Jul 21 1976
From The Space Library
The Marshall Star reported on a Bicentennial celebration at MSFC's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, La., that included planting of a "moon" tree to commemorate the 7th anniversary of the first Apollo landing. Michoud was the place where giant Saturn moon rockets were fabricated. Participating in the program were Lt. Gov. James Fitzmorris of La.; MSFC Director Dr. William R. Lucas; and Robert Littlefield, manager of the Michoud facility. The tree was a pine grown from seed carried to the moon and back in 1971 on the Apollo 14 mission as part of research into effects of weightlessness on seed germination. The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture had planted the returned seeds, and the seedlings had been set out in various public areas over the U.S. such as in Philadelphia's Washington Square. As the tree was planted in front of the Michoud administration building, a time capsule was deposited to be opened during the nation's Tricentennial in 2076. The capsule contained documents, tapes, and pictures relating to the space program. (Marshall Star, 21 July 76, 4)
Marshall Space Flight Center announced award to Martin Marietta's Denver division of a cost-plus-incentive-fee/award-fee contract for $9 282 667 to deliver parachute decelerator subsystems for recovery of 12 solid-fuel rocket boosters from 6 Space Shuttle flights. The contract, effective through Dec. 1980, covers design, development, manufacture, and refurbishment of the subsystems. Work was authorized to start 6 July at Martin's plant in Colorado and at Pioneer Parachute Co. of Manchester, Conn., subcontractor. (MSFC Release 76-135)
An enormous radiotelescope "the size of the earth" to be used in studying the process of star formation in earth's galaxy had been constructed by linking 'installations in Washington, D.C., California, Australia, and the Soviet Union, the Naval Research Laboratory announced. Four large radiotelescopes distributed around the world had joined in using very long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) to record microwave signals received at each antenna on videotape, and comparing the recordings. The resultant huge antenna would be able to resolve a source less than 2 ten-thousandths of a second of are, comparable to the thickness of a human hair at a 161-km distance, or a man's footprint on the moon. An instrument this size would be needed to study primordial clouds in the constellation Aquila containing water-vapor molecules that emit intense microwave radiation through maser amplification, analogous to the operation of optical lasers. These water-vapor masers seem to be associated with star formation taking place in giant clouds in the galaxy; sizes of the individual masing sources, which may number more than 100 in a single cloud, range from half to 3 times the distance between the sun and the earth. The masing radiation offered a way to study the clouds that obscure radiation at other frequencies and to estimate the physical conditions that surround star formation. Installations in the experiment were NRL's 26-m antenna at its Maryland Point, Md., observatory; NASA's Deep Space Network 64-m antenna at Tidbinbilla, Australia; the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory's 22-m antenna at Semeiz, USSR; and the Calif. Institute of Technology's 39-m antenna at Owens Valley, Calif. The maximum spacing achievable is the earth's diameter (12 600 km), a distance approximating the separation between the Md. and Australian antennas (12 091 km). (NRL Release 45-7-76B/HF; NYT, 20 July 76, 13)
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