Пособие по английскому языку

ween the crews. These assignments are complicated. Because of the differences between the manned spacecraft of the two countries, each operation presents difficult scientific and technical problems.

Soviet and American specialists set up working groups in five different areas: 1. Mission model and operation plans — spacecraft design, interaction of control centers, flight program, space crew and ground crew training, flight ballistics and scientific experiments; 2. Guidance and cont­ rol systems; 3. Mechanical structure of the docking system; 4. Communication and tracking provisions; 5. Life-support system and crew transfer. These groups were not as clearly defined as they are now, and they changed as the project developed. The division of the Apollo — Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) into several subproblems justified itself, though it required a high degree of efficiency in organizing the work.

derstanding. Instead of pressing each other, we always found a compromise solution, though at times complicated situations arose.

For instance, the question of compatibility of spacecraft atmospheres could have deadlocked the entire project. The Soyuz internal atmosphere consisted of oxygen and nitrogen at the Earth sea level pressure of 760 mHg (milli­ meters of mercury) while the Apollo atmosphere was pure oxygen at about 260 mHg. It became clear that unless the atmospheres of the spaceships were modified during docking, then even the use of the airlock would not ensure swift crew transfers. For example, to transfer from the Soyuz to the Apollo, the men would have to remain in the air­ lock for two to eight hours to carry out nitrogen desaturati­ on. Obviously such a procedure would not facilitate the rescue of a spaceship in distress. It seemed best for both craft to adopt the Soyuz atmosphere, since it resembles the atmosphere on the Earth in pressure and composition and is more lifeproof. Incidentally, in the future it will pro­ bably be standard for all manned spaceships. But in this project, if the Americans had shifted their pressure of 260 mHg to our 760 mHg, it would have required a major change in design and large expenditures of money and time.

If we had accepted the more rarefied Apollo atmosphere, we would not have had to redesign the Soyuz. However, it would have been necessary to repeat the whole experi­ mental adjustment of equipment and on-board systems be­ cause of the decreased oxygen content.

^Obviously each side had its own weighty arguments, and a long debate could have followed. After considering the pros and cons, we told our medical specialists to find a compormise that would make nitrogen desaturation un­ necessary and thus permit fairly rapid crew transfers. Ex­ tensive experimental work led to the discovery of the requi­ red pressure, 520 mHg in the Soyuz and 260 mHg (unchan­ ged) in the Apollo. This correlation made it possible to avoid the lengthy process of desaturation.

Creating an androgynous docking unit was less dramatic, hut more complicated. The units previously used in the Soyuz and Apollo spaceships did not meet the compatibili­ ty requirements, so that not a single one of them could be used in the ASTP program. Therefore it was decided to build a basically new compatible androgynous docking sy­ stem. Both sides devoted much attention to this job, rea­ lizing that such a docking unit could become the prototype of docking systems for future international stations. A num­ ber of experiments were conducted on the new devices. In August and September 1974 the docking units were tested jointly, their design was approved and their capability evaluated under the most rigid flight conditions. This checkup took place in Moscow at the Institute of Space Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Knowing how vitally important it was to ensure the safety of the first international space mission, we made a broad complex of ground and flight tests. These included two launches of a modernized unmanned version of the Soyuz spacecraft in April and August, 1974.

As part of the preparation for the Apollo-Soyuz test mis­ sion, Soyuz-16 was put into orbit on December 2, 1974, with Colonel Anatoli Filipchenko, commander, and Nikolai Rukavishnikov, flight engineer, on board. Soyuz-16 was identical to the one used in the joint mission. Its program tested the operations of all on-board systems and of the crew and ground complex under conditions as close as possible to the actual Soyuz — Apollo flight.

Now that the first experimental flight of Soyuz-19 and Apollo is over, we can note with satisfaction that all the

mission assignments were carried out. Alexei Leonov and Valeri Kubasov, aboard the Soyuz, and Thomas Stafford, Deke Slayton and Vance Brand, aboard the Apollo, perfor­ med their jobs admirably in spite of some unforeseen dif­ ficulties. Their piloting was superb. Mention should also be made of the efficient teamwork of the mission control centers and the excellent functioning of the complicated ground and artificial satellite communications system.

The implementation of the ASTP has provided valuable experience in international cooperation on major projects related to the exploration and use of outer space. We have worked out a businesslike, efficient method of operations characterized by mutual trust.

Many issues were decided in phone conversations con­ firmed later by a shorthand record. Every two weeks — and once a week in the prelaunch period — I talked on the phone with my American counterpart, Doctor Glenn Lunney, technical codirector of the Soyuz-Apollo Test Project. This method of organization proved very helpful in a situa­ tion where working groups were operating on different con­ tinents.

NASA Administrator James Fletcher once compared the Soyuz — Apollo mission to a climb up a mountain peak revealing new horizons of Soviet-American technical coope­ ration. I think this comparison is a very good one. Our joint work has been useful to both sides; it was the first extensive exchange of information on manned space flights and proved most beneficial to the specialists of both countries. Our successful cooperation in one of the most complicated fields of science has provided a wealth of organizational experi­ ence that can be used in other joint scientific and technical projects.

Moreover, our bilateral exchange in the area of space engineering can help further international cooperation. I am sure that space exploration will become a project for the entire planet, because it is international by its very nature. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the founder of cosmonautics, pointed out that in the future space travel would open up for human beings a kind of world ocean uniting them in a single family. The Soyuz — Apollo flight has given us a glimps of this future.

COOPERATION IN SPACE

During the joint Soyuz — Apollo experiment. Georgy Isachenko, Novosti Press Agency special correspondent in Houston, interviewed Glenn Lunney, the U. S. technical codirector for the flight. An account of the interview fol­ lows:

Glenn Lunney described to me the significance of the Soviet-American space experiment:

«It opens up new opportunities for the future, including the possibility of rendering aid in emergencies. In addition it paves the way for planning scientific missions, such as visiting a space station together. These are just ideas at the present stage, but I think we will continue our work on the rendezvous and docking systems. And when we find other missions that would be mutually beneficial, I predict they will be carried out.»

I asked Lunney what he thought of cooperation between Soviet and American specialists.

«On both sides», he told me, «we have had to adjust to a somewhat new way of doing business. However, I think the engineers and the managers have made that adjustment very well. I found that our meetings over the past year, for example, went very smoothly. We did not have any sig­ nificant areas of disagreement, a result of our learning to work together.»

Lunny had nothing but praise for Professor Konstantin Bushuyev, the project’s Soviet technical codirector.

«I have a great deal of respect for him and the job he performed in preparing for the mission. He is patient, know­ ledgeable and very pleasant.»

What was the most difficult1 part of preparing for the flight, the easiest?

«Probably the hardest job from the beginning was brin­ ging together the many different specialists we needed on both sides—people who could solve particular' problems.

«Probably the easiest part — and the most fun — has been sitting here in the control center where I can see every­ thing going on right in front of me, hear the astronauts and cosmonauts and watch the television screen.

I asked about the work of the mission control centers. «Execution of the mission by the control centers and the crews has been excellent. The same goes for exchanges between the centers during the flight. Over a period of four

or five months we created a good basis for understanding. We were able to discuss the situation fairly quickly and make ourselves understood.

«I would hope everyone will look at this mission and say: «It shows that people can work together at the level of en­ gineer to engineer, astronaut to cosmonaut and accomplish things in a reasonable and friendly way.»

Because it seems to be atypically electrically conductive, Io precipitates a large extra dose of charged particles onto the Jovian magnetic field lines that pass through it; some researchers believe that it also pinches in the closely adjacent field lines. The net effect is that there is a pronoun­ ced «flux tube» of charged particles mirroring back and forth between Io and Jupiter along the Jovian field.

Pioneer-11, says MJS magnetic fields co-investigator Mario Acuna of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, passed within 0.1 to 0.2 Jovian radii (about 7,000 to 14,000 kilometers) of the flux tube. This was enough to show a hint of enhanced particle activity but not to de­ tect magnetic effects. The first MJS craft to reach Jupiter is scheduled to fly due south of Io, right through the tube. A still more striking feature of the unusual moon is its ap­ parent «switching» effect on Jupiter’s powerful radio bursts, which, if they are not actually turned on and off by it, are

craft equipped with radio telescopes since Mariner-2, in 1962. (Radio bursts have also been discovered coming from Saturn and apparently from Uranus, and there are reported to be unpublished data that may mean the same thing for Neptune, all of which could be targets for the MJS radio «ears»). James W. Warvick of the University of Colorado, who has been studying Jupiter’s radio bursts since they were first discovered more than 20 years ago, will be the mission’s chief radio astronomer, in his first role ever as a spacecraft experimenter. He will be in charge of two 10-meter dipole

antennas on each spacecraft, arranged at a 90° angle to let them separate the circular polarization of Jupiter’s signals from the largely unpolarized galactic and solar emissions. In addition, says Warwick, it should be possible for the spacecraft to look hack «over their shoulders» at earth’s own radio output. This is of interest, he says, because the po­ larization of earth’s lowfrequency component (about 150 to 200 kilohertz, often associated with auroras) is not even known.

At Saturn, the moons on the target list include Hyperion, Titan, Rhea, Dione, Tethys, Enceladus and Mimas. There will also be photos of strange Iapetus, with its one highly reflective face and one dark one. (The anomalously shiny side was the location of the «star gate» in the book version of Arthur C. Clarke’s c2001: A Space Odyssey5). Unfortuna­ tely, says Smith, Iapitus will be too far away for what could have been infrared and ultraviolet spectra to be made by the spacecraft. The most important of them by far, however, is Titan, the most important target of the entire MJS mis­ sion except for Jupiter and Saturn themselves. If the se­ cond MJS craft is even to be considered for a Uranus visit, in fact, the first one will have to have logged a successful mission at Titan.

About 5,800 kilometers across, Titan is larger by nearly 1,000 kilometers than Mercury, yet less massive than Ga­ nymede. It produces its own radio noise, has an atmosphere that several researchers believe to be as thick as the earth’s

thane, says Veverka (who, though not an MJS experimenter, is a satellite specialist and a self-confessed Titan enthusiast), but more recent data have indicated the possibility of con­ siderable amounts of hydrogen.

In laboratory studies ultraviolet light and methanehydrogen atmospheres have combined to produce a variety of complex hydrocarbons such as ethane, ehylene, and ace­ tylene, the same sorts believed to exist in the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn, and infrared studies of Titan are con­ sistent with the presence of just such molecules. The diffe­ rence is that high temperatures deep in the atmospheres of the two gas-giant planets probably destroy the hydrocar­ bons as part of a cyclic process, whereas the frigid surface

of Titan may be at the bottom of a continuous accumulation of falling organic «goo».

In fact, says Cornell astronomer Carl Sagan, unless some other process is breaking up the reddish-brown goo, it could have accumulated over billions of years into a layer meters to kilometers thick. In short, says Veverka, Titan may be the best place in the solar system other than the earth to look for «very involved organic chemistry», a possible test of the theory that life on earth evolved from a primitive reducing atmosphere — just the sort of atmosphere that Titan seems to have right now.

Just as the oxidizing potential and simplified dynamics of the atmosphere of Venus combine to offer a natural la­ boratory for meteorological studies relevant to earth, Ti­ tan’s thick reducing atmosphere and 16-day rotation pe­ riod provide a chance to study a less-involved model of the gas-blanketed outer worlds, Veverka points out. The day is so long, he says, that rotation becomes almost negli­ gible in shaping circulation patterns; this is in sharp cont­ rast to the 9-to-15 hour periods of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and the distinct horizontal bandings they produce. Down below the atmosphere, Titan itself may be more interesting still.

Beneath the possible organic sludge-layer, says John Le­ wis of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, may be a thin, solid crust of methane and water ice over a large liquid mantle of ammonia and water. Further down, an outer core of wet, silicate slush may enclose a tiny center of solid iron sulfide. A meteorite impact, Veverka suggests, could crack the fragile crust, producing a huge fountain of dilute ammonia that is quickly photodissociated by ultra­ violet light into hydrogen and nitrogen, with potentially exciting contributions to the organic rain descending from on high. Glaciers, hot springs, self-healing craters, all sur­ rounded by a blanket that may be more intensely orange than even Viking’s views of Mars — the possibilities are intriguing. And MJS is planned to pass within 4, 100 ki­ lometers of the place, photographing objects as small as 500 meters across, analysing its atmosphere, and reporting for the first time from close up on what could be the most interesting moon in the solar system.

If (and only if) all goes well with the first spacecraft’s visit to Titan, and if the second craft is still in good health as it nears Saturn, the planet’s gravity will be used to send

the ecliptic. Almost nothing is known about them—they have never been photographed, even through the largest telescopes, as anything but points of light in the sky. Nep­ tune’s two even more distant moons are also out there wai­ ting, but not even the most optimistic of MJS supporters are seriously planning on a close look at them. «Twelve

ves. The advanced MJS camera systems will make the most of them. The first MJS photos of Jupiter, taken more than two and a half months before closest encounter, will be shar­ per, says Smith, than those taken by the Pioneer spacecraft only one day out from the planet. At best, they should show features as small as 6 kilometers across, some 35 times bet­ ter than the best of the Pioneer images. Each MJS craft will take up to 10,000 photos of Jupiter (and about 6,000 of Saturn), to be played back thanks to high data rates, at a pace whose peak may reach four times the capacity of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory computers to precess them. As a result of such rapid-fire photography, one plan is to make what amounts to a movie of the approach, showing 10 full rotations of Jupiter on its axis. Besides being an invaluable record of developing weather patterns it could indicate whether the convective turnover of the Jovian atmosphere is slow enough — some researchers have hypothesized that a given particle could take centuries to go from top to bottom — to sustain local temperature environments that could allow life to form from the precursors that are probab­ ly in the atmosphere. The MJS mission is not a biological one, but its data combined with atmospheric profiles from the proposed Jupiter Orbiter-and-Probe mission (a 1981 or 1982 launch, to penetrate the Jovian atmosphere in Nov.

Ringed Saturn is exciting enough as seen from earth, but by the time the first MJS craft sees it, scientists will have had 10 months to build up their anticipation even further by looking at he images returned by Pioneer-11, which will make its closest approach to the planet on Sept. 2, 1979. It is possible that both Pioneer-11 and MJS will be able

son is that by the time they are close enough to resolve in­ dividual particles, they will be moving so rapidly that such photos may be hopelessly blurred. Nonetheless, the overall ring structure, the Cassini divisions that separate the rings, and the banding and other features visible in Saturn’s own atmosphere will all be on the list, perhaps along with other special targets that Pioneer-11 may make known. At one time, says Smith, the possiuility was being considered of putting one of the MJS craft into orbit around Saturn, rat­ her than, just flying by, but this would have required larger fuel tanks on the spacecraft, added about two years to the flight time to Saturn, and caused a less-close encounter with Jupiter.

The resulting orbit, furthermore, would have a period of about a year, and the cost of ground support for even a single circumnavigation of such a leisurely pace would be considerable.

As for the moons, the cameras should be able to map about 30 to 50 per cent of most of their surfaces. This amounts to a quantum leap, since most of them are barely detectable from earth as discs, let alone featured ones. Ga­ nymede, Callisto and Europa will get far better coverage even than that, since the first MJS craft to arrive (Mari­ ner 12 — the second one launched) will see them as it leaves Jupiter, while the second one will see them as it approaches the planet.

But there’s far more to the mission than photography. The MJS vehicles will be the first planetary craft, (under the guidance of Frederic L. Scarf of TRW System Group) to carry plasmawave detectors. Whereas Pioneers-10 and -11 carried instruments to measure the energies and fluxes of the plasmas in the charged Jovian environment (as will the two Mariners), the MJS craft will also look at the plas­ mas’ overall structure—their wave patterns. This could help lead to an understanding of how planetary trapped radiation belts are sustained when plasma waves cause charged par­ ticles to precipitate to the upper atmosphere, changing the particles’ spin angle and kicking them free of the mag­ netic field lines to which they had been confined. The instru­ ments will also aid in studying Io’s switching effect on Jupiter’s radio emissions, and help with another of the mission’s goals: the search for lightning in the atmosp­

heres of Jupiter, Saturn and perhaps Uranus. With heavy atmospheres and radio emissions associated with all three planets, says Scarf, the presence of huge lightning bolts would not he surprising, and it is hoped that the MJS instruments will «hear» the resultant cascading radio frequencies knowna a «whistlers». Such whistlers are preceded by quick «snps»s of energy called «sterics», but, says James Warwick, a steric can ocur as long as 30 seconds before its whistler and might also he masked by the planet’s decametric radio bursts. Fortunately the time lag between steric and whist­ ler is in part a function of plasma density, so the plasma sensors will be able to lend a vital hand. And the MJS pro­ bes should be able to measure the particle sizes in Saturn’s rings, though not by taking pictures. The craft will fly so that their radio signals pass through the ring plane on their way to earth, yielding a size-distribution «map» ranging from shards a centimeter or two in diameter to huge chunks hundreds of meters across.

SECOND GENERATION STATION

Salyut-6 is the second generation station. It is the major element of the orbital research complex to be complemented with the Soyuz manned transport spacecraft and the Prog­ ress unmanned cargo spacecraft. The station can operate in manned and unmanned modes. Its weight is about 19 tons. The total mass of the complex is over 32 tons. The major developments of the station are as follows: a second docking unit; refuelling of the station thruster with the fuel deli­ vered by the automatic cargo spaceship; new means provi­ ding cosmonauts egress into space and their extravehicular activity; additional instrumentation for investigations and Earth surveys.

A second docking assembly has been installed primarily to provide docking of the station with two spaceships simul­ taneously. This is necessary in case on experimental mate­ rial is to be quickly delivered to the station and/or back to earth, or if an experiment is to be performed by a joint crew of 3-4 cosmonauts.

In the joint Soviet-French experiment «Citos» the bio­ logical culture was delivered to the station by cosmonauts Djanibekov and Makarov. In a few days the culture was brought back to earth by the visiting crew. The second doc­