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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 1364.PDF
468 FLIGHT, 21 September 19< Missiles and Spaceflight. . . ANGLO-AMERICAN SPACE TOPICS Astronomical Cost In the discussion following his paper UpperAtmosphere Experiments with Particular Reference to Black Knight and Skylark at the Anglo-American Aeronautical Conference inLondon last week, Prof Sir Harrie Massey, Chairman of the British National Committee on Space Research, declared that the expenseof exploring outer space could not be justified on purely scientific grounds. Scientists would certainly take advantage of flights tothe Moon, Mars and Venus if such flights were made but, on "United Kingdom financial standards," pure science alone couldnot foot the bill. Dr W. F. Hilton of Hawker Siddeley Aviation suggested that itwould be more valuable to place a telescope with a trained observer on the Moon than to mount a telescope in an astronomical satellitein Earth orbit. Sir Harrie replied that very few astronomers made discoveries by actually looking through a telescope—they studiedphotographic and other records, and they might well need a very large computer on the Moon in addition to a telescope there. Ifthe facilities on the Moon were good, well, all right, but we should not exaggerate the importance of having men on the spot. SirHarrie, for one, would not wish his income tax to go towards a lunar astronomical station merely for the sake of science. Mercury-Apollo Link The gap between the US Project Mercuryman-in-Earth-orbit programme and the Apollo manned lunar exploration programme will be bridged by extended Earth orbitsby Apollo-type spacecraft. This was stated in an interview at the Conference by Dr Abe Silverstein, Director of Space Flight Pro-grams, National Aeronautics and Space Administration. There was also the prospect, Dr Silverstein said, that the Mercuryprogramme itself would be extended. Initially designed for an operating life of 28hr, the Mercury spacecraft could be used for24hr orbital flights. It could, but probably would not, be used for orbital flights of several days' duration. The most important single development needed in the overallfield of space exploration, Dr Silverstein opined, was to increase the reliability of components. Tiros Data-Handling As briefly reported last week, details ofthe results achieved by the Tiros series of US meteorological satel- lites were given by Dr W. G. Stroud of Goddard Space FlightCenter in his Conference paper Meteorological Measurements from the Tiros Satellites. Included in Dr Stroud's paper were the com-parative details given in the table (right), and the following account of the complex processing of Tiros data. On the average, seven orbits of data (about 450 pictures and sevenradiation tapes) are obtained each 24 hours. The data received from the satellite are recorded in several formats at the ground stations.The telemetry data which handle all the "housekeeping" para- meters, such as voltages, currents, positions and so on, whichmeasure the performance of the instrumentation, are recorded on strip charts in analogue form for immediate analysis. The geo-physical data are recorded in two formats, one magnetic tape and the other as pictures. Both the picture and radiation data are recorded on high-fidelity magnetic tape. These tapes are shippi;to Goddard Space Flight Center for processing and archiv 1 purposes.For immediate operational use at the station, the picture dai i are recorded on 35mm film by means of a photo-kinescope. Tl ?film strip is rapidly processed at the station and teams of meteon - logists, by projecting the pictures on rough latitude-longitude gridwhich are machine-computed right at the stations, are able t-> prepare nephanalyses of the areas photographed by the satellite.These nephanalyses are prepared in a format for facsimile trans- mission so that within three to six hours after a satellite pass thefacsimile nephanalyses are transmitted to the National Weather Center at Suitland, Maryland, and then over the national weathercommunication circuits to the field users of meteorological data. Within these time intervals these nephanalyses of limited areas ofthe Earth appear at all major Weather Bureau stations throughout the country, on ships at sea. and at many of the US militaninstallations around the world. TIROS RESULTS Tiros I Tiros 2 Tiros 3 Launched April I, I960 Nov 23, I960 July 12, 1961 Days of data transmission ' 78* Approx no of pic- tures transmitted! 23,000 Orbits of radiation Still transmitting Still transmitting 35,650 12,000 data obtained M ajor failures t(1) Narrow-angle camera out be- tween orbits 22 and 572 (2) Relay failure destroyed bat- tery power system 1,601 367 '(I) Wide-angle !(l)One camera iens coated by \ shutter hung rocket exhaust,! up pictures poor (2) Decay of in- (2) Decay of in- terference fil- ter* on two scan radio- meters after several months terference fil- ters on two scan channels of radiometer * Beacons still transmit when in sunlight, t The radiation experiments were not included in Tiros I. + Five-channel radiometer motor stopped April 27, 1961. Balance of sub-system still operating. The original film containing the pictures is returned by mail tothe Naval Photographic Center in Washington, where it is pro- cessed, and positive and negative copies are made and distributedto all research users of the data. After gridding, the master film is sent to National Weather Records Center in Asheville, NorthCarolina, from which centre 100ft strip copies may now be purchased. The radiation tapes are mailed to Goddard, where they areprocessed in a two-step procedure; first, to a digital magnetic tape format which contains the raw radiation information as a functionof time; then, by mating this tape with a similar tape containing Left, Tiros 3 (upper foreground) and components for duplicate back-up Tiros payload (background). Right, Tiros 3 photograph of Florida pen- insula, showing line of thunderstorms across Gulf of Mexico. (Both illustrations from paper by Stroud.)
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