Nov 5 1976
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
NASA Hq announced that Robert S. Kraemer, Director of Lunar and Planetary Programs, would become special assistant to Dr. Robert S. Cooper, Director of Goddard Space Flight Center, working on the applications missions of the center. Kraemer had been at NASA Hq for 9 yr. 6 of them in his current position. (NASA Hq. special anno., 5 Nov 76)
LaRC announced that James S. Martin, Jr., manager of the Viking project, would resign in December to become vice president for advanced programs at Martin Marietta Aerospace. Martin, who came to LaRC in 1964, had managed the Viking project since 1968, directing work at JPL, at Martin Marietta's facility in Denver, and at universities and subcontractor plants throughout the U.S. Martin Marietta had been prime contractor for the Viking project. LaRC said that G. Calvin Broome, Viking mission director, would become Viking project manager 15 Nov., directing the 18-mo extended mission from the control center at JPL in Pasadena, Calif. (NASA special anno., 5 Nov '76; LaRC Release 76-37; NYT, 6 Nov 76, 9)
KSC announced award to Norflor Construction Co., Orlando, Fla., of a $284 000 construction contract for an airlock to provide a clean-room environment in the spin-test facility of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, to be used in preparing Delta-launched spacecraft and later for Space Shuttle payload processing. Construction would be completed within 160 days after contractor's notification to proceed. The airlock installation would include a 5-ton crane, air conditioning, personnel airlock, and lines for electricity, vacuum, compressed air, and gaseous nitrogen. Present clean-room facilities were occupied by elements of the Mariner Jupiter-Saturn spacecraft scheduled for launch in Aug. and Sept. 1977. Delta payloads scheduled for launch in the spring and summer of 1977 included Geos (ESA), April; Goes, May; OTS (ESA), June; Japan's GMS metesat, July; Sirio, an Italian comsat, August; and Meteosat (ESA), Sept. (KSC Release 490-76)
NASA Hq and LaRC announced that A. Thomas Young, former mission director for the Viking project, had been appointed Director for Lunar and Planetary Programs at NASA Hq and would begin his new duties 6 Dec. in the Office of Space Science. Young, who had worked with the Viking project since 1968 and helped develop Mars mission objectives, was most recently the mission operations manager and director of the 750-person Viking flight team at JPL in Pasadena, Calif. In his new job he would manage NASA's unmanned planetary programs, including Viking, Pioneer, Mariner, and Helios, as well as studies in planetary astronomy, atmospheres, and geology; advanced scientific planning, programming, and technology; extraterrestrial materials research; and flight-program support. (LaRC Release 76-40,; NASA Hq special anno., 5 Nov 76)
After a series of technical checks, the Ekran satellite launched in the USSR 26 Oct. had been activated, Tass announced. Ekran, in synchronous orbit, had transmitted experimental television programs over "a vast territory in Siberia between the Surgut and Yakutsk meridians," Tass said, describing the new service as a "gigantic telebridge." USSR first deputy communications minister V. Shamshin said the new generation of comsats would provide a reliable and economical system of television communications throughout the Soviet Union. Ekran, whose transmitters were apparently more powerful than those of the Molniya series, would dispense with the need for 12-meter ground antennas used by the previous Orbita system, Tass said. (FBIS, Moscow Tass in English, 5 Nov 76; Moscow Domestic Service in Russian, 6 Nov 76)
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