Ten Air Force pilots emerged from a simulated space cabin in which they had spent the previous month participating in a psychological test to determine how long a team of astronauts could work efficiently on a prolonged mission in space. Project Director Earl Alluisi said the experiment had "far exceeded our expectations" and that the men could have stayed in the cabin for 40 days with no difficulty.

Kleinknecht had concluded his CSM 103-106 configuration study by August 13 and determined the high-gain antenna was the most critical item. Kraft was still "GO" and said December 20-26 (except December 25) offered best launch times; he had also looked at January launch possibilities. Slayton had decided to assign the 104 crew to the mission. He had talked to crew commander Frank Borman and Borman was interested.

NASA decided to delete the Skylab backup Saturn V Orbital Workshop launch capability effective 15 August. All work associated with the completion, checkout, and support of Skylab backup hardware, experiments, software, facilities, and ground support equipment would be canceled immediately, except for the work that would directly support SL-3, SL-4, and rescue missions.

Glushko formally cancelled the N1 within the new NPO Energia on 13 August 1974 with the support of Ustinov, even though he had no decree of the VPK Military-Industrial Commission or the Central Committee authorising such an act. The N1-L3 itself was not officially closed down until the resolution of February 1976 starting work on the Energia/Buran boosters. By that time 6 billion roubles had been spent on the N1 over 17 years. Additional Details: here....

These RLA - Rocket Flight Apparatus - met the requirements of the Ministry of Defence as described in 1973 in Plan Poisk and would replace the failed N1 and all existing launch vehicles. As required by the Ministry of Defence, they used only Lox/Kerosene propellants; the various launch vehicles were modular, and used common engines and rocket bodies. The members of the VPK met the proposal with considerable scepticism. The final decision was that the plan had to be reworked. Additional Details: here....

Stationed at 160 deg E. Commercial communications. Longitude 160 +/- 0.05 deg E. Launched fromn China. Positioned in geosynchronous orbit at 160 deg E in 1992-1999 As of 1 September 2001 located at 159.98 deg E drifting at 0.009 deg W per day. As of 2007 Mar 11 located at 163.63E drifting at 0.044E degrees per day.

This freighter with food, water, fuel, post, spare parts, etc. docked to the forward docking port transition section -P.Kh.O.) on 13 Aug. 1993 at 0000 UTC. So 4 minutes after LOS for our position. The approach in orb. 42799, 12 Aug. 2351-2356 UTC, the cosmonauts visually observed the Progress-M19. At 2356 UTC Progress-M19 was on a distance of 25 M and the appr. speed was 0.85M/sec. The operation passed off smoothly and already during the pass in the next orb. (42800, 0129-0133 UTC) Tsibliyev reported the hermetic air-seal and the opening of the hatch to Progress-M19. In the pass during orb. 42801, 0304-0309 UTC, the cosmonauts expressed their gratitude for all what Progress-M19 delivered, but in Serebrov's opinion the Progress-M19 was 'too empty'. He said that only 66% of the cargo-volume had been utilised. Nevertheless he was satisfied about the post, the new paper (or: ribbon) for the RTTY printer and the renewed instructions for evacuation in case of emergency.

Perseid-meteorites: So the crew just had to work during 3 night shifts: 2 due to the meteorite-storm and 1 for the Progress-M19. In the night from 11 to 12 Aug. they enjoyed the sight of the meteorite-rain. They spoke about 'fireballs' and stopped counting them for it really was a rain. The night before they also observed this phenomenon, which was less spectacular then. Unfortunately they again had to report collisions with small particles and damages. S. and T. expressed their relief that all was over now and that they survived the meteorite-bombardments.

Chris v.d. Berg, NL-9165/A-UK3202.

Due to serious hearth rhythm problems Manakov, the commander of the main crew, had to be hospitalised. So the core crew has been replaced by the stand ins. The French spacionaute Claudie Andre-Deshays will stay in the main crew. The crew of the 22d ME will consist of: Valeriy Grigoryevich Korzun (Commander), Aleksandr Yuryevich Kaleri (board engineer) and Claudie Andre-Deshays, (cosmonaut-researcher, guest cosmonaut CNES. ) Vinogradov and Leopold Eyharts remain available for the eventual replacement of respectively Kaleri and/or Andre-Deshays. There is no reserve commander available.

Launch of Soyuz-TM24: The launch of this ship with the above mentioned crew members has been put forward and will now take place from Baykonur on 17.08.1996 at abt 1317 UTC.

The service call sign of the crew is FREGAT, so resp. Fregat-1. -2 and -3).

The names of the new crew and the earlier launch date had been given by a recorded message of Shannon Lucid transmitted from Mir on 437.925 mc.

Progress-M31: As already has been reported this freighter ceased her existence on 1.08.1996. The exact times of this operation were: Separation from Mir: 16.44.45 UTC, start reentry burn: 19.44.30 UTC and burning up over a designated area in the Pacific East of New Zealand: 2033 UTC.

Progress-M32: This freighter is still docked at Mir. If the launch and first part of the flight of Soyuz-TM24 will proceed as planned Progress-32 will undock from Mir on 18.08.1996 and burn up in the atmosphere.

Chris v.d. Berg, NL-9165/A-UK3202.

Soyuz TM-28 docked at 10:56 GMT on August 15 with the rear (Kvant) port of the Mir space station, which had been vacated at 09:28 GMT on August 12 by Progress M-39. The EO-25 crew, Musabayev and Budarin, landed with Baturin on Aug 25, leaving the EO-26 crew of Padalka and Avdeyev on the station. As only one final Soyuz mission to Mir was planned, with two of the seats on that Soyuz pre-sold to Slovak and French experimenters, the return crew of Soyuz TM-28 was subject to constant replanning and revision. On February 8, 1999, at 11:23 GMT Padalka and Avdeyev undocked from Mir's -X port in Soyuz TM-28, and redocked at the +X Kvant port at 11:39 GMT, freeing up the front port for the Soyuz TM-29 docking. Finally on February 27, 1999 EO-26 commander Padalka and Slovak cosmonaut Bella undocked Soyuz TM-28 from the Kvant rear docking port at 22:52 GMT, landing in Kazakhstan on February 28 at 02:14 GMT. Avdeyev remained on Mir with the EO-27 crew delivered on Soyuz TM-29, heading for a manned space flight time record.

The crewmembers aboard the Discovery / International Space Station complex were awakened shortly before 4:30 a.m. Central time today to the sounds of the overture from "The Barber of Seville" by Rossini, a tribute to Expedition Three Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin, who along with Commander Frank Culbertson and Pilot Vladimir Dezhurov, will move over to the ISS today to take up residency. Additional Details: here....

Canadian Space Agency spacecraft which carried the ACE-FTS spectrometer to study the chemistry of the upper troposphere and stratosphere and the MAESTRO instrument to study ozone and aerosol levels in the atmosphere. Originally to have launched June 25, 2002. Delayed five more times. Air dropped in Point Arguello WADZ.

Commercial imaging satellite in a 10:15 local time of descending node sun-synchronous orbit. Ground resolution of 0.31 m panchromatic, and 1.1 m multispectral. After releasing the satellite the Centaur stage restarted and used up its extra propellant by accelerating to an escape trajectory to solar orbit. WV-3 had an imager with 0.3m ground resolution in addition to multispectral and 3.7-micron IR cameras. Digital Globe was formerly EarthWatch Inc, and merged with the former Space Imaging Inc. (GeoEye) in 2012, which itself absorbed EOSAT in 1996 and OrbImage in 2006, completing the consolidation of the first generation of US commercial imaging companies.