Nov 29 1985
From The Space Library
Astronauts Jerry Ross, an Air Force Major, and Sherwood Spring, an Army Lieutenant Colonel, aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis on mission 61-B took 40 minutes to erect a 45-foot-high tower with 93 aluminum struts and 33 joints, the Washington Post reported. After breaking down the tower and stowing the parts, they assembled a 400-lb. inverted pyramid out of six 12-foot-long aluminum beams. They built and broke down the pyramid eight times in less time than they were given for six. By the end of their task, they were assembling the pyramid in nine minutes and breaking it down in less than six minutes-three minutes faster than their first assembly and disassembly. By 9:30 p.m. they had done in four hours a job given them to complete in five.
NASA referred to the first activity as ACCESS (assembly concept for construction of erectable space structures), researchers at Marshall Space Flight Center explained, and the second as EASE (experimental assembly of structures in extravehicular activity). Together they were the first flight demonstration of construction of large space structures, so called because they were distinguished by different assembly methods and physical characteristics. The astronauts used no tools in the construction, rather they SNAPped together prefabricated components to form the EASE/ACCESS structures.
EASE/ACCESS should provide NASA with valuable on-orbit construction experience as well as a comparison of assembly rates and techniques used in space to those used during simulations on the ground and in neutral buoyancy water tank tests. The activity should also help evaluate potential assembly and maintenance concepts and techniques for the proposed space station and identify ways to improve erectable structures to ensure productivity, reliability, and safety.
TV views at NASA Headquarters showed the astronauts trading places twice during their work and appearing in almost complete control of a job that had never been done before in space. Ross had the only complaint, saying his gloved hands were sweating and that he was using too much oxygen.
When the two had finished assembling the six required pyramids, astronaut David Leestma at mission control told them to take a break. "I'd be willing to do at least one more," Ross replied. "It feels good to do some good hard work." The two then proceeded to begin work again.
Spring once hit his feet against the tower, and Ross by mistake hit a switch with his hand that turned on an outside light, the only "accidents" that occurred during the exercise, although they triggered a warning from Atlantis's commander Brewster Shaw, Jr. "You guys are going great but just remember to be careful. The way that thing shakes up there, it's not going to be easy to chase anything down if it breaks loose," he cautioned. (W Post, Nov 30/85, Al; Marshall Space Flight Center Release 85-60)
NASA announced that its National Space Technology Laboratories, working with the University of Colorado at Boulder, uncovered information using remote sensing techniques suggesting a civilization existed before the Incas in subtropical Peruvian jungles. The university's anthropology department requested NSTL collaboration on the investigation because of the laboratories' expertise in satellite remote sensing and image analysis.
After remote sensing by satellites and aircraft permitted mapping and determining priorities for field investigation sites, Tom Sever, NASA principal investigator, and Tom Lennon, an archaeologist and co-director of the university's Rio Abiseo National Park project, completed a five-day expedition into the jungles of Peru's Rio Abiseo National Park.
Remote sensing had discovered Cerro Central, a site including more than 350 buildings. The previous major point of interest was the ancient site Gran Pajaten, which included only 30 buildings.
"We now know that Pajaten is probably the smallest and least important of the sites," Sever explained. "We are fairly confident that we have approached the very edges of a new civilization, and we believe that the farther in we go, the higher and more complicated the elevation and architecture and civilization will be." Sever added that the investigation represented in his opinion the best example of a remote sensing application to archaeology and perhaps the only known means by which to obtain his project's objectives. (NASA Release 85-160)
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