Nov 18 1980
From The Space Library
NASA reported that LeRC awarded a two-year $2,917,800 contract to Energy Research Corporation, Danbury, Conn., under a DOE program managed by LeRC, for fuel cell technology to provide 120-kilowatt capacity needed to meet all heating, cooling, and electrical needs of an apartment complex or small shopping mall with greater efficiency than that of usual systems.. Fuel cells would combine hydrogen and oxygen electrochemically to produce electricity as well as a usable by-product, heat. A fuel-conditioning system would produce hydrogen from natural gas or naphtha, oxygen coming from the air; future such systems could make hydrogen from synthetic fuels, liquid or gaseous, derived from coal. The LeRC contract would aid the government's effort to develop high-efficiency means of reducing U.S. dependence on scarce fuels while meeting environmental standards. (NASA Release 80-170)
NASA reported selection of Hughes Aircraft's space and communications group for negotiation of a $40 million contract to be managed by ARC for a carrier spacecraft to transport the Galileo probe to Jupiter. Launched from the Space Shuttle in March 1984, the probe would reach the planet by July 1987, separate from the carrier, and enter the atmosphere to measure it for about one hour down to a level where pressure would be 10 times that of Earth's.
The carrier would be powered by two radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs); solar energy at Jupiter's distance would be too weak to furnish power to the carrier, which would maintain contact with Earth during the entire mission, returning data both in real time and for playback on tape recorders. The carrier would receive data from the probe during its entry and descent into Jupiter's atmosphere, transmitting it to Earth stations. Data on Jupiter's atmosphere, believed to consist of the original material that formed the stars, would give scientists better understanding of Jupiter's and Earth's weather mechanisms. (NASA Release 80-171; ARC Release 80-79)
NASA launched an eighth space-processing applications rocket, SPAR 8, November 18 from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Its payload, developed and tested by MSFC, was three experiments processed in about five minutes of zero gravity in the coast phase of the suborbital flight, using a three-axis room-temperature acoustic levitator; a single-axis acoustic-levitator furnace to produce 1,575°C; and a specialized processing furnace.
All experiments had apparently performed as expected: two were on acoustic levitation (use of soundwaves to keep liquids from contamination in touching the walls of a container), one of them to produce a high-temperature glass; the third experiment studied movement of bubbles in molten glass. The payload, damaged at impact on Earth, was recovered for damage assessment and study by the investigators of the results. (MSFC Release 80-148)
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