Apr 14 1982
From The Space Library
Christopher C. Kraft, Jr., director of JSC since 1972, said that he would retire from NASA after the fifth (and first operational) Shuttle flight, now scheduled for November. He had begun working at the Langley laboratory of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in 1945.
When NASA was established in 1958, he was selected as an original member of the Space Task Group to manage the Mercury project: that group was the nucleus of NASAs Manned Spacecraft Center, which became JSC in 1973. Kraft was flight director of all the Mercury missions and many of the Gemini missions; in 1972 he succeeded Dr. Robert R. Gilruth, who had been the first director of JSC. Kraft said he had no definite plans for the future. (NASA Release 82-62; NY Times, Apr 15/82, B-4; W Post, Apr 15/82, D-2)
NASA reported that its Kuiper airborne observatory (a Lockheed C-141 Starlifter aircraft carrying a 36-inch infrared reflector telescope) had captured an image of Columbia's reentry heating pattern at the end of its third spaceflight.
The procedure, known as IRIS (infrared imagery of Shuttle), was part of an orbiter experiment program using the Shuttle to collect data of value in advancing aerospace technology. The Kuiper plane, operated by ARC, had taken off for observation without knowing whether the Shuttle would land at White Sands or KSC; an update 15 minutes before landing ensured success. A similar attempt on the first flight had failed. (NASA Release 82-56; ARC Release 82-14)
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