Apr 27 1973
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
Countdown demonstration tests were underway at Kennedy Space Center for both the Saturn V that would launch Skylab on May 14 and the smaller Saturn IB that would boost the astronauts into orbit on May 15 to join it. The solar telescope flight film had been installed - in the Skylab multiple docking adapter section and the hatch closed. Reassessment and further testing of a leakage problem with an oxidizer tank bladder in the command module reaction control system had determined that the bladder was not defective. A Mission Control Center network-validation simulation was conducted at the Johnson Space Center; an orbital operations simulation had been interrupted to take advantage of late software deliveries.
The Kennedy Space Center Public Information Office moved its operations to the Skylab News Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla. All KSC news activities would be conducted from there through two days after the launch of Skylab 2. (NASA Release 73-87; KSC Notice to Editors)
Flight Research Center Director Lee R. Scherer had been named senior NASA representative on the Navy-NASA accident board investigating the April 12 mid-air collision of NASA's instrumented Convair 990 aircraft and a Navy P-3 Orion aircraft, Fact's X-Press reported. Fact's 990 cockpit simulator had been set up to assist the board in determining the specific visibility available. (FRC X-Press, 4/27/73, 2)
Dr. Paul A. Gast, Chief of Space and Planetary Sciences at Johnson Space Center, and Dr. Gerald J_ Wasserburg of Cal Tech had been named to receive Columbia Univ.'s Kemp Medal for distinguished public service by a geologist, the Pasadena Star-News reported. The citation was for "performing a major role in the lunar projects of NASA, which have given the scientific world a better understanding of the moon.” (Pasadena Star-News, 4/27/73)
The role of commercial aircraft in monitoring meteorological parameters and atmospheric constituents was discussed in a Science article by Lewis Research Center scientist Robert Steinberg. Wide-body jet aircraft could supply global atmospheric and tropical meteorological data. "While scientists are not in total agreement on the 'magnitude of the effect of particulates and gases on the atmosphere, there is almost unanimous concurrence that we are severely limited in information, and that global baseline concentration must be established for particulates and gases in the troposphere and lower stratosphere as soon as possible." Commercial aircraft were flying 10 hrs a day on long-range flights, equipped with inertial navigation systems and central-air-data computers coupled to advanced data-storage systems capable of satellite interrogation. "This means that there is now a large amount of synoptic weather information which can be obtained with a minimum of effort and cost. Likewise, a start at obtaining measurements of atmospheric constituents on a global basis can be made now.” (Science, 4/27/73, 375-80)
April 27-May 2: Goddard Space Flight Center sponsored three scientific meetings: the X-ray Astronomy Symposium and the Goddard Scientific Colloquium met April 27 and the International Symposium and Workshop on Gamma-ray Astrophysics met April 30-May 2.
Dr. Floyd W. Stecker, GSFC scientist, and Jean-Loup Puget of the Paris Observatory presented their theory before the gamma ray symposium that the galaxies had been formed when equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the universe coalesced into separate regions after the universe expanded and cooled from an extremely hot, dense state about 15 billion yrs ago. The regions could have grown to the mass of galaxy clusters by the time the universe had cooled enough to go from a plasma to an atomic gaseous state. The theory would account for the sizes, mean densities, and rotational speeds of galaxies and was consistent with Dr. Stecker's interpretation of recently observed cosmic gamma radiation as resulting from matter-antimatter annihilation. (GSFC Note to Editors; NASA Release 73-86)
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