April 1973

From The Space Library

Apollo 17 Astronauts Eugene A. Cernan, Ronald E. Evans, and Dr. Harrison H. Schmitt concluded the largest and most success­ful schedule of postflight public appearances undertaken by an astronaut crew. The tour, begun Jan. 12 in Los Angeles, included 57 stops in 25 states and the District of Columbia in 11 weeks. The astronauts met with 12 state governors and addressed state legislatures in Kansas, New Mexico, Georgia, Arkansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Washington. Activities Bureau Chief Eugene A. Marianetti of NASA's Public Events Directorate said later that the astronauts had met no evidence of antispace sentiment, "only a lack of adequate informa­tion . . on the actual amount spent on the space program.” (NASA Activities, 5/15/73, 89)

Iowa Geological Survey scientist James V. Taranik reported on the useful­ness of a remote-sensing project to map temperatures of the Mississippi River, before the annual Iowa Science, Engineering and Humanities Symposium at the Univ. of Iowa. An infrared scanner aboard an air­craft flying at 2000 m (6000 ft) had provided data for a temperature map of waters beneath the site of a projected nuclear power plant. The map had shown temperatures above the standards set by the Environ­mental Protection Agency. If the plant had operated, the power com­pany could have been penalized for a condition that had existed before it was opened. (Unit/ Iowa Spectator, 4/73, 8)

A theory that the solar system had been visited by a space probe from another civilization was reported by Duncan A. Lunan, a graduate of Glasglow University, in Spaceflight. Lunan had found that certain long-delayed echoes of equally spaced radio signals transmitted from the earth could be interpreted in the form of a code. He had used data recorded in the 1920s by Norwegian, Dutch, and French experimenters who had noted that the delay times of the echoes varied from one signal to the next, but assumed a natural phenomenon. Lunan inter­preted the pattern of an October 1928 signal as a star map identifying the probe's origin as the double star Epsilon Bootis and putting its arrival in the solar system at 13 000 yrs ago. (SF, 4/73, 122-31)

Univ. of Wisconsin psychologist Dr. David A. Grant visited the U.S.S.R. as the first U.S. scientist to participate in an exchange agreement be­tween the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science and its Soviet counterpart, All Union Znaniye [Knowledge] Society. Dr. Grant lectured in Moscow and Leningrad. (AAAS Bulletin, 6/73, 1)

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