Aug 10 1978
From The Space Library
NASA announced that the first major symposium on crop monitoring based on space-age technology, scheduled for JSC Oct. 23-26, would discuss results of the Large-Area Crop-Inventory Experiment (LACIE). The symposium would give participants from government, industry-agriculture, and university communities around the world more information about LACIE's pioneering effort and how it could best be used to improve the world food situation. LACIE, a 3yr program of NASA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture working with university and industrial research groups, had been designed to estimate wheat production in major growing areas throughout the world by using satellite data and the global weather-observation network. LACIE had begun in the fall of 1974 when DOA had recognized a need for information on wheat-growing areas outside the U.S. Landsat satellites continuously scanning agricultural regions had provided the electronic imagery for area estimates. Combined daily with ground acquired data and information received from 8000 worldwide weather stations, the imagery had made it possible to predict crop area, yield, and production of domestic and foreign wheat-growing regions and to give an early warning of problems.
Earth resources scientists had learned to identify the "signature" (appearance) of wheat in the satellite data; others had been able to estimate the growth stage and potential yield of wheat. Computer programs combining records of weather conditions in past growing seasons with figures on crop yields in the past had enabled experimenters to estimate yields for the current growing season. Results from LACIE had shown the effectiveness of new technology in improving knowledge of global wheat production generally applicable to other crops. USDA was considering use of the data source to give early warning of significant changes in prospects for global commodity production. (NASA Release 78-125)
LaRC announced it had awarded two computer contracts: one to the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc., Cambridge, Mass., for an engineering model of a fault-tolerant multiprocessor (FTMP) computer. Draper Laboratory, which had designed the FTMP computer under a previous NASA contract, had intended it for safety-critical avionic and flight-control systems on future civil-transport aircraft. The FTMP could start and operate several aircraft functions (flight control, autopilot, navigation and guidance, and display and master alarms) without manual intervention and could also assess flight procedures including takeoff, climb, cruise, descent, and landing. The 2.5-yr contract would cost about $1.8 million.
The second contract award was to SRI International, Menlo Park, Calif., for an engineering model of a software-implemented fault tolerant (SIFT) computer. Conceived by SRI under a previous NASA contract, SIFT would perform the same functions as FTMP. SRI would work under the $1.6-million 2-yr contract in Menlo Park and at a subcontractor facility in Teterboro, N.J. LaRC would manage both contracts. (LaRC Release 78-42)
The USAF had budgeted $664 million for space procurement in FY80, up from $379.6 million in FY79, Defense/Space Business Daily reported. Major increases were in the defense support program (early-warning satellite by TRW and Aeroject), up $48 million; the satellite data system (Hughes), up $80 million; the defense satellite-communications systems (DSCS), up $65 million; and the Space Shuttle (Rockwell International), up $73 million. The USAF had planned to buy five satellite systems in FY80: an RCA defense meteorological satellite program (DMSP) spacecraft; a defense support program spacecraft; a satellite data system spacecraft; and two DSCS spacecraft. One spacecraft to be purchased in FY79 would be a DMSP. The Air Force had last purchased boosters (three Martin Marietta Titan IIIs) in FY78 and planned none for FY79 or 80, "assuming Shuttle stays on schedule," a USAF official said. (D/SBD, Aug 10/78, 188)
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