Oct 4 1977
From The Space Library
Postlaunch reports on the Voyagers said both were functioning as expected. The one launched first, called Voyager 2 because it would arrive second at Jupiter and Saturn, had had difficulty with attitude control as well as with its science-platform boom; its data showed that the craft was merely obeying faulty software, which ground control had corrected. The boom was stable enough to capture satisfactory starfield images. Voyager 1, launched later, had not achieved the proper velocity during two trajectory corrections; Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers said rocket exhaust was apparently pushing against the craft, and had changed the procedure accordingly. (NASA Release 77-209; MOR S-802-77-01/02 [postlaunch] Oct 6/77)
NASA announced that its administrator, Dr. Robert A. Frosch, and Chairman A.B. Wolff of the Netherlands Agency for Aerospace Programs had signed a memorandum of understanding on the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) project, a cooperative undertaking in which the United Kingdom would also share under a separate agreement. An earth-orbiting observatory built by the Netherlands and scheduled for launch in 1981 would carry a cryogenically cooled IR telescope furnished by the U.S. and a package furnished by the U.K. for command, control, and data acquisition. Nearly 500 scientists, engineers, and technicians from the participating nations would join in the first survey of the entire sky at infrared wavelengths undetectable by earthbased telescopes obscured by the atmosphere. The mission would have a 1yr lifetime. Ames Research Center would manage the telescope, built by Ball Bros. Research Corp.; JPL would have U.S. project management responsibility. (NASA Release 77-210)
Marshall Space Flight Center announced award to Intl. Business Machines of a $1 344 950 contract for 134 site data-acquisition subsystems to monitor performance of ERDA's solar heating and cooling demonstration program at sites throughout the U.S. The IBM machines would provide data on solar energy at each site, amounts used for heating, cooling, and hot water, and other areas of performance, efficiency, and fuel saving. Each site would feed data to a central computer in Huntsville, Ala., for compilation of reports to business, industry, and the general public on the most economical and practical systems tested. (MSFC Release 77-184)
The Washington Post reported on Sputnik 1's 20th anniversary as observed in the Soviet Union. Sputnik had set off a "search for nationhood in the United States even as it seemed to confirm it in the Soviet Union ... Ask any Soviet citizen above the age of 24 and each can tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard ... a Soviet satellite was in orbit." The U.S. search ended "in a symbolic and real sense" with the moon landing 8.5yr ago. However, the certainty of power that Sputnik gave the USSR "has never quite materialized out of the void of space." The A-2, early main launch vehicle for the USSR "civilian" program, was still that today. U.S. experts in the joint Apollo-Soyuz project had been "dismayed by the crudeness of Soviet space hardware": one compared the Soyuz craft to a "hot water radiator ... it works, but that's about all you can say for it." An aviation weekly, interviewing the experts, said they rated the Soyuz with the Mercury capsule, first U.S. manned spacecraft. "Their scientists are every bit as good as ours," said one U.S. physicist, "but the technical gap is still huge." The article noted that the U.S. had dropped its space medicine program in the early 1970s but the USSR had kept on with its, and had maintained large space stations in orbit since 1971 manned with crews up to 63 days at a time. The Soviet space program had had less trouble than the U.S. program "because of the closed nature of the system ... no citizens groups or congressional critics to question the need for a manned space program." Competition for limited resources was the same in both countries, but "lack of public debate allowed managers luxuries of continuity not available to their counterparts in a democracy." (W Post, Oct 4/77, A-1)
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