February 1982:space activities report

US/GERMAN SATELLITES

NASA and West Germany have agreed on a joint space venture: the cooperative project, Active Magnetospheric Particle Tracer Explorers, will use two spacecraft to study Sun-Earth interaction through active chemical release.

The mission objectives are to perform detailed studies of how solar wind ions enter the Earth’s magnetosphere and the processes by which these particles are energised in the Earth’s magnetospheric tail (the elongated portion of the Earth's magnetic envelope which streams away from the solar wind).

Tracer ions of lithium and barium will be released from the German Ion Release Module, and measured in the solar wind and within the magnetosphere by the American Charge Composition Explorer.

Ions will be released in three places around the Earth: in front of the magnetosphere at the sub-solar point; alongside the Earth at the magnetosheath (the boundary layer between the Earth’s magnetic envelope and the solar wind); and inside the distant tail of the magnetosphere.

The use of different ions will enable the project to study both the composition and dynamics of the natural charged particle population within the magnetosphere.

To carry out this project, NASA and BMFT (the W. German Ministry of Research and Technology) plan to develop and launch two spacecraft. NASA will provide the Charge Composition Explorer for launch in 1984 on a Delta vehicle into a highly elliptical orbit with an apogee of eight Earth radii. The German Ion Release Module will travel aloft on the same vehicle but with an additional kick stage to place it in a highly elliptical orbit with an apogee of about 20 Earth radii.

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DELTA LAUNCH ERROR

When two Dynamic Explorer satellites were placed in orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base on 3 August 1981 the craft failed to achieve their pre-planned orbits because of the failure by an engineer to make sure the fuel tanks of the Delta launch vehicle were filled with fuel, writes Gerald Borrowman.

Despite the error, the two satellites achieved orbit and the function of the experiments was not affected.

According to Ken Senstad, a NASA spokesman, “It was simple human error. It's the first time in memory that something like this ever happened as far as I know.

"We set up an investigation and after confirming this,revised our procedures so that it won’t happen again.”

The Dynamics Explorers are designed to study the interaction of the ionosphere and magnetosphere, two regions above the Earth’s lower atmosphere.

According to Senstad, the second stage of the Delta rocket was designed to carry 20,664 lb of liquid fuel. “But we have determined the rocket was 260 lb short at launch,” Senstad said. He explained that the engineer who was monitoring the fuel operation “saw visual evidence of overflowing” through a special porthole but failed to double-check a second set of gauges before cutting off the fuel flow.

"I understand it was a little more complicated than that,” said Hoffman, “I’ve been told they were using a new type of visual monitoring system and the engineer didn’t realise that.”

In either event, Hoffman said the first Dynamics Explorer had been expected to reach an elliptical orbit with a high point of 15,456 miles, compared to the 14,000 miles it actually achieved. The second reached 629 instead of 807 miles.

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SOVIET SUPER BOOSTER

The report Soviet Military Power, published by the US Department of Defense, claims that the large booster under development by the Soviets - possibly for launching a permanently manned space station in 1985 - will have a capability some “six-to-seven times” that of fhe Shuttle.

The USSR already orbits some 660,000 lb of payload a year - ten times the American figure.

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CHINESE SATELLITES

The Chinese made their first multiple-payload launch on 19 September when their CSL-2 booster put three satellites into a 1000 X 149 mile orbit. All three (the 9th-11th Chinese satellites) are described as being space physics satellites.

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SPACELAB 4 EXPERIMENTS

NASA’s Office of Space Science has selected the principal investigators and payload science experiments for the first dedicated life science mission, Spacelab 4, scheduled to fly aboard the Shuttle in October 1985.

Twenty-five experiments were selected for the mission,which will study the biomedical problems associated with human spaceflight and the effects of micro-gravity on living systems. The goal is to obtain medical and biological datathrough carefully planned experiments conducted on living organisms throughout the mission.

The science breakdown shows that six of the experiments concern cardiovascular and cardiopulmonary studies, three concern vestibular studies, three concern renal and endocrine studies, three concern hematology studies, one concerns immunology, four concern muscle studies, one concerns bone studies and four concern general biological studies.

The Spacelab 4 mission will consist of a Spacelab double habitable module equipped with a spaceborne biological laboratory.