Foreword and Introduction

FOREWORD and INTRODUCTION Nearly eight years after the opening of the space era by the launch of the earth satellites 'Sputnik l' and 'Explorer 1', engineers and scientists working in the field of automatic control came together for the first IFAC Symposium on Automatic Control in Space in Stavanger in June 1965 to exchange ideas and experiences on" automatic control problems related to space projects, either in planning or in progress. Already at this first symposium papers were presented on exploration of the moon by the Luna and Surveyor vehicles interplanetary probes like the Mars-Mariner, Venera and Pioneer series of space probes to explore Mars, Venus and Jupiter particular problems of launch veh icles, such as structural bending, fuel sloshing and pogo oscillation and manned space flight in earth orbit with its anthropo-technical aspects. At this early date, flight experience was already available from the Mercury and Gemini and Vostock and Voskhod space ships respectively. There is hardly any other technology where the general progress was so closely related to the advancement of automatic control as it was in the space field. All major space events in the preceding decade were reflected in the topics of the Automatic-Control-in-Space Symposia. High-I ights were soft landings on the moon, Venus and Mars and the Jupiter fly-bys of Pioneers 10 and 11 the construction of larger and better equipped space ships for manned flight in earth orbit and to the moon such as the Apollo space ships and Salyut orbital stations the development of highly sophisticated scientific satellites in earth orbit, such as Aeros, Kosmos-261, the Intercosmos and Prognoz series and OAO-3, Explorer 42, OSO and OGO. Although the launchings of the Sky-Lab and the Apollo-Sojus space ships and the Helios 1 and 2 flights to the sun along with the Viking landing on Mars (scheduled for July 1976) are the main events since the VI. Space Symposium in Tsakhkadzor in 1974, the present era is characterized not so much by spectacular space science projects as by the application of space technology in communication, navigation, earth exploration and the utilization of the space environment in the research and processing of materials. Pilot experiments executed during the Apollo Sojus and the Sky-Lab missions yielded promissing results. A key function in this type of space util ization will be assigned to spacelab scheduled to be launched by the Space Shuttle in 1980.

Areas of importance in future automatic control. efforts are, therefore, the development of improved sensors, such as star, correlation and earth seekers and the remote control of highly sophisticated experiments. The rapidly evolving design of digital computers and microprocessors will make possible the implementation of far more sophisticated control systems than have been used in the past. At the VII. Symposium on Automatic Control in Space, invited and contributed papers will be presented. The invited papers, collected in Volume 1 of the preprints, cover subjects of particular importance for present and future developments in space technology, such as: interplanetary space flight attitude control of orbital stations and application satellites including ground station requirements Space Shuttle experiments Space-Lab payloads optical sensors. The contributed papers, collected in Volume 2 of the preprints, cover the following topics: satellite attitude control space launch, re-entry control sensors optimization methods orbital control, navigation, guidance underwater control, manipulators roving vehicles control subsystems. In line with previous IFAC Symposia on Automatic Control in Space, the VII. Sympoium is intended to serve mainly as a forum for discussions offering the authors of technical papers as well as interested participants the opportunity to exchange their views on probfems of current interest. Authors of contributed papers will give only a brief account of their papers stating results and details of rechnical applications including the most recent, wherever possible. The success of the symposium will depend, to a very large extent, on the quality of the preprints of the invited and contributed papers which are expected to serve as a reference and back-up for the discussions. The International Program Committee extends its sincere thanks to the authors for their efforts and kind collaboration. E. Gottzein Ottobrunn