Aug 26 1977
From The Space Library
LaRC announced selection of RCA Service Company, Camden, N.J., to negotiate a $3.5 million contract for electronics fabrication services to the center. Work on the contract, covering a 2-yr period with options for three 1-yr extensions, would begin in Jan. 1978. (LaRC Release 77-40)
The NY Times reported that "observers in the U.S. and abroad" were puzzling over a Soviet space vehicle called Cosmos 929 that had been orbiting for a mo and was large enough to be manned, but apparently carried no passengers. Orbital and radio telemetry characteristics of the vehicle were like those usually related to a manned mission; speculation was that the vehicle might be the first unit of a large space station to be assembled in orbit.
Reports from Europe that the USSR would launch a space vehicle during the summer had assumed that the mission would be another Salyut, five of which had previously been orbited, the first early in 1971. Cosmos 929, launched July 17, had drawn attention because of its size and its unusual telemetry, apparently two distinct systems, as though it were two objects joined together. On Aug. 18, after a major change in orbit, one of the two radio transmissions had also changed "significantly," and part of the vehicle might have been detached at that time. Members of the Kettering Group, an international group of nongovernment space watchers, had confirmed that the vehicle was as large as a Salyut and that its 51.6° orbital inclination had usually, though not exclusively, been used for manned flights as had its telemetry signals. Cosmos 929 had produced no voices, however, and the group was "virtually certain" that no crew was aboard. (NYT, Aug 26/77, A10)
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