Word: nasa
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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...using solar satellites to capture vast amounts of energy may not be very farfetched at all. In spite of considerable scoffing at the sci-fi grandiosity of the idea, a report published last week, after a threeyear, $19.5 million study undertaken by the Department of Energy in collaboration with NASA, indicates that there are no insurmountable technological hurdles in the way of solar power satellites (SPS) as a major alternative energy source...
Weighing up to 50,000 tons apiece, solar satellites would have to be built in space itself, with materials carried aloft by a new generation of craft considerably larger and more powerful than the NASA space shuttle. Looking like great Erector Sets, the structures, about six miles long and three miles wide, would be made of long thin beams actually manufactured in space out of rolls of aluminum or carbon-fiber strips about as thick as the wall of a beer can. In the weightlessness of orbit, nothing stronger would be needed...
Though much of the assembly would be automated, as many as 600 construction workers would have to be housed at the orbital site for months at a time. As NASA's problems with the space shuttle's heat-shielding tiles have shown, countless un expected difficulties could crop up in such a complicated undertaking...
...scientists of Jupiter's Great Red Spot, a great whirling storm that has lasted for at least three centuries, Saturn's spots are smaller, perhaps only 12,000 km (7,500 miles) in diameter. Saturn's atmosphere seems at least as violent as Jupiter's. NASA scientists estimate winds at upwards of 1,300 km (800 miles) per hour...
Last week's surprises were only the beginning. NASA scientists expect their lode of data to yield discoveries for months to come. The advanced computer-enhancement techniques developed at J.P.L. for processing color photographs permit researchers to mute or intensify colors to help bring out the faintest details. It was during a photographic fine-tuning session, while he was rerunning fairly distant views of Saturn on the TV screen, that J.P.L. Scientist Stewart Collins, working with David Carlson, a visiting student from Drexel University, discovered the planet's 13th and 14th moons...