The team defended the G-1 draft project on 28 December 1948. The State Commission found the G-1 to be superior to Korolev's R-2 design in many respects. However the Russian designers managed to convince the government to put the R-2 rather than the G-1 into production by arguing that the manufacturing technology of the G-1 could not be mastered immediately by Soviet Union. Several of the design concepts (integrated propellant tanks, radio-controlled cut-off, forward liquid oxygen tank) were however used by the Russians in their R-2 and R-5 rockets.

Cruise stage tanks 1 and 4 empty. The flight continued to T+309 seconds, the longest to date, at which point the vehicle broke up due to an explosion in the empty propellant tank. The boosters operated normally but separation took place normally at Mach 3.3-3.4 (higher than expected).

Titan II, an advanced ICBM and the booster designated for NASA's two-man orbital flights, was successfully captive-fired for the first time at the Martin Co.'s Denver facilities. The test not only tested the flight vehicle but the checkout and launch equipment intended for operational use.

A memo from the Office of the Secretary of Defense to the Secretary of the Air Force, Eugene M. Zuckert, approved the Titan IIIX program and requisite lengthening of Titan III research and development. The Titan IIIX was essentially the Titan IIIA's first and second stages plus an adapter section that would allow the vehicle to be used with the Agena D upper stage.

Two to three days rest for the demoralised cadres is declared, before renewing anew the assault on the cosmos in January. Kamanin muses that some day Communism will be on all of the planets of the solar system, and men will travel in fully automated spacecraft. But full automation is the wrong approach now.

The Defense Department publicly announced its intention to conduct an eight-missile Operational Base Launch (OBL) program, Giant Patriot, subject to Congressional approval. This was subsequently canceled, and would have used configured Minuteman missiles launched from operational silos.

Continued operation of the long-range telephone and telegraph radio-communication system within the Soviet Union and transmission of USSR central television programmes to stations in the Orbita and participating international networks (international cooperation scheme).

Raduga 32 joined Raduga 25 and Raduga 1-1 at 70 degrees E. Positioned in geosynchronous orbit at 70 deg E in 1995-1999. As of 5 September 2001 located at 80.00 deg E drifting at 0.001 deg W per day. As of 2007 Mar 10 located at 73.08E drifting at 0.033E degrees per day.

16 Ku-band transponders. Stationed at 119 deg W. Positioned in geosynchronous orbit at 119 deg W in 1996-1999 As of 5 September 2001 located at 147.96 deg W drifting at 0.007 deg E per day. As of 2007 Mar 9 located at 148.10W drifting at 0.008W degrees per day.

The Tsiklon put six military Strela-3 and three civilian equivalent Gonets-D1 satellites into a medium earth orbit. Due to a launch failure in 2000 this was the first replenishment of the Strela satellite constellation since 1998. The Tsiklon second stage burn was complete at 0329:02 UTC. The S5M stage separated and ignited at 0330 and shut down at 0332:00, placing the stage and satellite dispenser in a suborbital -550 x 1400 km orbit. A second burn at apogee at 0406:15 UTC put the stage in a 1400 km circular orbit. The three Gonets satellites separated first, beginning at 0407:28 UTC; the last of the three Kosmos/Strela satellites was ejected at 0408:33, with a perigee about 15 km higher than the first of the deployments.

Delayed from September, October, December 26. Galileo In-Orbit Validation Element, a prototype for the Galileo European navigation satellite network. Giove carried carried two rubidium atomic clocks and a large L-band phased array antenna. Retired in 2012 as the production models went on-line.

CDR Whitson and FE-2 Tani began the day with the daily reading of SLEEP (Sleep-Wake Actigraphy and Light Exposure during Spaceflight) experiment data accumulated during the night, for logging and filling in questionnaire entries in the experiment's session file on the HRF-1 laptop for downlink. Additional Details: here....

The first time the CZ-2D booster was flown from their southern launch site. However, the rocket appeared to have run into problems and achieved orbit with an underspeed of 100 m/s, making a 212 x 520 km orbit instead of a circular 500 km one. The main payloads were Gaojing 1 and 2, two commercial high resolution (0.5m) imaging satellites also called SuperView 1 and 2. The satellites were owned by Beijing Aerospace World View Information Technology Co., Ltd (also called Beijing Space View Tech Co.Ltd.); the US company DigitalGlobe was a major investor. 1030LT SSO