Jul 1 1983
From The Space Library
Tass reported that the two cosmonauts aboard Salyut 7 had opened doors to a large attached module, Cosmos 1443, and were working in essentially a three-part assembly consisting of a Salyut, a Cosmos, and the Soyuz T9 in which they arrived at the space station June 28.
When the Cosmos docked automatically March 10 with the Salyut, U.S. space experts said that it would double the size of the 21-ton Salyut and had carried .3 tons of cargo, such as scientific gear, experiments, and life-support materials. Cosmos had sets of small thrusters generally used to change the or-bit of the entire complex, which weighed in total about 50 tons. The Cosmos itself, 43 feet long and 13 feet in diameter with solar-cell panels to generate electricity, consisted of an orbital module and a descent module. The descent module could return to Earth unmanned and land by parachute carrying experimental data and materials no longer needed on the Salyut, giving the same sort of round-trip supply service instead for the U.S. Shuttle without being reusable.
Tass said that the cosmonauts, Vladimir Lyakhov and Aleksandr Aleksandrov, were unloading Cosmos 1443 and reactivating systems on Salyut 7, putting film into cameras and turning on observation instruments, such as an East German mass spectrometer, which would photograph and measure "vast tracts of Soviet territory in middle and southern latitudes." (FBIS, Tass in English, July 1/83; NY Times, July 1/83, A-l)
A team of engineers from NASA and industry celebrated at GSFC their success, after 58 days of maneuvers, in putting the tracking and data-relay satellite into geosynchronous orbit. ' Using tiny one-pound thrusters with nozzles about the size of a thimble,. the team boosted the 5,000-pound TDRS more than 8,600 miles further into space, a feat never before attempted. The TDRS was launched from the Shuttle Challenger during its first mission April 4; after a successful deployment from the Shuttle, some difficulty in the inertial upper stage (IUS) rocket threw TDRS into a tumble from which ground control rescued it, stabilizing it far short of. the altitude needed for geosynchronous orbit.
A joint board representing NASA and the U.S. Air Force said later that the problem was loss of oil pressure in an engine seal, probably caused by excess engine heat. The board had viewed photographs taken by U.S. Air Force camera over New Mexico and had conducted "extensive tests." Because of the importance of TDRS operation to space communications, NASA and the Air Force had rescheduled two shuttle missions that were to use the IUS. (NASA Releases 83-104, 83-114, 83-116; MSFC Releases 83-49, 83-50; W Post, July 13/83, A-1; July 28/83, A-4)
NASA announced that Charles D. Walker, an engineer at McDonnell Douglas, would be the first payload specialist representing a project designed for commercial purposes. He would fly on the 12th Shuttle mission set for March 1984, operating a materials-processing device developed by McDonnell-Douglas to separate large amounts of biological materials in space for new pharmaceutical uses. As chief engineer responsible for spaceflight tests and evaluation, Walker had worked with project support at KSC and JSC, training NASA astronauts who operated the device for electrophoresis research on earlier Shuttle missions. (NASA Release 83-105)
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