Jan 21 1977
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
The United States planned to orbit in 1983 a 9080kg 645cm telescope that would observe' images almost to the edge of space and the beginning of time, Thomas O'Toole reported in the Washington Post. "Without the blurring of the atmosphere," said Dr. John Bahcall of Princeton Univ.'s Institute for Advanced Study, "we would be able to see things that are 10 times smaller than we have seen, or 10 times farther away. It would be like reading the writing on a quarter that we could only tell was round before." If approved by Congress, the $435 million Space Telescope would be carried from earth by astronauts manning the Space Shuttle. The telescope would investigate quasars radiating thousands of times the energy generated by ordinary stars of the same size, and would observe the birth of stars, map nearby planets and galaxies, and compute distances to the nearest stars.
In addition to optics half the size of Mount Palomar's, the Space Telescope would carry lenses and instruments to scan ultraviolet and infrared spectra not accessible to earthbound telescopes because of atmospheric blockage. The telescope would relay its views to earth using geostationary satellites over the U.S. NASA would send Shuttle astronauts to the telescope every 5yr to replace worn out or damaged parts. (W Post, Jan 21/77, C-24)
The Communications Satellite Corporation announced that its earth stations in Andover, Maine; Etam, W.Va.; and Jamesburg, Calif., had operated with two TV channels in each of four INTELSAT satellites to transmit coverage of President Jimmy Carter's inauguration to about 70 countries around the world. Total transmit-receive time for the satellite TV coverage was 61-1/6 half-channel hr. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), the Armed Forces Radio and TV Service, and other organizations had reached audiences in both western and eastern Europe through the ComSat network. Countries in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Asia, and Australia had seen inaugural' events transmitted either live or on film and videotape news services transmitted by the satellites. (ComSat Release 77-8)
The Soviet Union had radioed commands to its orbiting Salyut 5 space station to position it for rendezvous with a forthcoming Soyuz launch, according to a story in the Washington Post. Ideal time for a Soyuz launch would be within the next 5 days, the report said, and two Soviet tracking ships were already on station in the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea to keep in touch with the cosmonauts. (W Post, Jan 21/77, C8)
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