Shuttle May Be Used to Hunt for Water in Africa

A space shuttle flight in November may use a special camera to help search for water in drought-stricken areas of Africa.

President Reagan and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have been urged by three organizations and a senator to use the Large Format Camera as soon as possible. They call their proposal “Flight for Famine.”

“We could interpret information from a shuttle mission rapidly enough to have an effect on people’s lives within a reasonable amount of time, within a number of months,” said Paul Chakroff, vice president of TransCentury Foundation.

The Large Format Camera is able to photograph 23,000 square miles in a single snap, in great detail.

“What you are going to see is the surface features that, from an analysis, might indicate where ground water would have accumulated, much as a study might indicate where oil may have accumulated,” said Bruton Schardt, the space agency’s program manager for the Large Format Camera.

Sen. Gordon J. Humphrey (R-N.H.), in a letter to President Reagan and the space agency a month ago, said that “considering the immense nature of this human problem, I feel that it is essential that NASA give its highest priority to this proposal.”

The organizations pushing the proposal are TransCentury, which specializes in water exploration in that area of the world; BCI Geonetics Inc., of Laconia, N.H., which interprets photographs for underground formations; and Itek Optical Systems Inc., of Lexington, Mass., which designed and built the $10.3-million Large Format Camera for NASA.