Union. The November issue of Icarus, international journal of solarsystem studies, had carried a prospectus of the Soviet CETI (communication with extraterrestrial intelligence) program divided into two phases. CETI 1, scheduled from 1975 to 1985, included the whole-sky scan by eight stations plus monitoring by two space stations and a survey of nearby galaxies like the one under way at Arecibo. Only the eight-station project had been initiated, as far as U.S. scientists knew. CETI 2, from 1980 to 1990, had been scheduled to continue satellite monitoring but would also use semirotatable antennas such as the RATAN-600 antenna 600 m wide, known to be located high in the Caucasus; the system consisted of numerous plates that had to be aimed individually, calling for hand alignment since no computer had been designed to perform this role. The Soviets also envisioned a monitoring station at the point beyond the moon where the gravitational fields of earth and moon would balance each other; a station at that point would be protected from the earth's own radio emissions. Identical fluctuations of signal recorded simultaneously at widely separated points would be considered to have extraterrestrial origin rather than to result from a local manmade effect. (NYT, 29 Nov 75, C13)

During November: An x-ray telescope assembled at Marshall Space Flight Center for the study of remnants of an exploded star had been shipped from England, where it had undergone payload integration, to the Woomera Rocket Range in Australia for launch. The project, called Skylark for the British sounding rocket on which the telescope would fly, was a joint British-American undertaking to study a supernova remnant known as Puppis A for information on the evolution of stars and perhaps on the formation of neutron stars. The flight would provide at least 3 min 20 sec for the 346.5-kg payload to make its observations above 120-km altitude. (NASA Release 75-287; MSFC Release 75-238)

⚫ States involved in NASA's land-use satellite applications had included Ala., Miss., and Tenn., which had organized statewide survey programs, and Mo., which had just begun such a program. The Southern Growth Policies Board, a 15-state group monitoring the South's development, had investigated application of Landsat capabilities to identify prime farm land, potential commercial sites, and land values. Georgia, working through Ga. Tech., Marshall Space Flight Center, and the U.S. Dept of Agriculture, had begun aerial surveys of Georgia's peach orchards to study the problem of premature loss of the fruit trees. MSFC aircraft provided multispectral photos and thermal data to be processed through Ga. Tech. computers, detecting stages of decline not visible from the ground. (MSFC Release 75-247, 75-251) • The first successful air drop of data-collection platforms for use by the Nimbus 6 polar-orbiting weather satellite would lead to another first: successful day-to-day tracking of ice-pack movement in the Arctic Sea north of Alaska's oil-rich Prudhoe Bay area. Knowledge about the interaction between the winter sea ice and the continental shelf would be important to government and to oil companies; government would use the information in allocating drilling areas and overseeing their use by private industry. Oil companies would need to know whether to locate drilling rigs on the ice or sink them into the sea bed; whether to bury pipelines under the ocean floor, lay them along the bottom, or run them over the ice to loading areas. The exterior sphere of the plat

forms, built to be dropped on the ice from small aircraft, had been constructed of a tough material to foil the hunger and curiosity of polar bears, which reportedly would attempt to chew on anything appearing different from the usual surroundings.

The tracking and data-relay experiment aboard Nimbus 6 had successfully completed its share of a transmission test that sent sensor, telemetry, and ranging signals from its near-polar 1110-km orbit to NASA's Ats 6 in geostationary orbit 35 900 km above India. The signals, relayed to NASA's Madrid receiving station, were immediately retransmitted to GSFC. Information gathered in the test would be used to design the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) planned for late 1979. The system would use two geostationary satellites to relay tracking data, commands, and communications between a central ground terminal and a number of spacecraft in low earth orbit; this would increase low-orbit spacecraft access to ground stations from 15 to 85%, reducing NASA requirements for ground-station networks. General Electric's Space Div., reporting on the success of the test, said the quality of all data received was excellent. (Marshall Star, 26 Nov 75, 4; San Diego Union, 9 Nov 75, 1; Aero Daily, 26 Nov 75, 140; SBD, 26 Nov 75, 143)

• The Bangui Anomaly-a massive magnetic disturbance in the earth along the equator in Africa, suggesting rich deposits of heavy metals like iron and uranium-had been accidentally discovered by Ogo 1, launched in 1964 with magnetometers that were still measuring the earth's magnetic field in 1970 when the Geological Survey decided to use them for other purposes.

Attempting to measure the ionosphere for traces of a jetstream above the equator, Survey scientists noticed a "kink" in the data and had checked their findings by scanning the region with magnetometers in aircraft. Results showed a magnetic difference so great that it could be caused only by an ore body larger than the Mesabi range in Minn., largest in the U.S. Scientists had deemed the find so important that NASA had suggested putting a satellite in orbit to do nothing but chart the earth's magnetic field.

The anomaly was named for the capital of the Central African Republic, an extremely poor nation almost as big as Texas with a population of about 2 million. The deposits had been localized in hilly regions away from the Ubangi River, so that a railroad or highway would be needed to carry ores to the river for shipping. State Dept. sources said that interest in the region among foreign mineralextraction companies had risen. (O'Toole, LA Times, 15 Nov 75, 1) • Energy from the Mideast had been forecast for cooling buildings in the Persian Gulf countries-but without using a drop of oil, according to the Christian Science Monitor. Solar energy would provide power to sweeten the waters of the Dead Sea, heat water for householders in Cyprus and Israel, and desalinize water for military units in Saudi Arabia. First desalination plant of its kind to use solar energy would be built at Aqaba by the Jordanian Royal Scientific Society working with Dornier of West Germany; the latter company would also build the small desalting plants for the Saudis. A world conference on solar energy had been scheduled for the new Dhahran campus of the Saudi Arabia University of Petroleum and Minerals, at the end of November. (CSM, 18 Nov 75, 2)

• A simple device familiar for centuries-the flywheel-had been the subject of a national symposium as a possible solution for some of America's critical energy problems. The first conference on flywheel technology, held at Berkeley, Calif., under sponsorship of the Energy Research and Development Administration and the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, had been told that modern materials and design had made possible a superflywheel that could transform the energy picture. The principle upon which flywheels performed-storage of mechanical energy by a spinning wheel-had been enlarged by the use of fiber composites developed for use in spacecraft nosecones that had greater strength-to-weight ratios, being 10 to 20 times stronger than steel and much lighter. As the amount of energy stored by the flywheel varied as the square of the rotation speed, the limit had been on the tensile strength of the material used; the fiber wheel could be spun faster to store more energy per kg than the conventional metal one, and would also cost less. A superflywheel might spin at 100 000 or even 200 000 rpm. Both the Soviet Union and American industry had displayed interest in developing the flywheel; use of the technology in automobiles would reduce pollution and would represent a safety improvement. The flywheels also could act in backup systems for homes using solar energy and windmills for their energy needs. Further investigation of the materials under stress-rupture tests was being conducted at the Lawrence laboratory and elsewhere. (NYT, 30 Nov 75, L84)

• National laws and national governmental institutions were inadequate to deal with problems arising from possible depletion of ozone in the stratosphere by manmade fluorocarbons, said a study by the Library of Congress. The Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences said the study would be "most useful" in its continuing investigation of pollution in the upper atmosphere. The study called for an international system of data gathering and institutional control, at the same time emphasizing the lack of conclusive evidence that fluorocarbons had reduced atmospheric ozone-although it found "very strong grounds" for believing that probable cause of harm existed. (SBD, 4 Nov 75, 12)

December 1975

1 December: National Science Foundation held in Chicago the first of 7 meetings scheduled nationwide to obtain public views on a Federal program for greater public involvement in science policy issues. Subsequent meetings would be held during Dec. in Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Boston. Oral and written statements presented at the meetings would be included in an NSF report to Congress. (SBD, 3 Dec 75, 173)

2 December: Space programs that create new commercial activity, new wealth, and new jobs were essential to the growth of both the U.S. and Europe, Sen. Frank E. Moss (D-Utah) told the Assembly of Western European Union. Reviewing policies that had governed agreements on space with Western Europe, Moss warned that continued cooperation in space would hinge on Europe's paying its full share of the expenses. Concentration on programs with immediate application to earth problems should not mean abandonment of space science, or loss of "the vision and imagination that have been so important to our achievements to date," the senator said. (CR, 10 Dec 75, S 21650; SBD, 5 Dec 75, 185)

• Defense/Space Business Daily reported that "a NASA spokesman" had said the proposed Mariner Jupiter-Uranus mission scheduled for 1979 had not been eliminated from the agency's FY 1977 budget and was "still planned." The Federal budget squeeze announced for FY 1977 had put the $177-million project in serious question. NASA reportedly might try to use one of its Mariner Jupiter-Saturn 1977 spacecraft as an alternative to permit a flight to Uranus. (SBD, 3 Dec 75, 175)

3 December: Dr. Maxime A. Faget, director of engineering and development at Johnson Space Center, received the gold medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers at its annual winter meeting honors assembly in Houston. Faget had been responsible for design and testing of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft and the Skylab space station, as well as of the Space Shuttle scheduled for flight in the late 1970s. Previous JSC recipients of the ASME gold medal had been JSC Director Dr. Christopher C. Kraft, Jr., in 1973 and former JSC Director Robert R. Gilruth in 1970. (JSC Release 75-98)

• Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, associate director for science at Marshall Space Flight Center, would retire after 30 yrs of Federal service on 28 Dec., NASA announced. Born and educated in Germany, Dr. Stuhlinger became a physicist and had been involved in rocketry and space work since 1943 when he joined the rocket development team at Peenemunde, Germany. He had come to the U.S. after World War II and worked for the U.S. Army before transferring to NASA when MSFC was wet up in 1960. Early planning for lunar exploration and the Apollo telescope mount had been carried out under his direction, as well as early planning on the High Energy Astronomy Observatory and initial

phases of the Space Telescope project. His work had included electric propulsion studies and scientific payloads for the Space Shuttle. (MSFC Release 75-256)

• The Peoples Republic of China announced it had successfully recovered an artificial earth satellite for the first time, becoming the third country after the U.S. and the Soviet Union to develop a technique for returning a satellite from orbit. The satellite, which had been launched 26 Nov., was China's fourth; the third had been orbited in July and the first two in 1970 and 1971. Edward K. Wu, Hong Kong correspondent of the Baltimore Sun, noted that Chinese scientists and engineers apparently had solved technological problems including development of a heat-resistant alloy to withstand reentry temperatures, automatic techniques for remote control, and a trigger system to fire the satellite back to earth. (B Sun, 4 Dec 75, A4) The automated docking of the U.S.S.R.'s pilotless Soyuz 20 with the unmanned Salyut 4 space station [see 19 Nov.] had been a preliminary to Soviet experiments aimed at building a permanent space base, the Christian Science Monitor said. Recalling the failure of the automatic docking system in August 1974, CSM quoted Maj. Gen. Vladimir Shatalov-head of the cosmonaut group-as saying that the Soyuz was being developed as a universal spacecraft for carrying crews, fuel, and provisions to scientific stations and for assembling complex structures in orbit; craft of this kind would "undoubtedly become assembly sites for large space stations to be set up in orbit." European observers had said the Soviet plan would be to launch the central part of the space platform first, followed by separate laboratory modules that would plug into docking ports to draw on the power and facilities of the mother station. The orbital stations would be supplied with consumables by a modification of the existing Soyuz, and this experience would be applied later to shuttles and space tugs. (CSM, 3 Dec 75, 7)

• Evidence that aerosols from spray cans had damaged earth's ozone layer had been under study by an independent scientific panel that would make its report early in 1976, the Wall Street Journal said, but Federal action against fluorocarbons was not considered likely before that time, and foreign governments were considered unlikely to act before the U.S. did. Fluorocarbon manufacturers and users had insisted that the ozone-depletion theory had not been proved, and warned of damage to an industry that had made products worth $400 million to $450 million a year, with manufacturing facilities worth $300 million. U.S. producers had accounted for about half the world's production of fluorocarbons, which was approaching about 0.9 billion kg a year.

Two Univ. of Chicago chemists-Mario J. Molina and F. Sherwood Roland-had advanced a theory 18 mo ago that fluorocarbons used in spray containers and in refrigerators and air conditioners were getting into the upper atmosphere, encountering ultraviolet light (more intense at high altitudes) that split the fluorocarbon molecules to release highly active chlorine. The chlorine had depleted the atmospheric ozone by converting it to ordinary oxygen. The theory had been partly confirmed in the laboratory by National Bureau of Standards chemists who showed that ultraviolet lamps would split fluorocarbons to produce either one or two chlorine atoms, depending on the ultraviolet