Jan 15 1991
From The Space Library
NASA announced the selection of nine scientists as team members in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) Microwave Observing Project. The SETI project has two elements: Targeted Search and Sky Survey. The Targeted Search was to use the largest available antennas and search over a 1 to 3 gigahertz (GHz) frequency range, looking for patterns that could indicate an artificially generated signal. The search would conduct the most sensitive search yet conducted of nearby (less than 80 light years distant) solar-type stars. The Sky Survey would use the 34-meter antennas of NASA's Deep Space Network sites to scan the whole sky over a 1 to 10 GHz frequency range. The survey could detect signals from the vicinity of distant sunlike stars or from areas beyond the solar-type stars. SETI observations were to begin on Columbus Day 1992, with the Sky Survey deployed at Goldstone, California, and the Targeted Search mounted at the National Science Foundation's Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.
NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, is managing the overall SETI project as well as the Targeted Search element. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is managing the Sky Survey aspect. SETI is part of NASA's Exobiology Program of NASA's Office of Space Science and Applications. The scientists selected made research proposals to be accomplished by the SETI project and were to help SETI finalize some of the equipment designs and refine search procedures. (NASA Release 91-7)
Ariane 44L, the most powerful rocket of the Ariane series of Arianespace, the commercial branch of the European Space Agency, blasted into space the night of January 15 from the northeast coast of French Guyana in South America. The rocket carried two European communications satellites: Italsat I, the first experimental communications satellite of the Italian Space Agency, and EUTELSAT II-F2, the second communications satellite of the European satellite organization. (W Times, Jan 16/91)
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