Apr 28 1978
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
JPL reported it would participate in tracking and data acquisition as well as in navigation during the upcoming Pioneer Venus mission. Hughes Aircraft Co.'s Space and Communications Group had designed 2 spacecraft and 4 probe vessels for the mission, and General Electric Co.'s Systems Division would provide a probe-entry system. R. B. Miller would be tracking and data systems manager at JPL, with William Kirhofer responsible for the navigation phase.
First would be an orbiter carried in the nose cone of an Atlas-Centaur scheduled to go aloft from KSC May 20; the multiprobe vessel would be launched Aug. 7, also on an Atlas-Centaur. The flight to Venus would be relatively short, about 6mo for the orbiter and about 5mo for the multiprobe. The orbiter would study the atmosphere and other characteristics of Venus for 243 days.
In the multiprobe phase a large entry probe would make a detailed sounding of the lower atmosphere and clouds of Venus, and 3 smaller probes would measure widely separated areas of the planet's atmosphere. To conserve energy, JPL trackers and navigators would turn on the battery-powered radio transmitters of the probes only about 20min before entry into the atmosphere; ground controllers would not be able to check frequencies between launch in Aug. and shortly before entry in Dec. The orbiter-and-multiprobe mission would carry about 30 instruments for gathering scientific data on Venus. (JPL Universe, Apr 28/78, 1)
NASA had completed an ignition test Apr. 21 on 3 Space Shuttle main engines at the National Space and Technology Laboratory at Bay St. Louis, Miss., the JPL and KSC newsletters reported. The firing planned for 2.5sec had actually lasted only l sec, but NASA officials said the test had met most of the objectives. A low-temperature reading in the fuel-pressure pumps caused premature cutoff. NASA and Rockwell International engineers would decide whether to repeat the test before moving to the next phase of the program. (JSC Roundup, Apr 28/78, 1; Marshall Star, Apr 26/78, 2)
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