Aug 31 1977
From The Space Library
NASA reported it would join NOAA in a 5mo test to detect turbulence in the flight paths of 2 planes in the skies over Colorado, "a built-in turbulence laboratory," according to Dr. Peter M. Kuhn. An earlier study by Dr. Kuhn and others from NOAA's atmospheric physics laboratory had used infrared radiometers to detect fluctuations in atmospheric water vapor, indicating turbulent areas ahead of a plane with 81 % reliability [see A&A 76, Nov 11]. Successful tests could produce an inexpensive turbulence-warning instrument for a plane's control panel. (NASA Release 77-180)
GSFC announced "a comprehensive programmatic and institutional review" of its FY 1978-1979 program to define the skills it needed to do its job "within its allotted resources." The review would result in fewer Civil Service employees, the announcement said, and a work force adjustment would require a center-wide review and validation of position descriptions to match program redirection and "changes in manpower levels." GSFC Director Robert S. Cooper called on all center employees to cooperate fully "in the updating of our position descriptions." (GSFC anno Aug 31/77)
The NY Times reported that the voyager spacecraft being launched toward Jupiter and Saturn would use a little-known power source that had made possible much of the dramatic space activity of the last decade: a capsule of plutonium 238 producing heat convertible into electricity. In localities far from the sun, or on planetary bodies with drastic temperature swings between day and night, the plutonium capsule had proved far superior to solar cells.
Early missions such as Skylab and Salyut space stations; the Mariner 9 and 10 that surveyed Mars, Venus, and Mercury; and communications, weather, and navigation satellites had all used solar cells. But in 1959 President Eisenhower had revealed the possibility of nuclear power for spacecraft, and in June 1961 a grapefruit-sized 2.7watt generator had gone into orbit on the Navy's Transit 3A navsat. NASA had used a larger system called SNAP 19 on Nimbus 3. Later models powered the still active Pioneer 10 and 11 launched in 1972 and 1973 that reached Jupiter in 1973 and 1974, as well as the Viking landers that touched down on Mars in July and Sept. 1976 to search for evidence of present or past life.
Another model called SNAP 27 had powered the still-active stations left on the moon by Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972; the Apollo 12 station had lasted nearly 8yr, the length of time the late version nuclear capsule on the Voyagers would have to last to permit observing Uranus in 1985. The long-lived moon stations had attracted notice recently [see Aug. 23-26] when NASA announced it would stop monitoring them in order to save "something less than $1 million a yr," the article said.
The plutonium power sources, known as SNAP (system for nuclear auxiliary power) or RTG (radioisotope thermoelectric generator), had been a byproduct of U.S. production of power for nuclear weapons. The Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), destined to be part of a new federal Department of Energy, had undertaken a $30-million-per-yr development of even larger nuclear power systems for space, including selenide thermoelectric units with plutonium 238 heat sources for an orbiter with probe scheduled for launch toward Jupiter in 1982, and a system generating between 1000 and 2000 watts being developed for DOD. (NYT, Aug 31/77, 45)
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