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Aviation History
1981
1981 - 1604.PDF
1598 FLIGHT International, 30 Mar 1981 Shuttle tiles to be repaired NASA is to replace or repair up to 800 thermal-protection tiles on Orbi- ter Columbia before the next flight, currently scheduled for September 30. About 300 of the tiles will be re placed or repaired because of dam age sustained during the first flight. The remainder are being removed for densification—a process in which a silica-slurry is baked on to the back of the tiles to strengthen the bond with the felt attached to the Orbiter's aluminium alloy skdn (Flight, Febru ary 2, 1980). It has always been Nasa's inten tion to complete densification of Columbia's tiles before the second flight, which will experience greater aerodynamic and heating loads than the first. Most of the tiles to be densi- fied are on the wing surface and upper fuselage—areas that were not critical for first flight. During the week beginning May 18 Rocketdyne engineers at the Ken nedy Space Centre (KSC), Florida, were due to remove fuel pumps from Columbia's three main engines for inspection. The heat shield has had to be removed to allow access, but the engines will remain in place. The mobile launch platform arrived back at the Vehicle Assembly Build ing (VAB) from pad 39A on May 12, and on May 19 engineers began stacking the Solid Rocket Boosters for the second flight. Remaining mile stones before the second flight in clude; installation of the remote manipulator arm on June 22, loading of the Osta 1 experiment-carrying pallet on June 29, transfer of Columbia from the Orbiter Processing facility to the VAB on September 30: and movement of the Space Shuttle to pad 39A in late August. Britain plans new ground-station site BRITISH Telecom has bought an 87- acre site at Stert, near Devizes in Wiltshire, on which it will build several ground-stations for communi cations via satellite. The new site is necessary because space at British Telecom's Goonhilly Downs and Mad- ley sites is limited. British Telecom plans to have about six antennas at Stert by 1990—they will relay tele phone calls, data and television to Inmarsat and Intelsat satellites. None of the antennas at Stert will be more than 30m in diameter. British Telecom expects to have its first Stert station by early 1982. Canada gets increased space budget CANADA'S aerospace industry is to get an increase of C$64-4 million (£25 million) in its space budget for the next three years, according to the latest Government plans. The in crease means that Canada's space funding for 1981-82 will be £36 • 3 mil lion, that for 1982-83 will be £32-6 million, and that for 1983-84 about £32 million—a significant rise. One of the largest new projects in the space programme will be an Earth resources craft, which is being studied jointly with Nasa and the European Space Agency (ESA). Featuring a synthetic aperture radar, the craft would be launched in the mid-1980s. Arabsat bid confirmed by Aerospatiale AEROSPATIALE has confirmed that it is the only manufacturer chosen to negotiate with the Arab Satellite Communication Organisation for Arabsat craft (Flight, May 16, page 1495). Each Arabsat will be able to carry 8,000 telephone calls, plus one television channel for community broadcast. Aerospatiale teamed with Ford Aerospace on its bid and expects to announce a contract within a few weeks. At 28, Dumitru Pru- nariu (left) is one of the youngest men to fly in space (Flight, May 23, page 1543). He became the first Rumanian to orbit the Earth on May 14, when he was launched in Soyuz 40 with Leonid Popov (right). The cosmonauts docked with Salyut 6 at 22.50hr Moscow time on May 15 and were expected to re turn to Earth after a week in space Spaceshots... HEAO 2, Nasa's second High Energy Astronomy Observatory, reached the end of its useful life on April 25, when it ran out of attitude-control gas. The craft carries the largest focusing X-ray telescope, and was used to observe sources like stars, supernovae, galaxies and quasars. HEAO 2 was built by TRW and was launched on November 13, 1978. It lasted more than twice its design life, providing data on the composition of supernovae, mass distribution in galaxies and the origins of the extra-galactic X-ray background. Nasa's new chief administrator is James M. Beggs, and its new deputy administrator is Dr Hans Mark. Beggs was executive vice- president, Aerospace, and a direc tor of General Dynamics. He was with Westinghouse Electric for 13 years before spending 1968-69 with Nasa as associate administra tor of advanced research and tech nology. Beggs was Under Secre tary of Transportation from 1969 until 1973, when he spent a year with Summa Corp before joining General Dynamics. Mark was chair man of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California from 1964- 69 and then joined Nasa's Ames Research Centre. In 1977 he be came Under Secretary of the USAF, rising to Secretary of the USAF in 1979. Satellite Television Corporation (STC), a subsidiary of Comsat Cor poration, has requested a Space Shuttle launch in July and October 1985 for craft that will provide direct - broadcast television to viewers in the eastern USA. The first craft will be operational and the second an in-orbit spare. If STC is unable to get a Shuttle launch, its craft could be launched by Europe's Ariane. Nova, the first of the US Navy's latest navigation satellites, was launched from Vandenberg AFB, California, on May 14. The RCA- built craft is an improved version of Transit satellites and features a more powerful transmitter, a bet ter reference clock, greater compu ter capacity, and the ability to compensate for orbit disturbances.
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