Nov 25 1975
From The Space Library
The U.S.S.R. launched Cosmos 782, a biological satellite carrying 4 U.S. experiments as well as materials from Russia, Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, to be recovered in Soviet territory in about 3 wks. Launched from Plesetsk into an orbit with 405 km apogee, 227 km perigee, 62.8° inclination, and 90.5 min period, the satellite provided an opportunity for U.S. scientists to fly biology and weightlessness experiments that would otherwise have had to await flights of the Space Shuttle in the 1980s. Last U.S. biology research spacecraft, Biosatellite 3, had been launched in 1969.
Cosmos 782 was the first satellite equipped to simulate gravity in space, to compare effects on biological processes with those of weightlessness. A specially constructed centrifuge, consisting of a small disk that would rotate at a constant speed, would create a centrifugal force equal to gravity on earth for packages placed at the right spot on the disk. Comparing the specimens exposed to lack of gravity during orbital flight with similar specimens feeling the pull of gravity would prove any effects had resulted from weightlessness. Results of the experiments should' be available in about 90 days, according to the Tass news agency.
Ames Research Center managed the U.S. participation in the Cosmos 782 flight. It had had no advance notice of the launch date, place of launch, or mode of orbital operation, although life limitations of the biology materials had dictated a launch near this date. NASA had been invited to participate in a second Soviet biosat mission in 1977, and had planned to fly Russian experiments on its Space Shuttle in the early 1980s. (NYT, 27 Nov 75, 62M; NASA Release 75-292; SBD, 28 Nov 75, 145; Aero Daily, 28 Nov 75, 148)
A metering truss made of graphite-one of the few materials that expands with cold and contracts with heat-and epoxy, which expands with heat and contracts with cold in the usual way, had been designed to hold stable the mirrors of NASA's Large Space Telescope without being distorted by temperature changes. Built by Boeing Aerospace Co. under a $185 000 contract with Marshall Space Flight Center, the structure had been subjected to a 2-day vacuum-chamber test at Boeing's Space Center in Seattle under temperatures ranging from -84°C to +21°C without suffering lens-limiting thermal distortion. (Huntsville Times, 25 Nov 75; Boeing Release A-0459)
The Soviet Academy of Sciences chose Anatoly Alexandrov, a 72-yr-old nuclear physicist, as its new president, the Tass news agency reported. Peter Osnos commented in the Washington Post that the main speaker at the Academy meeting-Mikhail Suslov, the Communist Party's chief ideologist, who is not even a member of the Academymade the only speech on Alexandrov's behalf. This, said Osnos, showed the extent to which the choice was determined by Kremlin leadership and the Party's growing influence over the once autonomous scientific establishment. Academy members traditionally had voted in secret ballots and had maintained their own organizational structure in running the country's important research facilities; Alexandrov was chosen on a secret ballot, but apparently there were no other candidates. Alexandrov, head of the atomic research institute in Moscow, was one of the few Academy members also a member of the Party central committee. (W Post, 26 Nov 75, A8)
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