FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1981
1981 - 0068.PDF
62 Nasa summarises results of Saturn flypast fUGHT international, 10 January 1981 NASA has now released more pre liminary results of the encounter be tween Voyager 1 and Saturn in Nov ember last year. • Saturn's atmosphere is similar in appearance to that of Jupiter, but features are muted by a thicker haze layer above the visible clouds. Tem peratures at the cloud tops range from -187°C to -181°C, with the cooler temperatures near the centre of the equatorial zone. • Radio emissions from Saturn and its magnetosphere region suggest that Saturn and its magnetosphere rotate once every lOhr 39-5min. • Saturn's outer F-ring has its outer and inner limits patrolled by the shepherding satellites S-13 and S-14 respectively. The outer edge of Saturn's A-ring is similarly bounded by S-15. • Saturn's D, E and F rings are mostly composed of particles less than two thousandths of a millimetre in diameter. Radio measurements of Saturn's C-ring imply that it contains objects of roughly a metre in dia meter, but also that there is a wide range of body sizes in it. • Each of Saturn's five new moons, S-10 through to S-15, was photo graphed by Voyager 1, but only the shapes of S-10 and S-ll were dis tinguished. S-10 has an average dia meter of about 200km, while S-ll measures roughly 135km X 70km. Both moons are believed to be made of ice and are about 91,000km above Saturn's cloud tops. • Saturn's inner moons are composed mainly of ice. Left Nasa's Voyager 2 shows Saturn's south polar region in close-up. Large-scale light and dark horizontal bands are not visible in Saturn's polar areas. Instead, there are smaller waves and eddies. Below Saturn's moon lapetus features a 200km-diameter crater with a dark spot in its centre Nasa technicians use a working model of the Space Shuttle's remote manipulator to deploy a Vought- built structure in the water tank at the Marshall Space Flight Centre at Huntsville, Alabama. Sixteen tests with two Vought beams and an inter connecting segment were made during five weeks. When assem bled, the structure measured 3m x 3m x 152m. This is the first time that Shuttle's remote ma nipulator has been used together with men wearing space- suits to assemble space structures mss'r**m 1 ^ 1 Arianespace wins more Ariane orders ARIANESPACE, the organisation set up to market Europe's Ariane launcher, has taken reservations for three more flights from non-European customers. Telecommunication Luxem- burger is to launch its RTL direct- broadcast satellite in May 1985. The other customer is the Colombian Government, which is to orbit its com munications satellites Satcol-1 and -2 in July and October 1984 respectively. Luxemburger and Colombia have paid a deposit of $100,000 on each launch and contracts are now being negoti ated. The only other non-European custo mer for Ariane is Intelsat, which has taken three launches for Intelsat V communications satellites. But the new orders reflect a lot of confidence, because they were placed after the failure of the European Space Agency's (ESA's) second Ariane test flight and before the third—now scheduled for June this year. ESA has firm orders for the Ariane launch of Exosat, Marecs B and Sirio 2 (double launch), ECS 1, Intelsat V-6, Intelsat V-7 and Telecom 1A. Ariane space is handling subsequent custo mers and has firm orders for the launch of ECS 2, ECS 3, Intelsat V-8, Telecom IB, TV-Sat, TDF 1 and Spot.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
