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U-M First To Complete Satellite Work

U-M First To Complete Satellite Work image
Parent Issue
Day
24
Month
July
Year
1962
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Copyright Protected
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Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
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[image]:  MADE IN ANN ARBOR: The little black box at the left of the main body of the U. S. Eagle Satellite, shown here in an artist’s sketch, and another in the main portion of the earth-circling device, will take the labels "made in Ann Arbor" a quarter of the way to the moon.  The two satellite packages, designed and built by the University's Radio Astronomy Laboratory here are the first payload units for the instrument to have been completed and tested.

U-M First To Complete Satellite Work

Scientists and engineers in the University’s Radio Astronomy Laboratory are the first of 20 contracting and experimenting groups throughout the United States to complete and test their part of the nation’s Eagle Satellite project.

Testing was completed at the Goddard Space Flight Center, Washington, D.C., over the weekend on the two prototype payload packages from Ann Arbor that will circle the earth a quarter of the way to the moon, Prof. Fred T. Haddock, U-M radio astronomer and project director, reported yesterday.

Completed about six weeks ahead of schedule and ahead of all other prototype packages for the satellite, the U-M units passed the design qualification tests 150 per cent above flight level requirements.

The U-M packages will record spectra of radio bursts from the sun and planet Jupiter in the 2-4 megacycle band, which is too low to observe from the earth because of the ionosphere, Prof. Haddock said.

Designed and largely built the U-M's former Plant Department Building at Forest N. University Aves., under the direction of project engineer Wilbur J. Lindsay and Prof. Haddock, the units were completed ahead of those under contract at six other major universities and several government and industrial laboratories.

Preliminary development of the packages was started year and a half ago by Lyman W. Orr, a U-M research engineer on the project. Others aiding in the engineering effort George S. Cohen, Robert Peltzer and Robert Finch.

The U-M project included the development and building of ground station equipment as well as the flight packages that are expected to increase knowledge of outer space. A small portion of the work was subcontracted to the Aero-Geo-Astro Corp. of Alexandria, Va.

Other university groups working on packages for the satellite, in addition to the one at the U-M, are at the University of California, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the State University of Iowa, the University of Minnesota, and Stanford University.

The U-M and Stanford, however, will have the only passive radio type experiments on the satellite which will circle the earth for a year as far as 70,000 miles out in space.

Designed basically to make geophysical and inter-planetary measurements, the satellite will contain equipment to detect cosmic and gamma rays and make trapped radiation, magnetic field and inter-planetary dust particle measures, as well as the radio type experiments.