Jul 19 1978
From The Space Library
NASA announced that the Egyptian government had reserved four small self-contained payloads to fly on the Space Shuttle in the 1980s. At the NASA Hq ceremony July 13, Dr. Mohamed Shakar, minister of the embassy of Egypt, and Dr. Farouk el-Baz, research director for the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, gave NASA officials a down payment to reserve Space Shuttle space.
The payloads called "getaway specials," each weighing no more than 90kg (2001b) and no larger than 0.5m3 (5ft3), would fly on a space available basis. NASA had received payments for about 240 small payloads so far; purchasers had included private individuals, commercial firms, and foreign countries. The Egyptian purchase marked the first foreign educational use of a Shuttle payload, as Egyptian students would compete in proposing experiments for the Shuttle missions. Dr. El-Baz would direct evaluation of the proposals. (NASA Release 78-107)
NASA announced that Dr. Robert Frosch, NASA administrator, and Professor S. Dhawan, secretary of the department of space and chairman of the Space Commission, Government of India, had signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) July 18 for launch in 1981 from the Space Shuttle of India's first national satellite, INSAT-1. INSAT-1, a multipurpose spacecraft in geostationary orbit, would provide India with domestic public telecommunications and direct TV broadcasting and meteorology services. This was the first MOU NASA had signed with a foreign government setting forth terms and conditions under which NASA would furnish Space Transportation System launch services on a reimbursable basis. (NASA Release 78-109)
NASA announced that Puerto Rico's governor Carlos Romero Barcelo and officials from DOE, NASA Hq, and LeRC would dedicate on July 21 the federal government's second large wind-turbine generator to be field-tested by a U.S. utility, on the small Puerto Rican island of Culebra. NASA had designed the turbine to produce 200kw of electric power in winds of 29 to 60kph (18 to 34mph) measured 9m (30ft) above ground level, equal to 20% of Culebra's electric power, or about enough power for 150 island homes. The Puerto Rico Water Resources Authority would operate the wind turbine for 2yr, supplying test data to DOE and NASA on the performance and economics of large wind-energy systems used by utilities. Later in the yr NASA planned to begin operation of a much larger wind turbine rated at 2000kw (2mw) near Boone, N.C. (NASA Release 78-104; DOE Release R-78-266)
MSFC reported that a failure in Skylab's power system July 9 had caused loss of vehicle attitude; MSFC engineers had reconfigured the system and fully charged the spacecraft's batteries, before performing reorientation maneuvers to return it to its minimum-drag attitude. Skylab was now about 240mi above earth, rolling at about 2 revolutions per hr. Engineers had planned maneuvers to stop the roll and place the vehicle first in a solar-inertial attitude, then in an end-on velocity vector that would encounter minimum atmospheric drag. However, Dr. Christopher C. Kraft, JSC director, said in a copyrighted interview with the Dallas Morning News reported in the Washington Post: "I don't believe Skylab is going to live long enough for us to get to it with the Space Shuttle ... We're going to have to live with the fact that Skylab is going to die a natural death." (Marshall Star, July 19/78, 1, July 12/78,1; JSC Roundup, July 21/78, 1; ARC Astrogram, July 13/78; 1; W Post, July 21/78, A14)
MSFC announced that ISEE-C, third and last of the spacecraft in a joint NASA/ESA study of near-earth environment, would be launched August 12. Isee 1 and 2 built by ESA had, since they were launched into looping trajectories Oct. 22, 1977, been gathering detailed data on solarwind particle control of the boundaries between earth space and interplanetary space. ISEE-C, at a point in a sun-centered orbit where gravitational forces of the earth and sun were exactly equal, should obtain nearly continuous data on the fluctuating solar wind and on special solar phenomena, about an hr before the solar particles would flow past the earth orbit of Isee 1 and 2. (Marshall Star, July 19/78, 4)
GSFC reported that, after a 2mo search, its Copernicus 'satellite had located what might be a second invisible "black hole" in the universe. The satellite's x-ray experiment had found in the constellation Scorpio what was believed to be a super dense collapsed star with such strong gravity that even light could not escape it. Scientists had declared it much more active and convincing than the first black hole found, Cygnus X-1. The new black hole was orbiting Scorpio V-861, a supergiant star visible with the naked eye from earth, and gradually siphoning away the larger star's atmosphere.
Tracing the massive amounts of x-rays released from matter emanating from the giant star had led scientists to what they called the "best black hole yet"; discovery had given astronomers their first opportunity to study a black hole as it passed behind its companion star and to test some of their black-hole theories. Glen Pollard, coinvestigator on the project, said he hoped the new information would define the shape of the cloud of stellar material sucked into the black hole, reveal the dynamics of such systems, and provide a measure of the quantity of material being removed at speeds up to 2 million mph. Studying black holes would extend astronomers' knowledge of physics into areas not observable on earth-the physics of relativity. (Goddard News, July 19/78, 1)
GSFC reported it had held in June the first regional remote-sensing applications training course for state-related users of remote-sensing systems. Participants represented agencies implementing or planning facilities to use Landsat image data. Developed by Dr. Nicholas Short, GSFC training officer, and Henry Robinson of CSC, the course had offered comprehensive explanations of image processing offered by expert lecturers drawn from NASA, outside agencies, and contractors. (Goddard News, July 19/78, 4)
GSFC reported that its astronomers believed they were about to confirm for the first time the presence of gold on a star, perhaps as much as 100 billion tons of it. That amount of gold would indicate the star contained one part per 100 000, comparable to earth's one part per million. William Heacox and David Leckrone of GSFC's Stellar and Cosmic Astronomy Branch had planned additional observations to confirm the first signs of gold on Kappa Cancrii, a blue-white star visible to the naked eye in the constellation Cancer. The astronomers had found the gold traces on the star while using the IUE satellite to look at chemically peculiar stars rich in exotic elements. (Goddard News, July 19/78, 2)
GSFC reported that U.S., Canadian, and other scientists had been studying the first data from the applications Explorer mission Aem 1, launched Apr. 26 into a polar orbit. Using information on day-night temperature changes, the scientists had examined black-and-white and false-color images for clues to the locations of mineral resources and to identify rock types, soil-moisture changes and plant stress, and the effects of urban heat islands. The first false-color image had covered a 700km swath of the eastern U.S. from Cape Hatteras to Lake Ontario. The scientists would correlate data from Aem 1, first of a series of satellites for NASA's heat-capacity mapping mission, with data from other satellites, especially Landsat. (Goddard News, July 19/78, 2)
INTELSAT reported it had commissioned a $23 500 study in 1979 of ionosphere effects on communications-satellite transmissions. Cable and Wireless Ltd., U.K., in Hong Kong would conduct the study to discover the cause and extent of, and remedy for, fluctuations in satellite-signal strength noted by earth stations near the equator. The fluctuations in the 4 and 6GHz frequency band, believed to be caused by sunspot activity, had occurred only in the evenings, mainly during equinox periods, and had impaired international communications. As scientists had predicted 1979 would be a high sunspot-activity year, data gathered then would be vital to INTELSAT attempts to overcome such interference. (INTELSAT Release 78-21-1)
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