June 1983:space activities report

MORE IUS ORDERED

The US Air Force has asked Boeing Aerospace Co. to supply six more Inertial Upper Stages now that the first two have completed their space missions. The more recent one took the large NASA data relay satellite from Challenger's cargo bay during the STS- 6 Shuttle mission.

The contract calls for the delivery of the six, plus backup parts and six refurbishment kits for the “airborne support equipment” already provided by Boeing and used by the Space Shuttle to carry and launch the IUS and its payloads. The newly ordered IUS vehicles will be delivered between this November and April 1985; cost for each is about $42 million.

The two-stage IUS is a solid propellant upper stage for both the Shuttle and the US Air Force's Titan-34D rocket. The first was launched atop a Titan on 30 October last year, successfully carrying two Defense Satellite Communications Systems satellites to their precise deployment points in geosynchronous orbit some 22,300 miles above Earth. The stage is 5.2 m long, 2.9 m in diameter and weighs 14,700 kg; the first stage can generate up to 20,700 kg of thrust, the second up to 8,400 kg. By combining extremely high reliability parts, stringent testing and extensive backup systems, the IUS has a predicted reliability of better than 98 per cent, a figure never before reached by similar unmanned stages. Until the modified Centaur comes into service later this decade it will be the largest stage used by the Shuttle.

COSMIC TOOL KIT

Soviet cosmonauts Anatoli Berezovoi and Valentin Lebedev, during their 211-day space flight in 1982, carried some 17 kg of tools for repair jobs on the Salyut 7 space station, writes Neville Kidger. This was revealed by Mikhail Gelfand of the "Moscow Research and Development Association for Building Power Tools and Finishing Machines" - where the tools are designed and built - in an interview for the Soviet Union magazine.

The tools included screwdrivers, saws, drills, hammers and special equipment for conditioning metal before welding. During their 153 minute space walk on 30 July 1982 Berezovoi and Lebedev unscrewed a set of externally-mounted bolts and nuts with a special tool.

Tools taken into space have to be specially designed for the unique weightless conditions. The Soviets have designed hammers with hollow heads filled with metal shot (to prevent recoil) and a drill with an electric drive to neutralise reaction torques which would normally make the cosmonaut spin in the opposite direction. Other tools included nippers with rubber loops to secure them to the gloves of tne cosmonaut's space suit and a soldering iron resembling a ball-point pen.

According to Gelfand, the first to take a tool kit into space was tbe Soyuz 9 crew of Nikolayev and Sevastyanov. That kit weighed only 740 g and consisted of ordinary commercial tools, a screwdriver, knife, pliers and scissors. They were carried only in case of an emergency.

NEW ARIANE SCHEDULE

At its meeting on 23/24 February, ESA's Council established a new launch schedule because of the delays forced by the L5 failure last September. Ariane L6 is now scheduled for 3 June and the L7, L8 and L9 launches for 26 August, 4 November and January 1984, respectively. L6 will carry the ECS-1 communications satellite and the Amsat radio payload; the others will all orbit Intelsat 5 communications satellite.

The first of the Ariane 3s, L10, is currently scheduled for March 1984. Ariane 3 is a more powerful model, capable of injecting two spacecraft, each of up to 1,195 kg, into geostationary transfer orbits. The Agency's ECS-2 and Marecs-B2 satellites, the French Telecom-IA and B, the Arab League satellite, Arabsat-1, as well as the US Western Union's Westar-6, Southern Pacific's Spacenet-1 and 2 and GTE's G-Star 1 and 2 will be launched by Ariane 3. The Ariane 1 freed by the transferral of Europe's Exosat astronomical satellite to a US Delta vehicle will now be used for the Giotto Halley's comet probe in July 1985.

ASTRONOMICAL EXPERIMENTS

A new space experiment carrier called Spartan (Shuttle Pointed Autonomous Research Tool for Astronomy) has been developed at NASA's Goddard Space Center, writes Joel Powell. The free-flying payload, which occupies less than 5 cubic ft (0.14 m 3 ) and weighs less than 2,000 lb (900 kg), will be deployed by the Shuttle manipulator arm. Spartan 1, with a set of Naval Research Laboratory X-ray detectors, is scheduled for STS-17 in Spring 1984. Spartan 2, carrying two solar coronographs (UV and visible light) is ticketed for a late 1985 launch. Although not yet funded, Spartan 3 should follow with an ultraviolet payload.

Two ultraviolet astronomy experiments are destined for a new Naval Research Laboratory package named SURE (Space Ultraviolet Radiation Environment). Riding in the Shuttle cargo bay, an extreme ultraviolet spectrometer and a far ultraviolet imaging photometer will examine targets ranging from the terrestrial upper atmosphere to galactic sources during the mid-1980s.