Jun 25 1980
From The Space Library
NASA reported that MSFC had chosen Ball Aerospace Division to negotiate a $9.5 million contract for design, development, and manufacture of a chemical release module for use in the first large-scale controlled investigations of dynamic phenomena outside Earth's atmosphere. Information on such processes in Earth's magnetosphere, ionosphere, and upper atmosphere was hard to obtain because the areas were so enormous and the dynamic activity was invisible.
Scheduled for mid-1983 launch on the Space Shuttle, the self-contained free-flying module would release in space chemical elements that would absorb sunlight and reflect distinctive colors; other chemicals would glow when reacting with oxygen particles in the upper atmosphere. Motion of atoms and ions colored in this way could be tracked. During the module's six-month lifetime, it would make 20 to 30 chemical releases for visual, camera, and radar observation. (NASA Release 80-99; MSFC Release 80-89)
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