February 1980:space activities report

SPACE TELESCOPE SERVICING

Underwater tests to evaluate methods and equipment which might be used to service the Space Telescope in Earth orbit have been conducted at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center,Huntsville, Alabama.

Pressure-suited astronauts from the Johnson Space Center,together with Marshall Center engineers, have been using the huge 1.3 million gallon water tank facility, known as a Neutral Buoyancy Simulator, which allows a close approximation of a zero-gravity environment. A full-scale mockup of a portion of the Space Telescope was submerged in the tank for the astronauts and engineers to work with in the simulation exercises.

Astronauts Bruce McCandless and George Nelson first tested the difficulty of unlatching a door to the telescope’s star trackers and other components, and determined optimum type and location of foot restraints and hand-holds. The underwater tests were made to decide what modifications,if any, are needed to permit removal and replacement of components in space, and the time required for such tasks.

The Space Telescope, scheduled for launch by the Space Shuttle in late 1984, can be retrieved while in orbit and positioned in the Shuttle Orbiter’s cargo bay, where spacesuited astronauts can service it as needed.

The mockup used in the Neutral Buoyancy Simulator was the aft shroud portion of the Support Systems Module. Lockheed Missiles and Space Company are developing the module under contract to the Marshall Center which has overall management responsibility.

Other portions were being added to the mockup until a virtually complete Space Telescope is assembled in the tank. The next series of tests will be concerned with insertion and removal of the Telescope’s scientific instruments.

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ARIANE SUCCESS

The maiden flight of the Ariane heavy satellite launcher from Kourou, French Guiana, on 24 December 1979 was “a total success”, according to the European Space Agency. "The functioning of the three stages appears to have been perfectly nominal. The fairing was jettisoned in the planned conditions.The payload separation was nominal and it took place at the planned time... [and] the achieved orbit is very close to the planned orbit.”

"The functioning of the Guiana Space Centre facilities and the down-range stations at Natal and Ascension was faultless and has permitted continuous tracking of the launcher and the reception of telemetry.”

The launcher was programmed to deliver a CAT (Capsule Ariane Technologique) into an orbit of 200 x 35,753 km inclined at 17.5 deg. to the equator.

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NASA SEEKS INDUSTRIAL PARTNERS

Guidelines have been set up for innovative joint ventures which will make it easier for American companies to use the environment of outer space for commercial manufacturing.

NASA is offering industry "equity partnership ventures” in the use of its Space Shuttle transportation system, technical advice, data, equipment and facilities. Administrator Robert A. Frosch calls the action “neccessary and proper to achieve the objective of national technical superiority through joint action with US domestic concerns.’

The guidelines are intended to facilitate the entry of American industry into an area traditionally left to the Federal government because of the high technology and high economic risks involved.

Space flight has been virtually untapped as a unique laboratory for materials processing. Cround-based research, however, as well as experiments in the Apollo, Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz flight programmes and with sounding rockets, showed that materials in a liquid state behave much differently in the near weightlessness of space than on Earth, and that this behaviour in space can be used to advantage in preparing a number of substances.

The joint venture programme envisages a government-industry relationship in which the risk capital and technical know-how of industry works in concert with the resource capabilities of NASA to develop and enhance US commercial leadership in the field of materials processing.

To this end, NASA is providing a number of incentives to American industry, including:

• Flight time on the Space Transportation System;

• Technical advice, consultation, data, equipment and facilities;

• Joint research and demonstration programmes;

• Proprietary information protection.