Astronautics and Aeronautics”, 1978: A Chronology

403 Pages·2007·7.79 MB·English

NASA SP-4023
ASTRONAUTICS AND
AERONAUTICS, 1
A Chronology
The NASA History Office
The NASA History Series
Scientific and Technical Information Branch 1986
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Washington, DC
NASA maintains an internal history program for two principal reasons: (1) Spon-
sorship of research in NASA-related history is one way in which NASA responds
to the provision of the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 that requires
NASA to “provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of in-
formation concerning its activities and the results thereof.” (2) Thoughtful study
of NASA history can help agency managers accomplish the missions assigned to
the agency. Understanding NASA’s past aids in understanding its present situa-
tion and illuminates possible future directions. The opinions and conclusions set
forth in this book are those of the author; no official of the agency necessarily en-
dorses those opinions or conclusions.
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
20402 (paper cover) Library of Congress Catalog number 65-60308
Preface
Astronautics and Aeronautics for 1978 is the 18th volume in a series of
annual chronological digests of principal events in the fields of
astronautics and aeronautics. Initiated in 1961 with a compendium of
events from 1915-1960, this series is designed to serve as a reference for
policymakers, reference librarians, and researchers. Each entry is fol-
lowed by one or more citations of sources to which users may turn for
further information on the particular event or development being chron-
icled.
The Astronautics and Aeronautics series is one way in which the
NASA History Office has attempted to implement its charter to
disseminate information about the activities of the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration, and to provide support for historians and
other researchers in the area of United States aeronautical and space pro-
grams. As a result of staff and budgetary limitations, the NASA History
Office has been unable to maintain the annual currency of this series. We
expect, however, to bring the series up to date with a forthcoming com-
pendium volume covering principal events over a six-year period. This
volume was written by Ms. Bette R. Janson.
Reliability is essential to the usefulness of any reference work of this
scope. As with previous volumes, readers can contribute by notifying our
office of any errors so that we can publish them in subsequent volumes.
Sylvia D. Fries
Director, NASA History Office
July 1986
iii'
Four varieties of spacecraft launched by NASA in 1978: top left, scientific inter-
national ultraviolet explorer IUE I, launched Jan. 26; top right, eartl-resources
satellite Landsat 3, launched March 5; bottom left, environmental meteosat Tiros
N, launched Oct. 13; bottom right, comsat NATO 3C, launched Nov. 18.
Contents
...
Preface .................................................. IU
January .................................................. 1
February ................................................. 25
March ................................................... 49
April .................................................... 77
May ..................................................... 103 ’
June ..................................................... 129
July ..................................................... 155
August .................................................. 181
September ................................................ 209
October .................................................. 235
November ................................................ 259
December ................................................ 289
Appendixes
A .S atellites. Space Probes. and Manned Spaceflights. 1978 ...... 317
B . Major NASA Launches. 1978 ............................. 347
C . Manned Spaceflights. 1978 ............................... 351
D . NASA Sounding Rocket Launches. 1978 ................... 353
E . Abbreviations of References .............................. 361
Index .................................................... 367
Illustrations
First women named by NASA as astronaut candidates ........... 9
Space Shuttle orbiter Enterprise ............................. 72
Six astronauts awarded Congressional Medal of Honor .......... 237
Photo mosaic from the Viking orbiter ........................ 267
NASA’s second high-energy astronomy observatory ............ 269
Artist’s concept. Pioneer Venus orbiter and multiprobe .......... 281
V
January
January 2: Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine reported that
President Carter would soon receive from Secretary of Defense Harold
Brown a plan for a unified U.S. space policy covering all government
and private-sector programs. The plan was the product of a policy-
review committee headed by Brown and consisting of representatives
from NASA, the Dept. of Agriculture, Joint Chiefs of Staff, CIA, DOD,
the office of the President’s national security adviser, and the Office of
Science and Technology Policy; the Interior Dept. and NOAA had par-
ticipated in a steering committee under the main group. After evaluating
the effect of the U.S. space program on foreign policy, national security,
and overall economic benefit, the group had agreed that national security
considerations were the main hindrances to formulating a national space
policy. The group had considered space-arms control (maximum
pacification of space, with limitatidns on killer satellites); availability of
reconnaissance-satellite data (greater federal agency access); regulation
of private-sector remote sensing (resolution limits); interagency manage-
ment (a coordinating committee, to be chaired either by DOD and
NASA, or by the President’s science adviser); broadcast satellite policy
(no restrictions on signals crossing national borders); and certain in-
telligence, DOD, NASA, NOAA, and civilian programs. (AvW k, Jan
2/78, 14)
Av Wk reported NASA’s announcement that it would send Pioneer IZ
to fly just outside the rings of Saturn as a pathfinder for two Voyager
spacecraft scheduled to reach Saturn in 1980 and 1981. Passing 15 OOOmi
rather than 3700mi from Saturn’s surface, the new course would place
Pioneer ZZ at about the same distance from Saturn as the trajectory of
Voyager 2, if NASA should decide to use Saturn’s gravity to hurl
Voyager 2 toward Uranus. The outside trajectory would permit NASA to
achieve the maximum science return for all three spacecraft. Pioneer I1
should reach Saturn in Sept. 1978. (AvWk, Jan 2/78, 15; Lewis News,
Jan 6/78, 2)
* President Carter’s $100 million reduction in MX-missile FY 1979 fund-
ing would not prevent DOD’s continuing advance MX development for
another yr, Av Wk reported. The remaining $160 million would cover
costs of assessing basing modes and alternatives for the missile. The
President’s decision to continue MX without starting engineering
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JANUARY ASTRONAUTICS AND AERONAUTICS, 1978
deveiopment would delay initial operational capability until 1987. Key
administration officials doubted that MX would ever be deployed, said
AvWk, because of its links to future SALT agreements preventing
deployment of mobile-based systems. (AvW k,J an 2/78, 13)
January 5: NASA reported a board of inquiry’s findings on the Sept. 9,
1977, failure of an Atlas-Centaur launch vehicle destroyed 55sec into the
flight. Launched from Kennedy Space Center, the vehicle had carried an
Intelsat IV-A. The board attributed failure to a rupture in the high-
pressure “omega joint” in the Atlas-stage gas-generator discharge line,
caused by contamination during production. Technicians had tested
joints on all completed vehicles, and all those at KSC had passed; a few
in the factory that were corroded or questionable had been replaced.
Changing the fabrication process should prevent further contamination,
the report stated. (NASA Release 78-3)
January 6: Lewis Research Center reported it had signed a $24 million
1 yr contract with Honeywell, Inc., Avionics Division, St. Petersburg,
Fla., for management and engineering support of Centaur inertial
guidance. This automatic self-contained navigation and guidance system
with a digital computer unit would permit Centaur to compute and ad-
just its flight for delivery of a spacecraft to a preselected orbit without
ground command. The nation’s first high-energy liquid-hydrogen liquid-
oxygen rocket, the Centaur, as an upper stage on both Atlas and Titan
I11 boosters, had helped launch Voyager I and 2, scheduled to fly by
Jupiter and Saturn in 1979 and 1980. (Lewis News, Jan 6/78, 2)
Preliminary analyses of Viking Orbiter I (VO-1) data on the Mars
0
satellite Phobos revealed low density and a spectral reflectance and low
albedo that suggested a composition similar to type I carbonaceous chon-
drites, reported Science magazine. VO-1 had obtained a spectacular pic-
ture sequence at 100km, an encounter by far the most demanding naviga-
tion performance of any interplanetary-spacecraft exploration to date.
Since Phobos had a mean radius of only 11k m and was only partially il-
luminated when viewed during the flyby, the VO-1 position relative to
Phobos had required accuracy of within a few kilometers. Imaging data
had revealed small positive features (hummocks), small craters with
bright ejecta blankets, dark material on the floors of some craters, large
variations in topography, and an abundance of linear features resem-
bling crater chains. Further analysis would refine density estimates to
determine Phobos’s origin. (Sci, Jan 6/78, 61)
January 6-7: NASA launched Intelsat IVA F-3, fifth of a series of im-
proved commercial communications satellites, at 7:15pm EST Jan. 6
from Cape Kennedy on an Atlas-Centaur into a transfer orbit. ComSat-
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ASTRONAUTICS AND AERONAUTICS, 1978 JANUARY
Corp had fired the apogee kick motor Jan. 7, putting the satellite into
near-geosynchronous orbit. After initial positioning at 74"E the satellite
would be moved to 60"E as backup to Intelsat IVA F-6, and was sched-
uled to be on station at 63"E by mid-June.
Intelsat IVA F-3 had an overall height of 6.99m and a diameter of
2.38m. Height of the solar panel was 2.82m. Liftoff weight was approx-
imately 151 5kg (33401b); in-orbit weight after apogee motor firing,
825.5kg (18201b). Design life was 7yr.
Ten Intelsat IV and IVA satellites were currently in synchronous
equatorial orbit over the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, providing
full-time telephone, teletypewriter, data, and television services to 107
countries, territories, and possessions. The Intelsat IVA had almost two-
thirds greater communications capability than the Intelsat IV series, with
about 6250 two-way voice circuits and 2 television channels in its system
configuration. The number of operating transponders had increased
from 12 to 20. Improvement of the antenna system had produced greater
effective bandwidth through frequency reuse by beam separation: for In-
dian Ocean service, the east-pointed beam *of Intelsat IVA F-3 would
illuminate Japan and Southeast Asia using a 320MHz bandwidth, and
would reuse the same 320MHz bandwidth in the west beam illuminating
Europe and Africa. In addition to eight east-beam transponders and
eight west-beam transponders, four transponders connected to an earth-
coverage antenna would illuminate all stations in the Indian Ocean
region.
The Communications Satellite Corp. (ComSatCorp), US.m ember of
INTELSAT, would be management services contractor for the satellite
system; ComSatCorp on behalf of INTELSAT would reimburse NASA
under a launch-services agreement for costs of the Atlas-Centaur and the
launch. The Intelsat IVA program represented an investment by 101 na-
tions of approximately $295 million (US); this launch had cost approx-
imately $47 million ($18 million for the satellite and $29 million for the
launch vehicle and related services). (NASA Release 77-250; MOR
E-491-633-78-5 [prelaunch] Jan 5/78, [postlaunch] June 23/78; W Star,
Jan 7/78, A-5)
January 9: NASA announced selection of 16 experiments in space
technology for the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) mission,
scheduled as payload for the first Space Shuttle operational flight in
1980. LDEF, managed by Langley Research Center, was a reusable un-
manned free-flying structure carrying various technical and scientific ex-
periments in special trays, providing an easy and economical means to
conduct primarily passive experiments in earth orbit.
NASA had selected the 16 experiments from 190 candidates that
responded to an opportunity notice distributed in June 1976. In-
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JANUARY ASTRONAUTICS AND AERONAUTICS, 1978
vestigators selected to date represented 6 universities, 6 private organiza-
tions or research institutes, and 5 NASA centers. Seven experiments were
from France, 2 from England, and 1 from Canada. R&D value, com-
patibility with LDEF and other experiments, and effort cost had been
selection criteria. Technical areas included materials, thermal-control
coatings, detectors, power, micrometeoroids, electronics, lubrication,
optics, and space-debris detection. Eighty percent of LDEF’s experiment
trays had been filled; the remaining space would contain microme-
teoroid-detection panels. LDEF would remain in orbit 6 to 12mo for ex-
periment exposure to space environment. The Space Shuttle orbiter
would retrieve and return it to earth; experiments would go to their in-
vestigators for data analysis. (NASA Release 78-1)
NASA announced appointment of Kenneth Chapman as associate ad-
ministrator for external relations, effective Jan. 8. Chapman had been
acting in the position since its creation Nov. 8, 1977, and had been assist-
ant administrator for DOD and interagency affairs since joining NASA
April 1, 1977. Chapman would be senior policy official responsible for
integrating NASA activities in public, Iegislative, university, community,
interagency, and international affairs. Chapman had come to NASA
from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He retired from the Air Force
in 1975 after a 29-yr career. (NASA Release 78-4)
KSC had begun preparation for launching Shuttle Orbiter 102 in Oct.,
0
Spaceport News reported. Construction of new facilities and modifica-
tions to existing ones were proceeding on schedule. The orbiter-landing
facility and orbiter-processing facility had been the only new facilities
built at KSC to support Shuttle operations. Other preparations included
modifications of existing facilities originally designed and built to sup-
port Apollo/Saturn operations. KSC would transform hanger AF at
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station into a solid-fuel rocket-booster
recovery and disassembly facility. (Spaceport News, Jan 9/78, 1)
The Commerce Department had predicted the total value of U.S.
0
aerospace-industry shipments of complete aircraft, engines, and space
vehicles at $22.2 billion this year, reported Aviation Week. This was a
21 Yo increase over the estimated value of $18.3 billion for 1977, resulting
from a surge of orders for large commercial transports in the first half of
1977 for 1978 delivery. A hundred data collectors working for DOC con-
cluded that the U.S. would maintain worldwide preeminence in aero-
space; that aerospace exports would continue to provide the largest U.S.
manufacturing trade surplus; that sales, shipments, and profits would
move up with the demand for large transports causing the greatest op-
timism; that general aviation would continue to grow in 1978; and that
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