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Aviation History
1970
1970 - 0663.PDF
I NATO SATELLITE LAUNCHED A satellite built in America for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was launched from Cape Kennedy on March 20. NATO-I is the first of two spin-stabilised communication 1 satellites to be built by Philco-Ford to provide a direct link between NATO headquarters in Brussels, the other Treaty 1 countries and armed forces in the field. It will link areas in the northern hemisphere as far apart as Virginia and Ankara. ' Turkey. The second satellite, a back-up, will be launched next June into orbit alongside the first. f The satellite is very similar to Britain's military communica tion satellite Skynet, also built by Philco-Ford. It measures 1 54in diameter and 32in high over the drum, or 63in over the mechanically de-spun antenna. The weight was 5351b at I launch, but this will come down to 2851b after the expenditure of fuel for orbit adjustment. The launch was to have taken place on March 18, but was postponed for two days after laboratory tests and cine-film of a static firing had revealed i a potential "hot-spot" problem with the nozzle of the third- stage engine of the Delta launch vehicle. The final countdown and launch proceeded uneventfully, the satellite being placed in a 170- by 22,300-mile transfer path for five orbits. The path was then circularised, with the satellite in stationary orbit over the Atlantic, by means of the 4,500lb-thrust apogee motor. The entire programme will cost about $50 million. Of this, $30 million will buy the ground-terminals and related facilities in Europe, while the satellites themselves cost $5 million each. The cost of the launch vehicles and facilities is also $5 million per flight. As with Skynet, the satellite was bought from Philco-Ford through the United States Air Force, which acts as a procurement agency. It was this same Air Force-industry team which set up IDCSP (Interim Defence Communication Satellite (•rogramme), the system of 26 military satellites flown in multiple launches into near synchronous orbits by Titan 3 rockets during 1967-1968. The Earth segment of this very advanced system will comprise 12 satellites in as many countries, plus several terminals on NATO command ships. The satellites will be controlled and monitored from a central Earth station near ' Brussels. Eight of the stations are expected to be in operation i before the end of the year, two more will be ready in January 1970, another during the following month, and the final one ' in June 1971. Only three of the 15 member nations of NATO —France, Luxemburg and Iceland—will not have terminals. r but these countries can make use of the facilities by the use of land-lines (cables or micro-wave links) connected to the - nearest terminal. EUROPEAN SATELLITE ROUND-UP « Europe's first satellite, IRIS (ESRO 2b), completed its 10,000th Earth orbit on March 24. Launched on May 17, 1968, it was * designed for a six-month operational life, but there is now every prospect of a four-fold improvement on this figure. The * scientific experiments on board continue to function satisfac torily and data on solar electromagnetic and particle radiation is being continuously received. ESRO 2. the first flight model, * was destroyed during a launch-vehicle failure on May 29, 1967. I The second satellite, Aurorae (ESRO 1), launched on October 3, 1968, also continues to operate satisfactorily. This satellite * was designed to monitor the auroral phenomena which have K been prominent during the period of maximum solar activity. occuring in 1969-1970; it also has outlasted its six-month , 9 April 1970 607 design life. At the beginning of March the satellite had completed 7,500 orbits, had executed more than 31,500 commands, and had transmitted more than 41j500min of real time data. The third ESRO satellite, HEOS 1, which was launched on December 5, 1968, recently completed its 100th orbit. This satellite follows a highly eccentric orbit which takes it out nearly two-thirds of the way to the Moon to explore inter planetary space beyond that region which suffers interaction with the Earth's magnetic field. Data from this satellite is received almost continuously and its experiments remain fully operational. ESRO's fourth and most recent satellite, Boreas (ESRO lb), launched on October 1, 1969, was placed in a polar path, again for the purpose of studying the aurorae. The selected orbit was low, and an early cut-off of the launch vehicle engine caused the orbit to be even lower than planned. An early decay was therefore inevitable and, in the event, Boreas completed 835 orbits before re-entering the atmosphere on November 23 after two months of successful operation. BRITAIN'S SPACE COSTS The topic of Britain in space received an airing in the House of Commons on March 23. Mr John Farr (Con, Harborough) wanted to know the total expenditure of Government money on space to date. Mr Garmichael, the Joint Parliamentary Secretary at Mintech, replied: "The total expenditure on national space activities since 1966, including estimated expenditure for the current financial year, amounted to £56.6 million. He went on: "It is also important to recognise that we are co-operating with the other international bodies, in ELDO and ESRO and Intelsat, and that an additional £62.4 million is being spent on this." Mr Neil Marten (Con, Banbury) asked whether the Minister of Technology had yet received the report of the Working Group for a European telecommunication satellite. Mr The first of two satellites to provide a military communication system for Europe undergoes a test in a space chamber at Philco-Ford's Palo- Alto plant in California. Like Skynet and Intelsat 3, the new satellite is drum-shaped, is spin-stabilised and has a mechanically de-spun antenna
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