Sep 11 1985
From The Space Library
Kennedy Space Center (KSC) announced it had extended an existing contract with Planning Research Corp. (PRC) to provide engineering services for the Directorate of Engineering Development at KSC and at Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB). The $12,421,841 extension brought the total contract value to $66,187,413 and extended the period of performance from January 1, 1986, through September 30, 1986.
Under the contract, PRC would design ground-support systems for the Space Shuttle/Centaur program, which NASA would use to inject space vehicles into interplanetary trajectories after deployment from the Space Shuttle.
PRC would also provide designs for Space Shuttle launch-support equipment for the Department of Defense (DOD) at VAFB, which would become the second launch and landing facility for the Space Shuttle in the mid-1980s, particularly for launching DOD payloads into polar orbit.
Another PRC task under the contract was to provide KSC with designs for Space Shuttle cargo ground-support equipment. (KSC Release 186-85)
At 44 million miles from earth, the International Cometary Explorer (ICE) spent 20 minutes traveling through the tail of Comet Giacobini-Zinner, the Spaceport News reported. During the precedent-setting en- counter, ICE was traveling at 46,000 miles per hr. when it entered the 14,000-mile wide tail at a point 4,900 miles behind the comet's nucleus; when it emerged, ICE had no apparent damage.
Dr. John Brandt, head of Goddard Space Flight Center's Laboratory for Astronomy and Solar Physics, summarized scientists' tentative conclusions at a press conference, saying that mission discoveries added significantly to and confirmed many predicted features of the scientific portrait of a comet.
Scientists expected to see a sharply defined bow shock, but instead they observed that a broad U-shaped turbulent interaction region preceded the comet as it moved through the solar wind of interplanetary space.
Some data, however, confirmed what cometary scientists postulated about the comet's plasma tail: it was threaded by hairpin-shaped magnetic field lines captured from the solar wind and included electrified gases both denser and colder than those of the surrounding solar wind.
The flight also showed that the hazard of flying through the dust in Comet Giacobini-Zinner's tail was less than expected.
There was one new-found phenomenon that puzzled the ICE scientists. At least 300,000 miles before the ICE reached the comet, it detected high-speed heavy ion beams never before found in space. ICE scientists theorized that these beams were actually low-speed molecules that escaped from the comet, were ionized by solar ultraviolet light, and then turned around by the supersonic solar wind and accelerated back toward the comet as particle beams.
ICE was then continuing on to take solar wind measurements upstream of Halley's Comet on two occasions-the second, March 28, 1986, to be within 19.5 million miles of the comet. (Spaceport News, Sept 27/85, 1)
Kenneth Adelman, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, told a U.S. House foreign affairs subcommittee that the U.S. should not change its military plans, such as delaying a test of its new antisatellite weapon, to assist in negotiating an arms control agreement, the Washington Post reported. Adelman argued that testing “would not impair” negotiations and “can constitute an incentive to the Soviet Union to reach agreements on a wide range of issues.” Although the Air Force had set September 13 as its first test of the antisatellite weapon against a target in space, congressional sources said the Reagan Administration might step up its test plan because of the negotiations or the November summit meeting. As of mid-July, the Air Force had no plans to test the weapon in September, because it had returned both the weapon and its instrumented target to their manufacturer for repairs expected to take through October. Thus when House-Senate conferees met in July to iron out differences on the 1987 defense spending bill, the Pentagon agreed to a provision that limited the Air Force to three tests against a target in space through the end of FY 86. “They said they would not have a test before the new fiscal year began in October,” one conferee recalled.
Pentagon sources said Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and President Reagan agreed in early August to test the weapon against an old U.S. satellite “to show resolve.” Critics of the weapon, including four members of Congress, had filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington seeking to block the test, arguing that Reagan had not met a congressional requirement that he certify he was negotiating “in good faith” to get an agreement with the Soviets limiting such weapons. Oral arguments in the case were set for September 12.
Rep. George Brown Jr. (D-Calif.), one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, told the subcommittee the presidential certification was “less than candid” and “circumvented the intent and will of the Congress.” Brown also criticized the weapon, which was two years behind schedule, saying that the Pentagon talked about “how vital to the national security the system is, right up to the"day they cancel it.” (W Post, Sept 12/85, A26)
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