May 21 1980
From The Space Library
Jack Anderson wrote in the Washington Post that the controversial B-1 bomber, "like the wondrous Phoenix of Egyptian mythology, seems about to rise from the ashes" 3 years after the President "shot it down in flames": the House Armed Services Committee had voted $600 million for B-1 research and procurement.
The committee had asked Rockwell International, "which still hopes to build the big bird," to prepare a brochure comparing the B-1 with the FB-111 preferred by the U.S. Air Force to carry cruise missiles. The Post said an internal Air Force report prepared for Rep. Robert Carr (D-Mich.) indicated that Rockwell had "drastically" oversold B-1 capabilities. The brochure "grossly understated the range of the FB-111" by almost 900 nautical miles, comparing it on a low-level mission with a B-1 flying at a higher, fuel-saving altitude, the U.S. Air Force noted. Rockwell also "fudged on the delivery dates it promised in the brochure" by three to four months in one case, almost a year in another. The U.S. Air Force report said that there were "many other areas that are inaccurate." (W Post, May 21180, B-16)
NASA reported that a team using Voyager data found that Saturn's period of rotation (the length of a day on that planet) was 24 minutes longer than was thought earlier. Astronomers using Earth-based observations had calculated the length of a Saturn day as 10 hours, 15 minutes but admitted that their figures lacked accuracy. The inaccuracy of the earlier measurements arose from Saturn's lack of a solid surface; viewers could see only the cloud tops of the planet, with no sharply defined features to permit accurate determination of rotation.
The two Voyager spacecraft had recorded bursts of radio noise from Saturn and other sources in the sky during January 1980. By isolating Saturn signals from those recorded from the Sun, Jupiter, and other sources, the Voyager planetary radioastronomy team found that Saturn's originated at the planet's north pole and were precisely controlled by its rotating magnetic field. (NASA Release 8072)
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