Jul 27 1978
From The Space Library
NASA announced it would launch on or about Aug. 7 from Cape Canaveral the second of two Pioneer spacecraft designed for direct measurement of Venus's dense searing atmosphere, making the 354 million km (220 million mi) flight to Venus on an Atlas Centaur rocket. Pioneer/Venus 2, 20da out from Venus, would separate into five atmospheric-entry craft. Four would enter Venus's atmosphere at points over the earth-facing hemisphere, two on the day side and two on the night side, and the fifth (the transporter bus) would enter on the day side. The Pioneer/Venus 2 entry probe would arrive five days after the Pioneer/Venus 1 orbiter.
The 30 experiments aboard the two Pioneers, a coordinated observational system, would employ the most spacecraft (6) ever devoted to one planet. NASA has designed the flights to study atmosphere and weather on another planet on a global scale as an aid to understanding the forces driving earth weather, and had issued a fact sheet (NASA Release 78-100) giving details on the surface, atmosphere, and stratosphere of Venus. (NASA Release 78-101)
NASA announced that JPL engineers had commanded the shutdown of the Viking 2 orbiter on July 25, when it ran out of attitude-control gas after circling Mars 706 times over the past 2 yr. Several mo previously, orbiter 2 had sprung a leak in one of its attitude-control jets; engineers had slowed the leak but could not stop it completely. Viking 2, launched Sept. 9, 1975, had traveled more than 643 735 000km (400 million mi) to reach Mars orbit Aug. 7, 1976. The Viking 2 lander, riding piggyback on the orbiter, had landed Sept. 3, 1976, in the Utopia Planitia region of Mars's northern hemisphere. Plans called for the Viking 1 orbiter and both Viking landers, functioning well almost 3yr after launch, to operate through Feb. 1979. The Viking project would continue through Sept. 1979 to allow scientists and engineers to process a backlog of data from the spacecraft and experiments. NASA had designed the orbiters to operate for 150da after planetary encounter and to orbit for at least 50yr, in hopes of avoiding planetary contamination before they disintegrated. (NASA Release 78-115)
The ARC Astrogram reported that the quiet short-haul research aircraft (QSRA) built by Boeing under a contract from NASA had actually been a remanufactured twin-engine C-8A "Buffalo" airplane originally produced by de Havilland Aircraft of Canada, Ltd., that had been modified as an experimental aircraft to demonstrate technology for quiet short-haul commercial airliners of the future with short takeoff and landing capabilities.
The remodeled aircraft had made its first flight July 6 at Boeing Field, Seattle, Wash., strictly to test airworthiness and not for high performance takeoffs or landings. A failure in the lateral stability augmentation system (an automatic system to keep the plane stable during flight) had caused initial unsteadiness. The pilots had switched off the system and had flown the plane manually, correcting the motion problem. Pilot Tom Twiggs commented: "I didn't see any surprises. The QSRA simulation at Ames was one of the most accurate simulations I've flown. The failure modes we studied in the simulator saved the day in the first few moments of the flight." The plane had reached its maximum altitude of 6500ft and a speed of 120knots, maximum allowed by engineers for the first flight.
As of July 20 the plane had completed 10 flights with a total flight time of 13hr, and had accomplished all the objectives of the Boeing pre-ferry flight program except the noise tests. NASA would expect the QSRA at ARC in early August. (ARC Astrogram, July 27/78, 1; Av Wk, July 17/78, 21; Aerospace, Summer 78, 14)
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