Apr 13 1979
From The Space Library
NASA announced it would join Soviet scientists for the first time in a study of physiological changes due to simulated weightlessness. Tests in each country on 10 subjects aged between 35 and 40 would comprise two weeks of control observations, one week of bed rest, and two weeks of postrest measurements, including stress tests and blood and urine samples. Half of each group would be horizontal during the total bed rest, the others would rest with heads lowered 6° for horizontal. U.S. tests had kept subjects horizontal only, and the identical studies would indicate the best procedure. The program would begin in mid-May at the Moscow Institute of Medico-Biological Problems and continue at Ames Research Center (ARC) in July. Both NASA and USSR scientists would take part in each experiment. (NASA Release 79-46; ARC Release 79-17)
NASA reported that its small astronomy satellite Sas 3 had reentered the atmosphere April 9 over the Pacific Ocean after nearly four years of scanning the skies for X-ray data, although its design lifetime had been only one year. Launched May 7, 1975, from the San Marco platform off the coast of Kenya, the 195-kilogram. Sas 3 in a 500-kilometer orbit had discovered 2 new quasars and about half the 35 known X-ray bursters (stars emitting huge brief bursts of X-rays once every few hours). Sas 3 indicated that these bursts resulted from thermonuclear reactions on the surfaces of neutron stars. (NASA Release 79-44)
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