Apr 7 1980
From The Space Library
NASA reported a further development in its ongoing work with the St. Regis Paper Company in New York: an arrangement under which the initiating company would share the cost of satellite data gathering, but the technology developed would be available to all other timber companies. In 1977 St. Regis had begun a test program with NASA to see if Landsat Data could improve the company's data base on forest lands; it wanted to use the information to plan timber harvesting, leasing and buying new timber lands, and monitoring more than 2.3 million acres across the southern United States [see A&A77 Oct 25]. The success of the project led to the authorization by St. Regis Southern Timberland Division in Florida of more than $300,000 new capital investment for an information system using Landsat Data to support its general operations.
St. Regis was the first private company to participate in NASA's test program on resource-observation applications. The program began a unique relationship between NASA and the private sector, because St. Regis (not NASA) initiated the project and the company shared in the cost. NASA said that the entire forest industry would gain by the venture because technology from the St. Regis experiment would be in the public domain, available to other firms. NASA and St. Regis planned to conduct a symposium in 1981 to demonstrate Landsat Data interpretation to timber industry management. The program was managed by JSC and Purdue University's Laboratory for Applications of Remote Sensing, as well as by St. Regis. (NASA Release 80-44)
INTELSAT announced that its "assembly of parties" in Florida last week had agreed to technical and economic coordination of the proposed Arabsat communications satellite system, as Arabsat would lack significant economic impact on, and would be technically compatible with, the INTELSAT system. It would be the third regional system coordinated with INTELSAT; others were the European and Indonesian systems. (INTELSAT Release 80-06-I)
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