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

18 ammonium perchlorate (NH 4ClO 4)
and it became part of NASA when that agency was
formed in 1958. Ames has some of the largest wind tunnels
in the world. In addition to aerospace research,
Ames specializes in space life research—being home to
NASA’s Exobiology Branch and the recently formed
Astrobiology Institute—and the exploration of the Solar
System. Among the missions it has been closely involved
with are Pioneer, Voyager, Mars Pathfinder, Mars Global
Surveyor, Ulysses, SOFIA, Galileo, and Cassini. The center
is named after Joseph Ames, a former president of
NACA. 212
ammonium perchlorate (NH 4ClO 4)
The oxidizer used in most composite rocket motors. It
makes up 68% of the Space Shuttle’s Solid Rocket Booster
propellant, the rest being powdered aluminum and a
combustible binding compound.
AMPTE (Active Magnetosphere Particle
Tracer Explorer)
An international mission to create an artificial comet and
to observe its interaction with the solar wind. It involved
the simultaneous launch of three cooperating spacecraft
into highly elliptical orbits. The German component
(IRM, or Ion Release Module) released a cloud of barium
and lithium ions to produce the comet, the American
component (CCE, or Charge Composition Explorer)
studied its resultant behavior, and the British component
(UKS, or United Kingdom Satellite) measured the effects
of the cloud on natural plasma in space. (See table,
“AMPTE Component Spacecraft.”)
Launch
Date: August 16, 1984
Vehicle: Delta 3925
Site: Cape Canaveral
AMS (Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer)
An experiment flown on the Space Shuttle and the International
Space Station (ISS) to search for dark matter,
missing matter, and antimatter in space. It uses a variety
of instruments to detect particles and to measure their
electric charge, velocity, momentum, and total energy.
AMPTE Component Spacecraft
Particle physicists hope that its results will shed light on
such topics as the Big Bang, the future of the universe,
and the nature of unseen (dark) matter, which makes up
most of the mass of the cosmos. AMS1 flew on Shuttle
mission STS-91 in May 1998. AMS2 will be one of the
first experiments to be fixed to the outside of the ISS and
is scheduled for launch in October 2003.
anacoustic zone
The region of Earth’s atmosphere where distances
between rarefied air molecules are so great that sound
waves can no longer propagate. Also known as the zone
of silence.
Anders, William Alison (1933–)
An American astronaut, selected with the third group of
astronauts in 1963, who served as backup pilot for Gemini
11 and Lunar Module pilot for Apollo 8. Although a
graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Anders was a career
Air Force officer. He resigned from NASA and active
duty in the Air Force in September 1969 to become Executive
Secretary of the National Aeronautics and Space
Council. He joined the Atomic Energy Commission in
1973, was appointed chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission in 1974, and was named U.S. ambassador to
Norway in 1976. Later he worked in senior positions for
General Electric, Textron, and General Dynamics.
Andøya Rocket Range
A launch facility established in the early 1960s in northern
Norway at 69.3° N, 16.0° E and used initially for
launching small American sounding rockets. The first
launches of Nike Cajun rockets took place in 1962, and
until 1965 the range was occupied only at the time of the
launching campaigns. In late 1962, ESRO (European
Space Research Organisation), aware that the rocket
range it had planned to build at Esrange, Sweden, would
not be ready before autumn 1965, reached an agreement
with Norway to use Andøya. The first six ESRO rockets
were launched from there in the first quarter of 1966, and
four were launched on behalf of CNES (the French space
agency) the same year. In late 1966, Esrange opened and
ESRO shifted its launches to this new location; how-
Spacecraft Nation Orbit Mass (kg)
AMPTE-1 (CCE) United States 1,121 × 49,671 km × 4.8° 242
AMPTE-2 (UKS) United Kingdom 402 × 113,818 km × 27.0° 605
AMPTE-3 (IRM) West Germany 1,002 × 114,417 km × 26.9° 77