Mar 1 1977
From The Space Library
NASA announced the first use of a link between the Communications Technology Satellite Cts and the portable earth terminal (PET): a teleconference between Housing and Urban Development Secretary Patricia Roberts Harris in Washington, D.C., and a group of California mayors at the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. Mrs. Harris conferred with the mayors from the PET bus parked outside the HUD building. Cts, a joint effort between the Canadian Dept. of Communications and NASA, had been built and integrated by Canada; NASA provided the 200w transmitter and developed the PET at Lewis Research Center. The PET bus, based at LeRC, would travel around the U.S. demonstrating how to save money through teleconferencing. (NASA Release 77-40)
NASA announced it would join the Interior Dept.'s Bureau of Land Management in using Landsat, the earth resources monitoring satellite, to inventory wild land resources (major streams, ground cover and vegetation types, reservoirs, and fire hazards) in south central Alaska, northwestern Arizona, and southwestern Idaho. The project would examine each of the 3 different regional ecologies for about 1yr. During the 3yr project, the BLM and NASA would set up an automated inventory system to provide accurate and timely data on BLM land as another example of Landsat usefulness in solving public and private resource oriented problems. (NASA Release 77-37)
Marshall Space Flight Center announced it had awarded a $634 250 contract to Grumman Aerospace Corp. to design, build, and test a machine that would demonstrate, on earth, the automatic fabrication of beams for space construction. Ground demonstration would be needed to develop a safe and efficient facility for use in space. Beam fabrication, part of the Space Industrialization Program, would be the first step in building large space structures. (MSFC Release 77-33)
MSFC reported that the contractor for the first high-energy astronomy observatory (HEAO-A), TRW Systems of Redondo Beach, Calif., would ship the spacecraft to Kennedy Space Center on Mar. 7. HEAOA, a 2660kg unmanned mission scheduled for launch Apr. 15 into low circular earth orbit, would survey celestial x-ray sources and gamma-ray flux. (MSFC Release 77-32)
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