by Gideon Marcus
With both sides of the Cold War passing milestone after milestone in the Space Race, it's easy to neglect the less splashy events that are still, nonetheless, noteworthy. So here is a grab bag of July achievements that might have slipped below your radar amidst the Mariner news.
Mother Russia goes big
Four days ago, the Soviets launched Zond 3 with (apparently) no particular destination in mind. The timing is wrong for a planetary probe, and though the spacecraft sailed past the Moon, it is not being described as a lunar mission. What could it be?
The consensus is that the Russians are in a similar position to that of the Americans after a string of failures to launch a Pioneer to the Moon. Those missions had been designed as preambles for a 1959 Venus flight, but because of all the teething problems, the first probe destined for the Planet of Love was launched late. But while Pioneer 5 couldn't rendezvous with Venus, it could sail out as far as Venus and perform long range telemetry and endurance tests. The results of these came in very handy with Mariner 2 and now Mariner 4.
The Soviets have attempted to reach Mars at least twice with its Mars 1 and Zond 2 missions. Zond 1 was a failed Venus probe. It is likely that Zond 3 is an interplanetary probe, perhaps a back-up to Zond 2 as Mariner 4 was a back-up to Mariner 3. Rather than wait for another favorable alignment between Earth and Mars, the USSR has elected to launch Zond 3 as an endurance mission to test its systems at a distance. If they are successful, this will surely add to the reliability of their next interplanetary flights.
In even bigger news, figuratively and literally, the Soviets launched a satellite they call "Proton" into orbit on July 16. At 26,880 lb, it is the heaviest satellite ever put into orbit, and the Soviets have stated that they now have a new booster in the same class as our Saturn and Titan 3. Proton is billed as a science satellite, designed to investigate charged particles — and it probably is, like its predecessor "Electron". However, many experts see Proton as a precursor to elements of a Soviet space station, which could perhaps be launched concurrent with or in support of a lunar program.
Also on the 16th, the Soviets launched five Kosmos satellites in one mission, Nos. 71-75. Other than their orbital information (low) and that they're equipped with radio transceivers (of course), nothing else is known. They are probably not spy satellites since they seem too light be the Vostok-derivatives the Russians have used to date. They might be geodetic satellites, or perhaps engineering test craft.
Last, but hardly not least, Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, one of the nation's three leaders, boasted that the country had developed a "Fractional Orbital Bombardment System." This means that they can launch a satellite with a nuclear bomb, which can deorbit and hit any target at any time. Such a weapon makes our early warning radars virtually useless.
Sleep well tonight…
Think Blue, Count Two
Launched just two days ago, the third pair of Vela satellites will continuously monitor the Earth to ensure that the Soviets keep to the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963. Velas 3A and 3B orbit at an altitude of around 70,000 miles on opposite sides of the planet, ensuring that the USSR is always in sight. They are designed to operate for six months, but since the last two pairs lasted around a year, there's probably some engineering tolerance built in.
Piggybacked with the twins was ORS (Octagon Research Satellite) 3, whose mission is to monitor natural radiation far above the Earth's magnetic field.
Finally, though actually first chronologically, is TIROS 10, the latest weather satellite. It's funny; the TIROS series, begun in 1960, was supposed to be superseded by the next-generation NIMBUS satellites. Yet TIROS has proven so useful and reliable, that we still use them.
That doesn't mean this is the same old TIROS, however. For one, it's the second TIROS to be launched into a polar orbit, which means it circles the Earth as the planet spins beneath it. This orbit is called "sun-synchronous" which means that, from the perspective of the satellite, it is always the same time of day. Thus, every 24 hours, the entire world gets photographed in complete daylight.
TIROS 10 is the first of three satellites to be funded by the Weather Bureau “to be used to assure continuity of satellite observations for operational purposes;” the previous nine satellites were categorized as research missions.
It is astonishing that just ten years ago, there were no satellites of any kind. Now TIROS is a fundamental part of our daily forecast. It boggles to think what might be next coming down the pike!
Our next Journey Show features Dr. Lisa Yaszek, a Professor of Science Fiction at Georgia Tech; Hugo Finalists Tom Purdom and Cora Buhlert; Marie Vibbert, author of 50 science fiction stories in magazines like Analog and F&SF; plus a musical performance by Lorelei!
