Jun 22 1978
From The Space Library
Nature magazine reported that NASA planned to draw more academic scientists into its R&D activities. NASA Administrator Robert Frosch had issued a policy statement that, in the future, academic scientists would conduct "a substantial proportion" of basic research in all agency disciplines. Non-NASA scientists would take a greater part in all NASA basic research, from conception and planning through programming and execution to interpretation of data and publication of research results. The statement said NASA would increase peer evaluation of research projects in order to guarantee high quality. NASA critics had charged that agency research, particularly in areas such as space applications, traditionally proceeded in-house with little outside evaluation.
The new policy, partly in response to President Carter's directive on increased government support of basic science, had aimed at counteracting the criticisms. After NASA's divisions had prepared a list of proposed activities, NASA would publish a 5-yr plan based on these proposals and conforming to the new policy. The Office of Space and Terrestrial Applications, for instance, whose programs at the outset had been essentially technical exercises to test and develop means of data acquisition, had realized its concern with science relatively late, so that scientists had had to do the best they could with the data available. Under the new system, NASA would ensure better working arrangements between scientists and instrument designers in deciding on the most useful data a satellite could collect, from both a scientific and a technical point of view. NASA stressed that greater use of academic scientists would improve quality control at the same time it would help to develop specific fields of scientific knowledge. (Nature, June 22/78, 586)
ESA announced plans to launch its scientific satellite Geos 2 in mid July from ETR/Cape Canaveral on a Delta. This satellite would carry out the mission originally planned for Geos 1, which a malfunctioning Delta injected into a transfer orbit too low to permit attaining its scheduled geostationary orbit. The European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) at Darmstadt, Germany, had fired Geos 1's apogee boost motor to inject it into a 12-hr elliptic orbit; after a yr in this orbit, results showed Geos 1 had made a significant contribution to the International Magnetospheric Study (IMS).
Main mission objective of Geos 2 would be to learn more about responses of the near-earth environment to processes occurring in outer space. The satellite's geostationary orbit would be in a region of earth's magnetosphere where many dynamic processes causing magnetic and ionospheric disturbances were believed to develop. Geos 2's exceptionally high real-time transmission rate (over 100kilobits per sec), combined with a continuous link with ESA's Odenwald ground station in Germany; would allow it to transmit about 100 times as much data as any previous European scientific satellite. Built as a qualification model at the same time as Geos 1, the spacecraft had been converted into a high-quality flight model. Based on Geos 1 experience, only minor modifications were made in some Geos 2 subsystems. Geos 2's very sensitive experiment payload had put severe constraints on spacecraft design in the areas of electromagnetic and chemical cleanliness: for example, a complex system of 8 booms deploying in orbit had to be designed to put the sensitive experiment detectors measuring minute variations in the magnetosphere as far as possible from any electrical interference generated by the satellite. Prime contractor for Geos 2 was British Aerospace Dynamics Group, under the direction of industries in 10 European countries. (ESA Release, June 22/78; ESA Newsletter, June 78, 4)
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