May 17 1977
From The Space Library
NASA announced it had investigated a unique propulsion system for sending a spacecraft to rendezvous with Halley’s Comet in 1986. The comet had made some 30 visits since 467 B.C., and its next appearance would offer NASA an opportunity to find out more about the origin of the solar system.
A device using solar electric propulsion, suggested by MSFC and tested for several yr at Lewis Research Center, would aim solar energy concentrated by reflectors at conventional solar cells to provide electric power for a system of 8 ion engines capable of taking a spacecraft to an encounter with the Halley comet around Christmas Day 1985 just outside earth's orbit. The spacecraft would reach the comet during its most active state as it passed near the sun, and could send pictures of the comet to earth, possibly sending a probe through the comet's tail toward its nucleus to define its properties. NASA would decide in August 1977 whether to use the solar electric system, or a solar sail being developed by JPL, in its rendezvous with Halley’s Comet. (NASA Release 77-97; MSFC Release 77-87)
NASA announced it would launch on or about May 28 a new environmental monitoring satellite GOES-B, latest in a series to be operated by NOAA, to keep watch over the eastern half of the U.S. and the Atlantic Ocean, just in time for this yr's hurricane season. Built like the first three in the series by Ford Aerospace Corp., GOES-B would replace Goes 1 as NOAA's east coast satellite at about 75°W; Goes I would move to standby status at about 105°W. (NASA Release 77-88) NASA announced it had awarded Computer Sciences Corp. a $41 million contract for support services to communications and instrumentation at KSC, the major site for Space Shuttle launches beginning in 1979.
Services would be in 2 categories: the first, covering 3yr, would include modification, installation, operation, and maintenance of an operational intercommunications system, operational TV system, and checkout control-monitor subsystem. The second category, lyr with 2yr option to renew, would cover KSC work on communications, measurements, telemetrics, computer services, data storage and retrieval, program planning, and reliability and quality assurance. (NASA Release 77-104; KSC Release 104-77)
MSFC reported that the Energy Research and Development Administration had selected 80 new projects for installing solar heating and cooling, on 27 of which MSFC would monitor technical design and construction. MSFC was already monitoring 32 commercial demonstration projects selected by ERDA in April 1976 as the first of a series; ERDA would issue a third solicitation for proposals later this summer, the announcement said.
Dr. Henry H. Marvin, director of ERDA's division of solar energy, said cooperative agreements negotiated by MSFC with the 27 proposers of projects would be signed within approximately 3mo. Government funding on a cost-sharing basis would cover only the solar portions of the projects; more than 90% of the funds would go to projects with substantial small business participation, and more than half the awards would go to teams using solar energy systems supplied by small businesses. (MSFC Release 77-89)
NASA announced that it and the Soviet Academy of Sciences had agreed to continue joint technical, scientific, and operational activity developed in the Apollo-Soyuz mission July 1975 by starting studies of 2 programs, one for a joint orbital manned flight, the other for an international space station.
The agreement signed May 6 by Acting NASA Administrator Dr. Alan M. Lovelace and May 11 by Anatoly P. Aleksandrov, president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, envisioned preliminary project documents within 6 to 12mo and definitive documents within a yr, noting that the working groups should proceed on the assumption of a first flight in 1981. Working groups to study experiments, basic and applied, and the operation of a Salyut-Shuttle mission would be named within 3 days after the agreement became effective; a third group, which would consider development of an international space platform, would be appointed within 2mo. NASA stressed that neither side would be committed beyond initial studies, and either could proceed with its own space station interests. (NASA Release 77-98; NYT, May 18/77, A15)
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