Sep 21 1973
From The Space Library
The U.S.S.R. launched Cosmos 587 from Plesetsk into an orbit with a 289-km (179.6-mi) apogee, 177-km (110-mi) perigee, 89.1-min period, and 65.4° inclination. The satellite reentered Oct. 4. (GSFC SSR, 9/30/73; 10/31/73; SBD, 10/1/73, 152)
NASA held two Skylab press briefings at Johnson Space Center, while the Skylab 3 crew (launched into orbit July 28) completed its 56th day of work in the Orbital Workshop., At an Apollo Telescope Mount briefing, Skylab principal investigator James E. Milligan said that the Skylab 3 crew had operated the ATM console photographing the sun for 300 hrs. It was "remarkable how few mistakes they have made." The sun also had been cooperative. "During this mission we've had everything from one of the quietest Suns I have ever seen to a Sun that was as active as it ever is, at least during a moderately active day during Sunspot maximum." The crew had taken "thousands and thousands and thousands" of photographs of "on the order of one hundred" flares, coronal transients, and promi-nences. Jack H. Waite, Marshall Space Flight Center's manager of corollary experiments, said at a corollary briefing that all the planned objectives of the corollary experiments had been completed. MSFC's Material Processing Program Manager Robert L. Adams said the materials experiments had indicated that both electron-beam welding and the exothermic-tracing techniques could be used successfully in space for the assembly and repair of large structures. Experiments in the forma- tion of metallic spheres had generally indicated more spherical and less porous products than their one-g counterparts could be produced. (Transcript)
Pioneer 10-launched March 2, 1972, toward Jupiter-had traveled farther into space than any man-made object, NASA announced. The spacecraft, when it swung by Jupiter on Dec. 3 to give man his first closeup look at that planet, would set a speed record of 132 000 km (82 000 mi) per hr, breaking its own earlier mark of 51 683 km (32 116 mi) per hr set at launch. After the Jupiter encounter, Pioneer 10 would be hurled by the planet's gravity beyond the solar system toward the red star Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus. It was expected to cross the orbit of Pluto in 1987 still transmitting scientific data to the earth. The onboard experiments had been designed to yield useful data as far as 30 to 40 astronomical units, 4.5 billion-6.0 billion km (2.8 billion-3.7 billion mi), away. The spacecraft had been tracked and controlled so precisely that it would arrive at Jupiter within less than a minute of the time predicted at launch. NASA had submitted three applications to the National Aeronautic Association and the Federation Aeronautique Internationale for Pioneer 10's unmanned interplanetary space flight records: maximum distance traveled from the sun, maximum distance of communications from the earth, and duration of the mission during which the spacecraft had been functioning. (NASA Release 73-183)
Sen. Alan Bible (D-Nev.), with cosponsors, introduced S. 2456, the Geothermal Energy Act of 1973, to "authorize the Secretary of the Interior to guarantee loans for the financing of commercial ventures in geothermal energy and to coordinate Federal activities in geothermal energy exploration, research, and development." Under Title II of the bill, NASA would be directed to prepare a proposal for the use of space technologies and NASA services to explore and map geothermal re-sources. (CR, 9/31/73, S1726-9)
NASA launched an Aerobee 200 sounding rocket from White Sands Missile Range carrying a Goddard Space Flight Center solar physics experiment to a 290.8-km (180.7-mi) altitude. The rocket performed satisfactorily. Preliminary estimates indicated the experiment was 90% successful. (GSFC proj off)
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