Feb 16 1973

From The Space Library

Scientists at the State Univ. of New York had concluded the orange soil found on moon by Apollo 17 Astronauts Eugene A. Cernan and Harrison H. Schmitt was billions of years older than first thought, the New York Times reported. The discovery had originally led the scientific community to believe the moon might have been volcanically active into geologically recent times, but Dr. Oliver A. Schaeffer, Pro­fessor of Earth and Space Sciences at State Univ., had said, "It can now be reasonably stated that volcanism ... ended about three billion years ago." The team had tested the orange soil sample by potassium-argon dating. By measuring atomic properties, the soil had been found to be 3.71 billion yrs old. It was not known whether soil was of volcanic origin. (Rensberger, NYT, 2/16/73, 46)

The Manned Spacecraft Center had awarded a shuttle contract to Charles S. Draper Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the MSC Roundup reported. The Laboratory had received a $1375 484 cost-no-fee contract to provide technical support for guidance, navigation, and con­trol subsystems in space shuttle program. (MSC Roundup, 2/16/73, 1)

Plans to operate the new Trident nuclear-powered submarine with 24 missiles of 6500- to 9700-km (4000- to 6000-mi) range from the Pacific Ocean were announced by Secretary of the Navy John W. Warner. Facilities at the Bangor Annex of the Naval Torpedo Station Keyport near Bangor, Wash., would be expanded as base for Trident, to broaden the area of operations of deterrent submarines. (DOD Release 84-73; NYT, 2/17/73, 30)

A Science editorial criticized the Nixon Administration's abolition of the post of Presidential Science Adviser and the Office of Science and Tech­nology: The deed had been done in a way "not worthy of a great na­tion." The office had first been abolished, "then someone woke up to the fact that it served important functions. After scrambling around, some­one had the inspiration to transfer the functions of the office to the Na­tional Science Foundation (NSF) and appoint [Dr. H.] Guyford Stever (head of the NSF) as science adviser. The solution has merit. However, if it is to represent more than a gesture, Stever and the NSF will be over­loaded with conflicting responsibilities.” (Abelson, Science, 2/16/73, 641)

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