded, "because these stars would offer a unique opportunity to see the way a solar system might appear in formation." Theories of planet formation had generally predicted that planets evolved from large stellar clouds of dust and gas that gradually condensed into orbiting planetary bodies, a theory strengthened by the IUE observations. (JSC Roundup, Jan 18/85, 3)

Planetary Exploration

NASA Administrator James Beggs approved the addition of an asteroid 28 Amphitrite-flyby option to the Galileo mission, permitting a December 1986 final flyby decision and changing the Jupiter arrival date from August to December 1988, the JSC Roundup reported.

Approval had followed a two-year study by scientific groups, mission designers, and program officials, in which the National Academy of Sciences and NASA's Solar System Exploration Committee identified asteroids investigations as an essential element of a balanced planetary exploration program.

The asteroid flyby could not compromise or risk mission objectives. NASA would make the final decision for a flyby after launch based on analysis of spacecraft health, particularly the attitude-control and mission-operations systems.

Amphitrite, about 200 km in diameter and one of the larger of the minor asteroids, was in a near-circular solar orbit in the middle of the asteroid belt at 2.5 Astronomical Units (AU) from the sun (the earth's distance was 1 AU or about 150,000,000 km).

A specially convened hazards workshop had concluded that, at a 10,000-to 20,000-km flyby distance, hazard to the spacecraft was no greater than flying through the asteroid belt as 2 Pioneer and 2 Voyager spacecraft had done, and measurements analysis and Doppler-tracking data could achieve significant scientific objectives. As Amphitrite had a rotation period of about 5.39 hours, Galileo's mapping spectrometer could photograph and scan most of its surface. Data analysis would reveal size, shape, mass, density, exact rotation rate, pole orientation, detailed surface morphology, and mineral composition, thus indicating whether Amphitrite was a primitive accumulation of solar nebulae condensates or an evolved body that was a fragment or perhaps a core of a broken-up minor planet. With this data, scientists could possibly confirm or refute a hypothesis that asteroids were sources of many of the meteorites that had fallen on earth.

NASA had developed a new trajectory containing both Amphitrite and Jupiter, constrained by launch-vehicle energy and the existing launch window, that would result in a Jupiter arrival date delay from August 29, 1988 to December 10, 1988. Since the flyby would require early added-propellant expenditure, NASA would decrease the number of Jupiter-tour orbits from 11 to 10 and lengthen the tour from 20 to 22 months, permitting achievement of all major 11-orbit tour objectives. The delayed arrival and increased tour time would add five months and about $20-25 million in costs to the mission. (JSC Roundup, Jan 18/85, 1)

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