Dec 13 1976
From The Space Library
Forecasts of NASA activity in 1977 included plans to launch 19 missions, with a possible four backup spacecraft in case of trouble with current missions. The 19 included eight comsats (NATO-3B; Palapa-B; OTS, an operational test satellite developed by ESA; INTELSAT IVA-C; Sirio, an Italian experimental spacecraft; INTELSAT IVA-D; FLTSATCOM, part of a Navy-Air Force operational near-global system for command and control of all DOD forces; and Japan's CS, a comsat to be placed in synchronous orbit); six scientific satellites (HERO-A, a high-energy astronomical observatory; GEOS, an ESA mission to study geomagnetic phenomena from synchronous orbit; MJS-A and -B, two Mariner spacecraft scheduled to fly by Jupiter and Saturn, and possibly Uranus; ISEE, a two-spacecraft international sun-earth explorer mission developed' by NASA and ESA; and IUE-A, the international ultraviolet explorer spacecraft also developed jointly by NASA and ESA); three metesats (GOES 2, to be launched for NOAA into synchronous orbit; CMS, a Japanese geosynchronous meteorological satellite; and Meteosat, ESA's synchronous-orbit weather spacecraft, scheduled for 0° longitude); one navigational satellite, the Navy's Transit 19, with R&D modifications not common to other Transits; and one applications satellite, Landsat-C, third in its series of earth resources technology spacecraft. The backup launches to be scheduled only if replacements were needed were comsats RCA-C and a spare OTS; navsat Transit 20; and metesat ITOS E-2, on standby in case of trouble with NOAA 4 or NOAA 5, already in orbit. Of the 19 scheduled launches, all but two would be from Cape Canaveral, using 12 Delta rockets, 3 Atlas-Centaurs, and 2 Titan III-E-Centaurs. The other two launches, both from Vandenberg AFB, would use one Delta and one Scout rocket. MSFC forecast for 1977 that facilities for assembling and testing the Space Shuttle orbiter would be completed, as well as test firings of the Shuttle's solid-fuel motors and main engines. (Av Wk, 13 Dec 76, 26; KSC Release 492-76; MSFC Release 76-218)
NASA's permanent-personnel status as of the end of November 1976 showed the agency as having 153 employees over its end-of-year ceiling, 23 816. Center with most employees over allowed number was MSFC, with 143; also over strength were Headquarters with 34, LaRC with 14, ARC with 8, and JSC with 5. However, GSFC had 20 fewer employees than allowable, KSC had 15 fewer, LeRC and Wallops were each 6 below ceiling, and NSTL and DFRC were short three and one employees respectively. The General Management Review Report containing these figures noted that efforts would be made to achieve the FY 1977 ceiling through attrition. (GMRR 13 Dec 76, 13)
Radio links with the Viking landers on Mars were reestablished, ending a month of silent hibernation during which communications had been blocked by the passage of the sun between Mars and earth. Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Pasadena sent a "wake-up call" to the robot laboratories on Mars that had been collecting a month's supply of data during the blackout period; these data, to be played back' beginning 20 Dec., would include images of the area around the two landers, inorganic chemical analysis, additional biology data, and any records to support the (thus far unsuccessful) search for marsquakes, using the seismometer on the Viking 2 lander.
Resumption of activity would begin Viking's 18-mo "extended mission," which would provide more images of the Mars surface and polar regions, as well as measurements of water vapor and temperature, some at twice the resolution of previous observations; process more samples of the surface for life-detection tests and inorganic chemical analysis; photograph Deimos and Phobos, the moons of Mars; and monitor daily and seasonal weather changes, origins of planet wide dust storms, and any seismic activity that might occur. As Mars entered its closest approach to the sun in the spring of 1977, scientists would be watching for signs of the dust storms thought to be triggered by perihelion; when Mariner 9 arrived at Mars in 1971, the entire planet was engulfed in the greatest dust storms in the history of Mars observations and surveys from orbit were limited for several months. Such storms could endanger the Vikings on the surface of Mars, besides impeding the view from orbit. (W Post, 15 Dec 76, 2; NASA Release 76-208; W Star, 16 Dec 76, A-7; NYT, 21 Dec 76, 21)
NASA announced that a series of aircraft flights from Alaska to Argentina between January and May of 1974 had provided information on the transport and distribution of water vapor in the atmosphere from the tropic seas to the higher latitudes, as well as vertically to the stratosphere, important to an understanding of earth's ozone layer and possibly of earth climate. Previous studies of water in the stratosphere, made from aircraft and balloon flights, had not provided data on latitudinal transport. Ernest Hilsenrath of GSFC, who reported this first mapping of water-vapor distribution in both northern and southern latitudes in a paper at the American Geophysical Union meeting 8 Dec., noted that the 1974 flights had confirmed an increase in the amount of atmospheric water vapor since 1964. The experiments, flown on an Air Force RB-57, were managed by GSFC under contract to DOT as part of its Climatic Impact Assessment Program. (NASA Release 76-201)
Simultaneous measurements by two polar-orbiting satellites of powerful electric currents causing magnetic disturbances on earth had produced composite diagrams of horizontal current-flow in the ionosphere, vertical currents along magnetic-field lines, and the resulting magnetic perturbations, NOAH announced. A team of scientists representing NOAA and five universities had presented their findings at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. Dr. Yohsuke Kamide of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (sponsored by NOAA and the Univ. of Colorado) said that, before the advent of satellites, auroras had been studied from the ground with cameras and magnetometers, which could detect the presence of powerful currents but not their location or direction. The Triad satellite launched in 1972 by the U.S. Navy had carried a Johns Hopkins Univ. three-component magnetometer to measure the strength of vertical currents supplying the "auroral electrojets"; using it, together with a satellite launched by the USAF Defense Meteorological Satellite Program and ground-based measurements from stations in Alaska, Canada, and the USSR, the team had produced its composite for 30 instances of perturbation. Other members of the team were Herbert W. Kroehl of NOAA's Environmental Data Service; Dr. Gordon Rostoker, Univ. of Alberta; Dr. Syun-ichi Akasofu, Univ. of Alaska; Dr. Thomas A. Potemra, Johns Hopkins Univ.; and Dr. Ching Meng, Univ. of Calif. at Berkeley. (NOAA Release 76-274)
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