Dec 21 1976
From The Space Library
The Dept. of Defense had reported McDonnell Douglas as the largest U.S. defense .contractor for the year ended 30 June, replacing Lockheed Aircraft Co., the Wall Street Journal announced. The leader; which had been fourth on the list in FY 1975, had obtained contracts valued at $2.46 billion (5.9% of all defense contracts of more than $10 000 awarded during FY 1976). Lockheed, which had been the leader for 6 of the previous 7 yr, received contracts in FY 1976 valued at $1.51 billion (3.6% of the total). Third was Northrop Corp. with $1.48 billion (3.5%); fourth was General Electric Co., $1.35 billion (3.2%). Others of the ten largest were United Technologies Corp., $1.23 billion (2:9%); Boeing Co., $1.18 billion (2.8%); General Dynamics Corp., $1.07 billion (2.6%); Grumman Corp., $982 million (2.3%); Litton Industries, Inc., $978 million (2.3%); and Rockwell Intl. Corp., $966 million (2.3%). (WSJ, 21 Dec 76, 11; DOD Release 585-76)
The Natl. Science Foundation announced that U.S. and Canadian astronomers had succeeded in using telescopes more than 800 km apart, linked by satellite, to simulate a telescope nearly as large as the earth. A radio telescope at the Natl. Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, W. Va., had been linked through a joint U.S.-Canadian satellite to a radio telescope at the Algonquin Radio Observatory in Ontario, allowing the observers to review the results while the observations were in process. The technique would permit astronomers to measure the size and shape of a distant galaxy or quasar with a precision better than I / 1000 arc sec, equivalent to measuring the size and shape of a penny more than 4000 km distant. The satellite would transmit information at a rate equivalent to 10 000 simultaneous telephone calls; the large data rate would increase the sensitivity of measurements, allowing the study of very faint objects in space. Besides the principal investigator, Dr. George W. Swenson, Jr. of the Univ. of Ill., the team included S.H. Knowles and W.B. Walton of NRL; N.W. Broten and D.N. Fort of Canada's Natl. Research Council; K.I. Kellermann and Benno Rayhrer of NRAO; and J.L. Yen of the Univ. of Toronto. (NSF Release PR76-106)
ESA announced that its council meeting in Paris 16 and 17 Dec. had approved a new program, Earthnet, in which ESA would centralize and coordinate European activities in reception, processing, distribution, and archiving of earth-resources satellite data. Earthnet would give European users access to data from NASA programs such as Landsat, SEASAT, Nimbus-G, and the Heat Capacity Mapping Mission, to provide a basis for defining European requirements for future remote-sensing satellite programs. Earthnet would be integrated into existing data-reception and processing facilities at Fucino, Italy, and would use ESA's computerized data center at Frascati, Italy, with an information-retrieval network RECON to disseminate information on the data available. (ESA release 21 Dec 76)
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