bryan@SDCSVAX.ARPA (09/05/85)
From: crash!bryan@sdcsvax.arpa #: 54855 S1/NASA Space Programs 27-Aug-85 10:27:32 Sb: Satellite on a String Fm: Tom Neff 75176,3532 AP 08/27 10:38 EDT a0570 STANFORD, Calif. (AP) -- A 1988 space shuttle experiment in which a satellite will be dropped into the upper atmosphere at the end of a 12-milelong cable will allow study of a state of matter rarely found on Earth, say the scientists designing it. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Space Plan Office of the Italian National Reseach Council last week selected Stanford University's proposal for the experiment to be carried on three missions. The shuttle, cable and satellite together will form "the largest object ever flown anywhere, anytime. It will be more than 100 times larger than anything that has ever flown," Stanford Professor Roger Williamson said Monday. NASA selected Stanford's Shuttle Electrodynamic Tether System (SETS) from more than 75 proposals submitted by scientist worldwide for the study of ionized gases and their properties in the upper ionosphere. Using the tether, which will be barely a half-inch wide, will put the satellite into a little-known region of the ionosphere that is dense enough to slow a free satellite and make it fall. At the same time, the shuttle will be high enough that atmospheric drag can be ignored. The tether also allows scientists to examine two regions simultaneously, said Williams, a member of a team of Stanford electrical engineers led by Professor Peter Banks. The region to be studied by the satellite is made up of ionized, charged particles or plasma, a state of matter rare on Earth outside of lightning and other high-temperature or electrical reactions but believed to be the most abundant type of matter in the universe. An international team of scientists, including the half-dozen Stanord scientists, also will study how a large structure such as the shuttle and the satellite it will tow like a fish lure disturbs these excited particles, he said. "We hope to learn a lot about large structures in space like solar sails and solar power stations, especially since we've never had anything nearly this large in space," Williamson said. "In the next 10 years, NASA has planned 200 trips of the shuttles and a space station of unprecedented size. It is incumbent on us to understand that atmosphere." If the flight is successful, a second shuttle will tow a satellite at the end of a tether 62 miles long, he said.