Oct 15 1974
From The Space Library
Capt. Jaques-Yves Cousteau's research vessel Calypso left Galveston, Tex., on a nine-month voyage to carry out oceanographic and weather experiments for NASA in cooperation with Texas A&M Univ. Researchers would measure chemical content of seawater, temperature, depth factors, water colors, and pollutants in different regions for correlation with weather and water appraisals collected by Ats 3 and Nimbus 5 satellites (launched 5 Nov. 1967 and 10 Dec. 1972), by Nimbus-F after launch in 1975, and by high-flying U-2 aircraft equipped with a coastal zone color sensor being developed for launch on Nimbus-G in 1978.
One of NASA'S Lockheed U-2 earth resources survey aircraft was based at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, during October for stratospheric sampling in a semiglobal Ames Research Center study of the effect of ozone, nitric oxide, and pollutants on the climate. (NASA Release 74-283; ARC Release 74-47)
The Nobel Prize in physics would be shared by two radio astronomers, the Swedish Academy of Sciences announced in Stockholm, marking the first recognition by the Nobel committee of achievements in astronomy. Sir Martin J. Ryle, Astronomer Royal of Britain and professor at Cambridge Univ. Cavendish Laboratory, was cited for development of a way to use several small radio telescopes to achieve results which would otherwise require an antenna several kilometers in diameter. Dr. Ryles's system accumulated data over a period of days and correlated it through computers to piece together larger pictures. Dr. Antony Hewish, professor of radioastronomy at the Cavendish Laboratory and leader of the research group that discovered pulsars in 1967, would share the prize. (Rensberger, NYT, 16 Oct 74,1)
15-30 October: The United Kingdom's Ariel 5 (UK-5) satellite was launched on a NASA Scout vehicle at 10:47 am local time (3:47 am EDT) by a team of Italian engineers at the San Marco launch facility off the coast of Kenya. Orbital parameters were 569.5-km apogee, 502.0-km perigee, 95A-min period, and 2.86° inclination. After completion of checkout, routine experiment and spacecraft operations began 30 Oct.
Ariel 5-a 132-kg, solar-powered, 16-sided polygon designed by the U.K.-was the fifth satellite launched in a cooperative program between NASA and the U.K. Science Research Council. The mission of its one-year operating life was to study x-ray sources both within and beyond our galaxy, using five experiments from U.K. and one from Goddard Space Flight Center. Instruments were designed to follow up findings of Uhuru (Ezplorer 42), launched 12 Dec. 1970, and OAO 3, launched 21 Aug. 1971. Uhuru had extended the number of known celestial x-ray sources from about 30 to 200 and found evidence of a black hole companion to Cygnus X-1, later supported by OAO 3, sounding rocket, and ground-based observations. Four Ariel 5 pointing experiments focused on specific x-ray sources, and two scanning experiments swept the entire galaxy with every revolution. The GSFC scanning experiment-first of its kind to fly on an orbiting scientific satellite-consisted of two x-ray pinhole cameras, each with a 90° field of view, providing together a sweep of the entire sky. After evaluation, Ariel 5 results would be avail-able to the world scientific community.
Though all experiments obtained data during initial tests, two were drawing excessive current. The problem was resolved by outgassing. A slight delay in shutter closing on Experiment A, a star sensor, had little or no effect on the mission.
The U.K.-U.S. cooperative satellite series had begun with Ariel 1 in 1962 and continued through Ariel 4, launched 11 Dec. 1971. Ariel 5 was launched under a 2 Nov. 1970 SRC-NASA Memorandum of Under-standing, with a 27 Dec. 1973 letter modification shifting the launch site from Wallops Flight Center to San Marco to enhance scientific data return. The Memorandum tasked SRC with spacecraft design, fabrication, and testing, five experiments, primary command and control, and data reduction and analysis. NASA was responsible for one experiment, space-craft technical support, the Scout launch vehicle, and tracking, com-mand, and data acquisition. SRC financed all aspects of the Ariel pro-gram. The launch by members of the Univ. of Rome's Aerospace Research Center was the seventh from San Marco, but the first payload for a country other than the U.S. or Italy `'(NASA MORS, 11 Oct 6, Nov 74; NASA Release 74-274)
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