Apr 11 1983
From The Space Library
NASA launched RCA-F at 5:39 p.m. EDT from the Eastern Space and Missile Center (ESMC) on a Delta into a transfer orbit with 36,266-kilometer apogee, 169-kilometer perigee, 634.2-minute period., and 24° inclination, before reaching geosynchronous orbit at 139 °W where for 10 years it would provide commercial and official voice, digital, and video communications between Alaska and the continental United States.
Called Satcom 1R in orbit, the 3-axis stabilized craft weighed nearly 600 kilograms (1,320 pounds) and carried 24 solid-state transponders. It would replace the first of RCA's domestic communications satellites, RCA Satcom 1 launched December 12, 1975, which had served for seven years. Satcom JR joined five previous RCA communications satellites to provide television, voice, and high-speed data transmission to all 50 states and Puerto Rico. More than 4,000 Earth stations had direct access to these spacecraft. (NASA MOR M-492-206-83-07 [prelaunch] Mar 31/83; NASA Release 83-44; SPX-354; NASA wkly SSR, Apr 14/83)
NASA said that President Reagan asked his Senior Interagency Group for Space, chaired by William P. Clark, assistant to the president for national security affairs, to establish a basis for an administration decision on whether to proceed with NASA development of a permanently based manned space station. (NASA Release 83-51; MSFC Release 83-24)
After months of unsuccessful effort to communicate with Viking lander 1 (the Mutch Memorial Station on the surface of Mars), engineers at JPL decided that they probably could not reestablish contact.
Launched in August 1975, the lander reached Mars July 20, 1976, and was joined by lander 2 September 3 of that year for the most thorough examination of another planet ever undertaken. When contact was lost in November 1982, engineers vainly transmitted command series based on studies of possible failure modes. However, lander 1's internal program could initiate signals to Earth without being commanded; if the lander were still operating, it might transmit in May.
Lander 1 was renamed the Mutch Memorial Station to honor Dr. Thomas A. Mutch, former leader of the Viking imaging team, who disappeared in September 1980 during a climbing trip in the Himalayas. (NASA Release 83-47)
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