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.