Nov 21 1978
From The Space Library
GSFC announced that the third international sun-earth explorer Isee 3 had been injected into a halo orbit, most unusual ever proposed for a NASA space mission, to increase understanding of solar terrestrial relationships. Isee 3 was orbiting around the L-1 libration point, a point between the earth and the sun about 1.5 million km (1 million mi) from earth at which the centrifugal and gravitational forces acting on a satellite were exactly counterbalanced. In this orbit, Isee 3 would be able to monitor characteristics of the solar wind and other solar-induced phenomena such as solar flares about an hr before they disturbed earth space.
GSFC's Dr. Robert Farquhar, who devised the halo orbit, said it had been designed "to pass slightly above and below the ecliptic plane so that it will avoid excessive solar interference with spacecraft communications back to earth stations. To a person observing Isee 3 from our planet, it will appear to be orbiting the sun, but it actually traces a halo above earth." On entering the halo orbit, Isee 3 would accomplish three spaceflight firsts: a libration-point satellite; a spacecraft stationed in a halo orbit; and a spacecraft orbiting a point in space rather than a body such as the sun, earth, or moon.
Libration-point orbits had aroused interest as possible ideal locations for future space colonies; they would also offer advantages in lunar farside communications and as staging locations for lunar and interplanetary transportation systems. At least five of the libration points had been mentioned as possible sites for space colonies; one of them (the earth-moon L-5 point) was even the namesake for the leading group of space-colony enthusiasts, the L-5 Society. However, research concerned with space colonization had been mainly theoretical. Isee 3 should pro- vide the first real flight experience for orbital operations of future space colonies. (GSFC Release G-78-85)
Fourteen satellites, four of them NASA's and two starting the INTELSAT V series of international communications satellites, were on the preliminary schedule of NASA launches for 1979, Aerospace Daily reported. These missions would use expendable launch vehicles, and NASA hoped that its most significant mission of 1979 would be number 15; first flight of the Space Shuttle. The tentative 1979 schedule would begin the transition of payloads from expendable launchers to the Space Shuttle. The Delta launch vehicle, workhorse of the 1970s, would carry only 4 of 1979's 14 missions. Only three of the payloads were commercial, and half the 1979 launches would be from Vandenberg AFB and Wallops Island rather than KSC. The three launches scheduled in the first quarter of 1979 would use all three launch sites and three different launchers. Second-quarter payloads, all sponsored by organizations outside NASA, would also use all three launch sites. NASA planned five launches in the third quarter, which it hoped to close with the Space Shuttle's first flight. (AID Nov 21/78, 95)
FBIS reported that scientists and staff members of the Prague Institute of Geophysics were working around the clock as they received and processed data coming from the first Czechoslovak artificial satellite, Magion. Beginning Nov. 14, when Magion separated from Intercosmos 18 and went into an independent orbit, it had returned data on the earth's ionosphere and magnetosphere four times a day to the Czechoslovakian Panska Ves Observatory, where incoming information was computer processed and transmitted to the Flight Control Centre and to stations in the Soviet Union. P. Triska, in charge of the Magion experiment, said that onboard systems were working efficiently and that he and his staff were cooperating closely with their Soviet colleagues: "We draw up together working programs for Intercosmos 18 and Magion and exchange information." (FBIS, Tass In English, Nov 21/78)
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