The Key West Citizen

Bell Labs Help In Spinning New Satellite Into Space

"[into a] 300-mile circular orbit with the Bell Telephone Laboratories Command Guidance System," said Bob Brown, Telephone company manager in Key West.

Brown stated that this radio-inertial command guidance is the same system developed by Bell Telephone Laboratories and Western Electric Company for the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division for use in the first squadrons of the Titan intercontinental ballistic missile.

It was also used last year to guide the successful Thor Able re-entry test vehicles. Included in these tests were the first nose cone recoveries after flights of ICBM range.

Capable of achieving what Bell Laboratories engineers describe as "pinpoint accuracy," the guidance system is well suited for space experiments, such as Tiros, where very precise control is required to obtain the desired orbit.

"In this command guidance system," Brown said, "ground-based radar continuously determines the position of the missile during powered flight.

A Remington Rand - Univac digital computer, developed for the guidance system, is also on the ground.

"The computer accepts these data and, by reference to previously stored trajectory information for the particular mission, computes appropriate orders to steer the missile on its proper flight path.

These corrective orders are transmitted by radio to the missile and are applied to the missile's autopilot and control system."

Brown explained that the principal guidance control equipment, such as the radar and computer, is kept on the ground. The ground-based system provides the ultimate in reliability since it is not subjected to the severe environment of space flight.

One question raised was whether the flights made during the last four years 'along the frontiers of the free world' were ever on the Soviet side of those frontiers.

The expendable portion of the guidance system, the units placed in the missile itself, is kept to a minimum to promote reliability in an environment that is far more rugged than that on the ground.

Among the advantages in this command guidance system is that it permits a reduction in cost and weight of air-borne equipment.

Each pound of weight in the second stage and in the "payload" or satellite requires hundreds of pounds of fuel to launch it.

A reduction in weight of the guidance system means additional instrumentation can be placed inside the satellite without requiring a greater amount of fuel for launching.

"A further advantage of this ground controlled system," said Brown, "is that it provides an ICBM squadron commander with a quite accurate prediction of where the warhead will land, based on the computer's calculations at the end of the missile's powered flight."

"The Tiros satellite is designed to use television cameras for gathering weather data which will be relayed back to earth. Two cameras in the satellite feed pictures into separate magnetic tape recorders for playback when the satellite is interrogated by a ground station at Kaena Point, Hawaii, or Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey."

Brown stated that the placing of the Tiros satellite in its circular orbit is the first use of the Bell Laboratories Command Guidance System in a NASA project. The three-stage Delta space vehicle, now under development for NASA, will also use the Bell Laboratories guidance system.