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

Donald Slayton Deke Slayton suits up for an altitude test of
the Apollo Command Module in an altitude chamber of
Kennedy Space Center’s Manned Spacecraft Operations Building
in preparation for the Apollo Soyuz Test Project. NASA
Slayton, Donald Kent “Deke” (1924–1993)
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(ASTP) in 1975. Slayton received a B.S. in aeronautical
engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1949,
joined the Air Force in 1942, and received his wings a
year later. During World War II, he flew combat missions
over Europe and Japan, then became an aeronautical
engineer with Boeing in Seattle. He was recalled to active
duty in the Minnesota Air National Guard in 1951 and
remained in the Air Force, going on to attend the Air
Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base before
becoming an experimental test pilot there. After being
selected by NASA, Slayton was assigned to fly the second
Mercury orbital mission but was grounded by an irregular
heartbeat. He stayed with NASA to supervise the
astronaut corps, first as chief of the Astronaut Office and
then as director of flight crew operations. He eventually
overcame his heart problem and was restored to flight
status in 1972. Three years later, on July 17, 1975, Slayton
made it into space aboard the ASTP after 16 years as an
astronaut. For the next two years, Slayton was manager of
the Space Shuttle approach and landing tests at Edwards.
From 1977 until he retired from NASA in 1982, he was
manager for orbital flight tests. Later, he became president
of Space Services, a company that develops rockets
for suborbital and orbital launch of small commercial
space payloads. 272
slingshot effect
See gravity assist.
SME (Solar Mesosphere Explorer) 381
sloshing
The back-and-forth splashing of a liquid fuel in its tank.
Sloshing can lead to problems of stability and control in
a launch vehicle.
slot
The longitudinal position at which a communications
satellite in geostationary orbit is located.
SLV-3
An Indian four-stage, solid-propellant launch vehicle with
a payload capacity of less than 50 kg into a low-Earth
orbit with a mean altitude of 600 km at an inclination of
47°. Following an initial failure, the SLV-3 successfully
orbited three Rohini satellites in 1980, 1981, and 1983.
The SLV-3 formed the basis of the ASLV (Advanced
Space Launch Vehicle).
SMART (Small Missions for Advanced Research
in Technology)
An ESA (European Space Agency) program of small, relatively
low-cost missions to test new technologies that will
eventually be used on bigger missions. SMART-1, the first
mission in this program, will become the first European
spacecraft to visit the Moon. However, the Moon is not so
much the focus of the mission as the venue around which
SMART-1 will test a solar-electric propulsion system like
that employed by Deep Space 1. If successful, the unit
will be used by the Mercury probe Bepi Colombo.
SMART-1 is scheduled for launch early in 2003.
SME (Solar Mesosphere Explorer)
Ascientific satellite designed to investigate the processes
that create and destroy ozone in Earth’s upper atmosphere.
The mission’s specific goals were to examine the
effects of changes in the solar ultraviolet flux on ozone
densities in the mesosphere; the relationship between
solar flux, ozone, and the temperature of the upper
stratosphere and mesosphere; the relationship between
ozone and water vapor; and the relationship between
nitrogen dioxide and ozone. The mission was managed
for NASA by JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and operated
by the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space
Physics of the University of Colorado via the Goddard
Launch
Date: October 6, 1981
Vehicle: Delta 2914
Site: Cape Canaveral
Orbit: 335 × 337 km × 97.6°
Size: 1.7 × 1.3 m
Mass: 437 kg