May 2 1973
From The Space Library
The Skylab manned space laboratory to be launched May 14 would fly over 89% of the world's population and 65% of the earth's land areas and would be visible to the naked eye, NASA announced. Information would be distributed to enable people in most of the populated areas of the world to see Skylab in orbit. Skylab would be visible only in clear skies during the two hours before and after dusk when the viewer would be in the earth's shadow and the space station in the sunlight. It would appear like the brightest star but would move fast enough to be distinguishable from stars. (NASA Release 73-90)
U.S. space observers believed an accident to the Soviet Salyut 2 space station launched April 3 had prevented the U.S.S.R. from carrying out a maximum one-month mission manned by a Soyuz crew, Thomas O'Toole reported in the Washington Post. Their assessment was that Salyut 2 had begun tumbling in orbit when a maneuvering engine fired and then kept firing out of control. The firing had forced Salyut 2 into cartwheel motion through space. Its solar panels had been torn loose, cutting the station off from almost all its electric power. The only electricity supplied to Salyut 2 after the accident had come from batteries that might now be burned out. A few U.S. observers thought the Soviet tracking ship that instructed the station to make the fatal maneuver had received details of the accident by radio from Salyut 2 before communications ceased. The ship had left its station off Newfoundland and had joined a sister ship in Curacao, Dutch West Indies, where both had been refueled and refitted. The ships were now in Cuba, which had led some space observers to think they might put to sea again to await a further Soviet attempt to launch a Salyut station. (W Post, 5/2/73, A20)
Thomas J. Lee had been named Manager of the Marshall Space Flight Center Sortie Lab Task Force by Dr. Rocco A. Petrone, MSFC Director, the Marshall Star announced. Lee succeeded Jack Trott, who had re-tired April 30. (Marshall Star, 2/5/73, 1)
Johnson Space Center announced the award of a $1947 000 cost-plus-fixed--fee contract to Chrysler Corp. to distribute and document wind-tunnel data for space shuttle development. (JSC Release 73-50)
The Space Science Board of the National Research Council released HZE. Particle Effects in Manned Spaceflight. The report, prepared for NASA by the Board's Radiobiological Advisory Panel to the Committee on Space Biology and Medicine, concluded that the high-energy, heavy-ion irradiation encountered by astronauts outside the earth's magnetosphere or in high-inclination earth orbits would have negligible biological effects for periods of less than two years in space. (NRC Release)
Former astronaut Frank Borman, now an Eastern Air Lines, Inc., senior vice president, left Moscow after a visit to the U.S.S.R. at the invitation of the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. During the visit, which began April 28, Borman laid a bouquet at the Kremlin wall where Yuri A. Gagarin and other cosmonauts were buried and visited the cosmonaut training center and a Salyut orbital station mockup at Star City. In an interview he said that he believed the 1975 U.S.-U.S.S.R. Apollo-Soyuz space flight was "the forerunner, the prototype to exactly the type of mission that we'll eventually see going to Mars. It is very difficult to project the pace at which space exploration will go forward, because it doesn't depend on technology so much as it does on economic and political action. But I think that by the end of this century we will have a manned earth mission to Mars." (Tass, FBIS-Sov, 4/30/73, L2; 5/3/73, G2; Moscow News, 5/19-25/73)
Sen. Peter H. Dominick (R-Color) introduced S. 1686 to authorize the National Science Foundation to facilitate the application of science and technology to civilian needs and to assist in establishing civilian research and development priorities. The bill would seek to place a science and technology adviser in each governor's office and enable states and localities to participate at the Federal level in establishing R&D priorities. (CR, 5/2/73, S8159)
President Nixon submitted nominations to the Senate: Howard A. Callaway to be Secretary of the Army succeeding Robert F. Froehlke, whose resignation he had accepted May 1; Amrom H. Katz to be Assistant Director for Science and Technology of the U.S. Arms Control and Dis-armament Agency; and Robert M. Behr to be USACDA's Assistant Director for Weapons Evaluation and Control. (PD, 5/7/73, 441, 444, 454)
The Air Force announced the award of a $1788 000 firm-fixed-price contract for component parts of the multimode radar system for the C-5A aircraft. (DOD Release 219-73)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
