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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 0154.PDF
142 FLIGHT International, 24 January !% Missiles and Spaceflight Launch of a Seacat anti-aircraft missile from Q ship of the Swedish Navy. This photograph WQS taken during sea trials, which showed the weapon system to be so reliable that it has now been purchased in quantity by the same Service (see news-item) SLOUGH TO PROCESS SATELLITE DATA British equipment will be used to process the raw data received from the second US/UK satellite, scheduled to be launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration next year. The satellite, known as S-52, is now at an advanced stage of con struction. The processing equipment should be in working order by next July at a special data processing centre to be set up at the Radio Research Station, Slough. In the case of Ariel, the first joint US/UK satellite launched on April 26, 1962. the initial stages of data pro cessing have been undertaken by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. For the second joint satellite, the magnetic tapes on which is recorded the information telemetered from the satellite will be sent to Slough from the various receiving stations throughout the world. These will contain measurements from several experiments recorded in a pulsed frequency modulation code, together with timing in formation. The new processing equipment at Slough will convert this data into digital form so that it can be used as the input in fast digital computers for further processing, and for eventual analysis. The tapes will first be "edited" to select the satisfactory parts and to assess their overall usefulness. Those tapes found to be of adequate quality will then be passed to the main programming and digitizing section of the system, where the pulse frequency signals are separated from the background noise and recorded in a form acceptable to the digital computer. In addition the processing equipment will print out data from two selected experiments and will draw graphs of up to four experiments simultaneously, thus permitting an amount of preliminary analysis, while it is engaged in the main task of preparing the input tape for the computer. PLANETARY PROGRAMME CHANGE Following the "complete success" of the flight of Mariner 2 to Venus, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has modified its programme of unmanned planetary exploration. The Venus flight will not be repeated in 1964, as had been planned, and NASA will concentrate instead on other projects such as the 1964 Mars missions and later flights to Venus using advanced Mariner spacecraft. Because of the long lead times involved, plans for the 1964 flights had been initiated well before completion of the Mariner 2 flight. It is on the recommendation of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, based on the mass of data obtained by Mariner 2, that NASA has eliminated from its programme the repetition of the Venus mission. Some of the information obtained by Mariner 2 has already been disclosed (Flight International, January 3 and 10). and the remainder is expected to be made available in mid-Febru ary. US/FRENCH SATELLITE LAUNCH The French National Space Centre CNES (Centre National d" Etudes Spatiales) has announced that the co-operative launching of a scientific satellite is to be carried out by France and the USA. Two Scout vehicles have been allocated by NASA for the launch of a satellite which is to be developed and built in France by CNES and CNET (Centre National d'Etudes des Telecommunications). Designated F-l, the satellite will be designed to measure the charac teristics of very-low-frequency radio-wave propagation, and will be ready for launching at the beginning of 1965. It will be launched from Cape Canaveral into orbit at an altitude of 185-1,850 miles, at an inclination to the Equator of 30-40\ MORE SEACATS FOR SWEDEN Short Brothers & Harland Ltd, whose Precision Engineering Divi sion at Castlereagh, N. Ireland, produces the Seacat weapon system for the close-range defence of ships (primarily against aircraft), announces that the Swedish Navy has placed two substantial follow- up orders. Sweden bought a number of Seacat rounds for evalua tion in 1959, and the decision to order more has been taken follow ing the start of the sea firing trials in which the weapon has been proved reliable. A Swedish Navy spokesman said in Stockholm on January 16: "'We believe that we now have an efficient anti-aircraft weapon which is well suited to the tactics and economy of our Navy today; it is also an advantage to get this weapon so early that we can keep pace in this field with one of the great sea powers." One of the advantages of Seacat is its flexibility, in that the weapon system may include various types of radar as an alternative to visual sight ing and radio command guidance. The Swedish warship Soder- manland is equipped with radar by the Dutch firm NV Signaal- apparaten Fabrik, as illustrated in Flight International for last September 6, page 407. The accompanying photographs may well have been taken aboard this vessel. South American Relay The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Relay communication satellite was used to trans mit messages between South America and Europe on January 12. Engineers at the Relay mobile ground station near Rio de Janeiro held telephone conversation with personnel at Goonhilly and Fucino, and teletype messages were also relayed. Messages were also transmitted between the Brazilian station and the US stations at Andover, Maine, and Nutley, New Jersey. Japanese AAM The Japanese Defence Agency announced on January 7, that "the first Japanese anti-aircraft missile" would be tested in March on Niijima Island, 100 miles south-west of Tokyo In fact, the weapon is an air-to-air missile; in many respects it resembles the Sidewinder, and it is viewed as an eventual replace ment for the American weapon. New RCA Radar Radio Corporation of America announced on January 3 that it had "solved the radar problem of tracking missile? with a take-off speed of 1,000 m.p.h. [sic]." Mr J. H. Sidebottom vice-president of the RCA Missile and Surface Radar Division at Moorestown, NJ, said that the solution was an infra-red sensor and a radar programmer. The IR sensor is mounted on the radar aerial and follows the flame from the missile, while the programmer stores information about the expected angular velocity. The firing signal is fed simultaneously to the missile and the radar, and the programmer turns the aerial to follow the rocket. The system has been tested on the Pacific Missile Range.
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