Sep 4 1973
From The Space Library
World atlases were inaccurate in delineating outer bound-aries of polar icecaps according to imagery returned by Nimbus 5 (weather satellite launched by NASA Dec. 10, 1972), NASA announced. A Goddard Space Flight Center study had shown that synoptic photos from Nimbus 5 clearly indicated polar regions underwent large-scale changes in a short time. Boundaries between the multiyear icepack around the North Pole and the large areas of first-year ice varied significantly within one freezing season. Even greater changes occurred around Antarctica. Nimbus 5 also was measuring daily rainfall distribution over the earth's oceans to indicate to meteorologists how much energy was being released into the global atmosphere. An electrically scanning microwave radiometer aboard the spacecraft was measuring rainfall rate and heat thus released to enable forecasters to understand a tropical storm or hurricane and predict its 24- to 48-hr intensity. (NASA Releases 73-176, 73-175)
Assignment of L/C William E. Barry (USAF), a medical doctor, as Special Assistant to the NASA Administrator was announced. Dr. Barry had been selected from the White House Fellows Program, which provided highly gifted young persons experience in U.S. government and leadership. Dr. Barry had been an aeronautical engineer, a test pilot, and a flight surgeon in the Air Force. He had been named Air Force Systems Command Flight Surgeon of the Year and had won the Aerospace Medical Assn.'s Julian E. Ward Award for outstanding contributions to the art and science of aerospace medicine in 1972. (NASA Ann)
NASA launched a Black Brant VC sounding rocket from White Sands Missile Range carrying a Naval Research Laboratory and Harvard College Observatory solar physics experiment to a 235.1-km (146.1-mi) altitude. The rocket and instrumentation performed satisfactorily. (GSFC proj off)
A Chicago Sun-Times editorial praised the "mapmaking" of the Skylab 3 astronauts (launched July 28 to man the Skylab 1 Orbital Workshop launched May 14) : "We were particularly impressed to read about their assigned job of photographing a swamp in southern Sudan as they zipped over North Africa." Such tasks "point up the way in which a space shuttle can be used to facilitate jobs on Earth and, no less important, encourage co-operation between nations." (C Sun-Times, 9/4/73)
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