Dec 11 1980
From The Space Library
ARC reported that its Earth-resources survey aircraft (U-2) was helping the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, and California Department of Forestry fight fires by providing real-time infrared imaging of smoke-obscured landscapes. The images, used for the first time October 2 during a fire at Kings Canyon National Park in the Sierra Nevada where thick smoke blocked aerial viewing, gave the size, shape, direction of burn, and hot spots of the fire. Crews had to hike four hours each way to get to some areas.
Steep terrain would endanger firefighters and equipment if the fire perimeter was unknown.
Flying at 21-kilometer altitude (about 65,000 feet), the plane used a Daedalus multispectral scanner with a Fairchild charge-coupled linear-array scanner to send infrared (IR) images directly to ARC, which transferred the hard copy of processed information immediately to U.S. Geological Survey maps of the area. Within 10 minutes, fire control headquarters would receive a telecopy for use in deploying manpower and equipment. The U-2 could photograph a fire for up to 5 hours and transmit anywhere within 500 kilometers (300 miles) of ARC, located near San Francisco, covering virtually all forested lands in California. (ARC Release 80-90)
NASA announced development of a new lightweight flame-resistant material subject only to charring even at 800°F (426°C): polyimide resilient foam, a product of International Harvester's solar division at San Diego, under contract to JSC. Use of the new foam, available next year, would reduce hazards for buses, trains, and automobiles as well as planes.
Between 1965 and 1978, fires occurred in 20% of all passenger air-carrier accidents and caused 2,727 deaths, 469 of them (17 %) attributed to effects of fire or smoke. Airlines and builders of commercial planes had sought improved materials since the 1960s; in the late 1960s, materials developed by NASA for Apollo and Skylab were made available to the industry, which chose not to use them because of cost, scarcity, and lack of durability. (NASA Release 80-185)
INTELSAT said that the full launch sequence for INTELSAT 5A F2, world's largest and most advanced commercial communications satellite, was completed successfully December 10 when the craft unfolded its antennas upon command from the Washington, D.C., control center relayed through a ground station at Fucino, Italy.
Launched December 6 on an Atlas Centaur into a highly elliptical orbit, the satellite went into near-circular orbit when the apogee motor was fired December 8. For the next two days the control censer staff had been activating it into operational configuration, unfurling its giant 51-foot (15.6-meter) solar arrays and locking its sensors on the Earth, spinning up the momentum wheel to stabilize it facing Earth's surface. Final operation was antenna deployment.
INTELSAT 5A F2 would now drift in equatorial orbit to its station as primary Atlantic Ocean communications satellite by May 1981, when it would begin serving as communications link between the western hemisphere and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. (INTELSAT Release 80-29-I)
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