March 1981:space activities report

NEW AMERICAN SPACE MUSEUM

On 17 February 1980 a signal from the Voyager 1 spacecraft,then 375 million miles from Earth on its way to Jupiter, was relayed to Hutchinson. Kansas, via the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The signal triggered a laser, which detonated and fired an explosive device buried in the ground. This was the unusual groundbreaking ceremony for the Kansas Cosmosphere and Discovery Center, which opened to the public in October 1980.

The Discovery Center contains $85 million worth of artifacts from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Included in the more than 1,400 exhibits are nearly 150 items that have been to the Moon and back.

The highlight of the Hall of Space, which opens this spring, will be an entire set of actual working spacecraft, making the Cosmosphere the only institution, other than NASA and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, with a complete collection of American manned space vehicles. The Hall of Space will also have the Apollo-Soyuz trainer that was used in the first manned international spaceflight in 1975. Completely restored back-up Mercury and Gemini craft will be on display,along with a full scale Lunar Module (one of five in existence) and Lunar Module cockpit trainer. The Discovery Center staff has also restored an Apollo Command Module and installed video monitors in the windows and a computer system; visitors will be able to enter the module and experience a simulated trip to the Moon.

The Hall of Space will also have the only Space Shuttle cockpit trainer on display in the United States, with visual projections simulating a Shuttle landing. The Center has one of the largest collections of spacesuits in existence. The 25 suits include early Air Force suits,Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo suits, Skylab flight suits and sleep gear, as well as a set of one-of-a-kind prototype hardsuits.

Inside and outside the building will be a number of rocket engines, including several small thruster engines, a V-2 rocket engine, a Mercury Redstone and Gemini Titan, an H-1, and an F-1 engine from the Saturn V rocket. The hall will feature an exhibit on space benefits and spinoffs.

The William D.P. Carey Cosmosphere, named for one of Hutchinson’s most prominent citizens, will seat 110 people and will feature a Spitz projection system. The Cosmosphere is designed with a tilted dome, so both the dome and the floor are angled at approximately 21 degrees, suspending the audience in the simulated environment. It will be one of five theatres in the world using the Omnimax film projection system and Imax film, which has frames 51 mm high by 71 mm wide. The first film to be shown will be “To Fly,"the award-winning film on the history of flight which premiered several years ago at the National Air and Space Museum. Unlike the Air and Space Museum theatre, which projects the film onto a big flat screen, the Cosmosphere system will project the film onto the dome, filling 86% of its surface.

The Kansas Cosmosphere and Discovery Center is located at 1100 North Plum Street, Hutchinson, Kansas, USA 67501, on the campus of the Hutchinson Community College.

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VOSKHOD - IT S OFFICIAL

On 18 March 1980, the USSR's Postal Administration celebrated the fifteenth anniversary of the first space walk by issuing a miniature stamp sheet. The 50 kopeck stamp depicts Alexei Leonov floating in space, but the more interesting part is the surround. It shows Voskhod 2 as seen by Leonov, and in fact the sheet is Leonov's design. It is based on one of his own paintings. The miniature sheet is probably the first official Soviet document to admit the close relationship between Voskhod and Vostok. The spacecraft is depicted with the inflatable airlock extended from the spherical cabin and the hatch open. Vostok’s four long HF aerials are present, along with the porthole and the ring of pressurised gas bottles surrounding the base of the cabin.

The device on top of the sphere does not show any forward-pointing rocket nozzles where some observers place the reserve retro-rocket. However, this does not exclude the possibility of it having a jettisonable cover.

The new sheet contrasts greatly with the one issued just afterthe flight, in 1965, where a spaceman floats outside the square door of a domed, cylindrical spacecraft while another spaceman looks on from inside the cabin.

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ENGINES FOR GALILEO

NASA's Jupiter orbiting probe Galileo, which is due for launch in the mid-eighties, will use a European built engine system. Development and construction of Galileo's propulsion unit has been entrusted to the Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm company in Federal Germany. The 1033 kg module will consist of one main 400 Newton thrust chamber and thirteen smaller 10 Newton thrusters for attitude control and minor manoeuvres. Of the total mass,850 kg will be the bi-propellant fuel mixture of monomethyl hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide (N2O4), the technology for which stems from experience with the Franco-German 'Symphonie' satellites.

The propulsion unit will not be in operation during the early stages of Galileo's flight which will be a Shuttle launch. The JPL upper stage of the Shuttle system will remain attached until the Mars fly-by when the MBB unit will take over.