The Complete Book of Spaceflight: From Apollo 1 to Zero Gravity

164 Glennan, T(homas) Keith
istrator Dan Goldin at the time: “I cannot think of a better
way to pay tribute to two of Ohio’s famous sons—one
an aeronautic researcher and the other an astronaut legend
and lawmaker—than by naming a NASA research
center after them.” 73
Glennan, T(homas) Keith (1905–1995)
The first administrator of NASA, serving from 1958 to
1961. Glennan earned a B.S. in electrical engineering
from the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University in
1927 before becoming involved with the newly developed
sound motion-picture industry at Paramount Pictures and
Samuel Goldwyn Studios. In 1942, he joined the Columbia
University Division of War Research, serving first as
administrator and then as director of the U.S. Navy’s
Underwater Sound Laboratories. Shortly after the end of
the war, he was appointed president of the Case Institute
of Technology, in Cleveland, Ohio, and from October
1950 to November 1952, concurrent with his Case presidency,
was a member of the Atomic Energy Commission.
During his period as NASA administrator, Glennan
presided over the unification of the nation’s civilian space
projects and the addition to the agency’s organization of
the Goddard Space Flight Center, the Marshall Space
Flight Center, and JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory).
Upon leaving NASA in January 1961, he returned to the
Case Institute of Technology, where he continued to serve
as president until 1966. During this period he helped to
negotiate the merger of Case with Western Reserve University,
creating Case Western Reserve University. After
his retirement in 1966, Glennan spent two years as president
of Associated Universities, a Washington-based advocate
for institutions of higher learning. 153
glide
The controlled descent of an air vehicle using control
surfaces, not rockets, to maintain aerodynamic stability.
The descent is a result of gravity and lifting forces generated
by the shape of the air vehicle.
glide angle
The angle, or slope, of glide during descent. The glide
angle for the Space Shuttle during the final stage of its
descent from orbit is 22°.
GLOMR Missions
glide path
The descent of a gliding air vehicle as viewed from the side.
Globalstar
A consortium of international telecommunications companies
formed in 1991 to provide a worldwide satellitebased
telephony service. Together with Iridium, ICO,
and others, Globalstar is one of the new comsat companies
supporting global mobile voice and data communications
with a constellation of satellites in low Earth
orbit. The Globalstar constellation, launched in 1998 and
1999, consists of 48 satellites (with four in-orbit spares) in
1,400-km-high orbits inclined at 52°, allowing a concentration
of coverage over the temperate regions of Earth
from 70° S to 70° N. The satellites operate in the L-band
(see frequency bands). Space Systems Loral is the prime
contractor for the constellation; in parts of the globe
lacking a communications infrastructure, the handheld
Globalstar unit, supplied by Qualcomm, sends a signal to
a satellite overhead. The satellite then relays this signal
to a regional ground station where the signal travels
through a terrestrial network to its final destination.
GLOMR (Global Low Orbiting Message Relay)
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)
satellites designed to demonstrate the ability to read out,
store, and forward data from remote ground-based sensors.
GLOMR was first scheduled for deployment from a
modified Get-Away Special container on Space Shuttle
mission STS-51B, but failed to eject because of a battery
problem. It was reflown and deployed successfully from
STS-61A and reentered after 14 months. GLOMR-II,
also known as USA 55 and SECS (Special Experimental
Communications System), was roughly the size of a basketball
and had greater data storage, more redundancy,
and more space-qualified hardware than its predecessor.
(See table, “GLOMR Missions.”)
GLONASS (Global Navigation Satellite System)
The Russian counterpart to GPS (Global Positioning System);
both systems use the same techniques for data transmission
and positioning. GLONASS is based on a
constellation of active satellites that continuously transmit
coded signals in two frequency bands. These signals can be
Spacecraft Date
Launch
Vehicle Site Orbit Mass (kg)
GLOMR Nov. 1, 1985 STS-61 Cape Canaveral 304 × 332 km × 57° 52
GLOMR II Apr. 5, 1990 Pegasus Edwards AFB 489 × 668 km × 94.1° 68