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Aviation History
1981
1981 - 3339.PDF
USSR orbits comsat THE Soviet Union's latest communica tions satellite, Statsionar 3, was suc cessfully launched, on October 9. The craft is one of the Raduga series, and works in the SHF band. Statsionar 3 is in geostationary orbit and will be used to relay telephone calls, and black-and-white and colour television for the Central region. • The USSR has flown a Vertikal 9 sounding rocket with a payload jointly supplied by the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. Vertikal 9's payload made observations of the Sun, and reached a height of more than 480km. • India's Space Research Organisa tion has completed assembly and test ing of its Bhaskara 2 Earth observa tion satellite. The craft has since been sent to the Soviet Union, in prepara tion for an Interkosmos launch. The University of Surrey's experimental satellite, Uosat, as it appeared during con struction. Uosat was launched successfully on October 6, and the control team at Guildford are now trying to stabilise its attitude IMasa defines Spacelab 4 NASA has chosen 25 experiments for its first Shuttle flight dedicated to life sciences, Spacelab 4, due to fly in October 1985. Human subjects are in volved in nine of the experiments. The experiments include six on cardiovascular and cardiopulmonary studies, three on vestibular work, three on renal and endocrine systems, three on haematology, one on immuno logy, four on muscles, one on bones, and four on general biology. Fourteen of the experiments are from US universities, six are from Nasa centres, three are from foreign institutes, and one is from industry. Spacelab 4 comprises one long habit able module. Large parts of the Spacelab 4 ex periments are being built by Nasa's Ames and Johnson centres. Nasa's life sciences programme is mainly aimed at man's health, safety, and perform ance in space. Galileo heatshield passes tests NASA'S Ames centre has success fully completed tests of the General Electric-built heatshield which will protect the Galileo probe when it enters Jupiter's atmosphere in mid- 1987. After entry the probe will have about an hour to send its observations to Earth via the Galileo orbiter. Nasa calculates that the probe will enter Jupiter's atmosphere at a speed of 48km/sec—fast enough to take it from New York to Los Angeles in just l-5min. Kinetic heating will brake the probe's fall with an acceler ation of up to 300g, and the gas layer next to the heatshield is expected to reach more than 8,300°C. The carbon phenolic heatshield has a maximum thickness of 100mm, but 90 per cent of this will burn off during entry. Design of the Galileo spacecraft is now almost complete, and about 95 per cent of the flight parts have been delivered. Galileo is scheduled for a Space Shuttle launch in 1985, but may be susceptible to budget cuts. Such cuts could delay Galileo further, or even cause cancellation at this late stage. Galileo is Nasa's only new planetary exploration venture, and its future is crucial to this science in the USA. Nasa's Jet Propulsion Labora tory in Pasadena, California, manages the Galileo programme. Looking into the Sun NASA has chosen two experiments to make use of its Solar Optical Tele scope, due to fly aboard the Space Shuttle in Spring 1987. The experi ments are to be supplied by the University of California and Lock heed's Palo Alto Research Laboratory. They will observe the Sun in the near infrared, visible, and ultraviolet spectrum. SOT has a diameter of l-25m, and will be supported on a pointing sys tem in the Shuttle's payload bay. The first flight will last about a week, but SOT is intended for repeated use. Now that the experiments for this flight have been chosen, the next step is negotiation of contracts between the experimenters and Nasa's Office of Space Science. Spaceshots... Comsat has received a $16 million contract from the US Navy for extended use of UHF capacity in the three Marisat communications satellites. The contract covers the year of use, which began on October 1. Nasa received the External Tank for the third Space Shuttle at Kennedy Space Centre on October 5. The tank is the light brown colour of the spray-on foam insula tion, saving about 270kg in paint weight and several thousand dol lars in manfacturing costs. Because the tank is carried almost to orbit, the weight saved is worth nearly the same amount of extra payload. Vought will continue systems man agement of the Scout launcher in a new three-year Nasa contract worth $39 million. The company handles systems engineering and reliability, as well as vehicle pro cessing and launch and logistic sup port. Fokker and Hollandse Signaal Ap- paraten have completed their work on the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (Iras), which has since been flown back to Nasa's Jet Pro pulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Iras is due to be launched from Vandenberg AFB in late August next year. Matra and the Australian National University (ANU) have signed an agreement to share in the develop ment of ANU's instrument package for the Starlab orbiting space telescope. The telescope, a joint Australian, US and Canadian ven ture, is due to be launched in 1989. TRW has won a $26 million Nasa contract to develop, integrate and install the Space Telescope Science Operations Ground System. The ground system comprises data- processing and planning facilities at the Space Telescope Science In stitute, Baltimore, and spacecraft checking and observation schedul ing at Nasa's Goddard Centre. Honeywell Avionics is to sponsor a Space Shuttle experiment in aero dynamics designed by 17-year-old Todd Nelson. The experiment will use high-speed photography to study how insects fly under weight lessness. Analysis of the results is expected to help scientists design apparatus for future space colon ists. Nasa's six-year search for extra terrestrial intelligence by listening to radio signals from the stars ended at the beginning of this month. The search was costing about £:2 million a year and has been axed because of budget cuts. FLIGHT International, 24 October 1981 1247
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