Jan 11 1999
From The Space Library
Mario Dario Grossi, radio physicist and engineer, died at the age of 74 in Boston, Massachusetts. Grossi developed the concept of tethered satellites and the hardware to make them possible. Together with a colleague, Grossi had conducted most of his work at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Grossi had first approached NASA with his concept in 1972, and in 1982 NASA had issued a contract to build a system. In July 1992, NASA had tested the tether in space when astronauts aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis Mission STS-46 "reeled out a half-ton [450-kilogram or 0.45-tonne] satellite of the Italian Space Agency dangling on a spaghetti-thin cord 12 miles [ 19 kilometers] long." The successful test had provided data that would assist engineers in applying the tether satellite technology to build space stations or in "operating instrument-laden satellites far from the shuttle."
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