Measuring Meteoroids

Slim and tall, the graceful gantries of Cape Kennedy's Missile Row loomed over a week of intense activity. First rocket off the pad was a giant Saturn, its eight-engined booster still the most powerful the U.S. has ever aimed at space. With deceptive ease it ignited, accelerated and climbed out of sight. A few minutes later, the second stage blasted into orbit. Sizable pieces, which are dummy Apollo parts, detached themselves and moved away, leaving a curious folded apparatus exposed to space. Slowly that great gadget expanded its accordion pleats and flattened into a shiny aluminum wing for the Pegasus of the 20th century.

Electronic Collision. So frail that it can hold its shape only at weightless, airless altitudes, that wide wing is the working element of a satellite, built by Fairchild Hiller Corp., for detecting micrometeoroids. Pegasus' 208 rectangular panels are covered on both sides with thin sheets of copper and aluminum separated by plastic. The metal sheets are electrically charged, but normally no current flows between them. When a micrometeoroid penetrates the aluminum, it will punch a hole in the plastic and fill the hole with metal vapor that is a good conductor of electricity. Although the gas will dissipate quickly, there will be time for a brief pulse of electricity to cross the barrier and inform the satellite's electronic brain. Instruments in the satellite will record the time of each hit, identify the panel, and report roughly in what direction it was facing when hit.

Since the panel's aluminum sheets vary in thickness, they will be able to distinguish between meteoroids of different energy. Pegasus will store all such information and hold it until it gets a radio command to transmit its observations to the ground.

Routine Now. More detailed knowledge of micrometeoroids is considered essential for man's safety in space. But even so, orbiting Pegasus was not the most significant achievement of the Saturn launch. Far more encouraging for the future of space exploration was the smoothness with which the many-tiered rocket was dispatched into the sky.

Early space rockets, even small ones, spent weeks or months on their pads before taking off. Often, when they seemed to succeed, they accomplished only part of their mission. The failure of some small part kept them below the level of total perfection that is the absolute imperative of space. But nothing at all went wrong with last week's Saturn, which left its pad as routinely as an ocean liner leaving its pier.

The eight interconnected engines of the big bird's booster stage are training vehicles on which U.S. engineers are learning to handle the five much larger engines that will boost the Apollo spaceship on its voyage to the moon. Saturn's second stage teaches an even more difficult art. Its six Pratt & Whitney RL-10 engines burn liquid hydrogen, which is incredibly touchy to handle, but has an added efficiency that is considered essential for the moon project. The smooth success of last week's launch suggests that LH2 has at last become a routine fuel.

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