The first clarification to emerge from the nation's amorphous space policies was revealed on 15 November 1957 when Secretary of Defense McElroy told a press conference he was thinking of centralizing control of space research and development in a special agency, This was the first public announcement of the future birth of ARPA, as it was later called-the Advanced Research Projects Agency. Confirmation of this intent was stated in the President's State -of-the -Union message to Congress on 9 January 1958, when he said that Secretary McElroy "has already decided to concentrate into one organization all the anti-missile and satellite technology undertaken within the Department of Defense. " (History, HqARDC, 1 Jan 31 Dec 1958, Vol 1,prep by ARDC Hist Div, p.7.)

The Source Selection Board at NASA Headquarters composed of Abe Silverstein, Ralph Cushman, George Low, Walter Schier, DeMarquis Wyatt, and Charles Zimmerman, completed their findings and reported to Dr. T. Keith Glennan, the Administrator. McDonnell Aircraft Corporation was selected as the prime contractor to develop and produce the Mercury spacecraft.

At the first meeting of the Manned Lunar Landing Task Group, Associate Administrator Robert C. Seamans, Jr., Director of the Office of Space Flight Programs Abe Silverstein, and Director of the Office of Advanced Research Programs Ira H. Abbott outlined the purpose of the Group to the members. After a discussion of the instructions, the Group considered first the objectives of the total NASA program:

1. the exploration of the solar system for knowledge to benefit mankind; and
2. the development of technology to permit exploitation of space flight for scientific, military, and commercial uses.

1. a manned landing on the moon with return to earth,
2. limited manned lunar exploration, and
3. a scientific lunar base.

After eight months of debate, a Vostok project plan was finally agreed. There would be a single female cosmonaut flight in March-Apriil 1963. This would be followed by 4 to 5 additional Vostok flights in 1963 and 2 to 3 flights in 1964. This plan was approved by Malinovskiy, Keldysh, Smirnov, and Dementiev and forwarded to the Communist Party Central Committee. However Rudenko and others were still opposed.

Kamanin would like to get going with the training of 40 additional cosmonauts from many disciplines in order to 'storm space'. Korolev is opposed. Kamanin is also trying to get new flights scheduled for his female cosmonauts. This is never mentioned in the planning of future flights. Korolev is opposed to sending any further women into space. Kamanin would like to see a two-woman Voskhod flight, or a woman making a spacewalk. Aside from Tereshkova, Ponomaryova and Solovyova are as qualified and talented as any of the male cosmonauts for such flights. Yerkina and Kuznetsova, although they have completed the course, are ruled out by weaknesses in technical areas or character, in Kamanin's opinion.

NASA budgetary restraints required an additional cut in AAP launches. The reduced program called for three Saturn IB and three Saturn V launches, including one Workshop launched on a Saturn IB, one Saturn V Workshop, and one ATM. Two lunar missions were planned. Launch of the first Workshop would be in April 1970.

The State Commission for the first N1 launch, headed by Afanasyev, convenes at Area 12 of Baikonur. All of the Chief Designers and top generals of the VVS are in attendance. Many defects are identified in the review, but there seem to be no show-stoppers. Payload integration with the booster is to begin 13 January and launch by 18 February. Then Baikonur commander General Kurushin drops a bombshell - he declares he is not prepared to attempt to launch this 'unready' rocket. Much argument and discussion ensues. Finally Afanasyev asks that the issues raised be reviewed, in preparation for the next commission meeting on 11 January.

The VVS leadership visits Chelomei's facility at Reutov. Kamanin recalls first seeting the Almaz mock-up five years earlier - it was already fully defined then. But it was only in August 1970 that a resolution was issued setting a firm schedule: Chelomei was to start flight trails in the second half of 1971, and the station was to enter service in 1972. Mishin is proposing to cancel Almaz and build 10 DOS stations instead. Mishin currently supervises five design bureaux, 60,000 workers, and is working on Soyuz, 7K-S, L3, DOS-7K, and a very few other projects. Chelomei has only one design bureau and 8,000 workers. Yet he has produced well-designed, mass-produced cruise missiles for the Navy, over 1,000 ICBM's for the RVSN, and the high-quality UR-500 Proton launch vehicle. Almaz could have flown on time if Ustinov had allowed Chelomei just 10% of the resources he has let Mishin squander on DOS. Chelomei easily agrees with the VVS to a mutual schedule for Almaz crew training, crew composition, etc. The contrast with the argumentative Mishin couldn't be greater.

Replaced Molniya 3-10. 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).

Manned five crew. Deployed Leasat 5, retrieved LDEF. Night landing. Payloads: Deployment of Syncom IV-5, retrieval of Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF), Fluids Experiment Apparatus (FEA)-3, Protein Crystal Growth (PCG) III-2, Latitude/Longitude Locator (L3), American Flight Echocardiograph (AFE), Characterization of Neurospora Circadian Rhythms in Space (CNCR)-01, Air Force Maui Optical Site (AMOS)-4, Mesoscale Lightning Experiment (MLE), IMAX, Interim Operational Contamination Monitor (lOCM).

Deployed from STS 32 1/10/89; 177 deg W; leased to U.S. government. The Leasat series was developed as a commercial venture to provide dedicated communications services to the U. S. military. Positioned in geosynchronous orbit at 178 deg E in 1990; 72 deg E in 1990-1997; 77 deg E in 1997-1998; 155 deg E in 1998-1999 As of 5 September 2001 located at 155.70 deg E drifting at 0.023 deg W per day. As of 2007 Mar 11 located at 100.05E drifting at 0.003E degrees per day. Additional Details: here....

Soyuz-TM18 has been launched from Baykonur on 8.01.94 at 1005 UTC. All went well and at 1014 UTC Soyuz-TM18 had reached the right orbit. For the flight the 1st crew had been selected, so: Captain V. Afanasyev, who makes his 2d flight, board engineer (rookie) Yu. Usachev (pronunciation Usachov ) and the physician Dr. V. Polaykov, making his 2d flight. He will try to remain 427 days in space. The call of the crew is Derbent, so resp. Derbent-1, 2 and 3. For radio-amateur traffic resp. U9Mir, R3Mir and U3Mir. Soyuz-TM18 came in range during orbit 3, 1307 UTC. Strong transmissions on the known frequencies (121.750, 165.874 and 922.755 mc). Afanasyev reported that all went well and he added some pressure values. After abt. 30 mins Mir (orb. 45114) could be heard here. TsUP told the Mir-crew that all on board Soyuz-TM18 was normal. In the pass in the 4th orbit (1436 UTC) Afanasyev reported that the Soyuz-TM18 executed 2 orbit corrections without significant problems. During the pass in the 5th orbit (1609- UTC) Afanasyev reported the successful performance of Soyuz-TM18 during the 3d orbit correction. Afanasyev got the order to adjust the Globus position indicator and Dr. Polyakov stated that the condition of the crew was excellent. On 10.01.94 at 1150 UTC Soyuz-TM18 has to dock to the Mir-complex. This will be abt 4 mins. after LOS of the space objects in Mir's orbit nr. 45144.

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

The second unmanned test flight of the Shenzhou manned spacecraft design carried a monkey, a dog and a rabbit in a test of the spaceship's life support systems. Shenzhou 2 was the first test of an all-up flight model of the spacecraft, with a functioning orbital module. It was also the most ambitious space science laboratory ever launched by China. It carried 64 scientific payloads: 15 in the re-entry module, 12 in the orbital module and 37 on the forward external pallet. These included a micro-gravity crystal growing device; life sciences experiments with 19 species of animals and plants, cosmic ray and particle detectors; and China's first gamma ray burst detectors.

The launch was originally scheduled for January 5, but the second stage of the launch vehicle was dented by an access platform while being prepared for roll-out in the vehicle assembly building. This caused several days of delay until it was cleared for flight. Shenzhou 2 made three orbit-raising manoeuvres during its flight, reaching a 330 x 345 km orbit by the end of the initial phase of the mission. Ninety minutes before landing the orbital module depressurised, and the spacecraft went briefly out of control. However this was regained after venting of the atmosphere from the module ended. The descent module and service modules separated from the forward orbital module and external pallet normally. After retrofire by the service module, it separated and the descent module landed at 11:22 GMT on January 16 in Inner Mongolia. Lack of post-recovery photographs led to speculation that the recovery may not have been completely successful. The Shenzhou orbital module had its own solar panels and remained operational in orbit, conducting scientific experiments. It was actively controlled for six months, maneuvering in orbit several times (reaching a final orbit of 394 x 405 km). It then was allowed to decay and reentered the atmosphere at 09:05 GMT on August 24, 2001. The reentry point was near 33.1 deg S in latitude and 260.4 deg E in longitude, over the western Pacific Ocean between Easter Island and Chile.

Dummy EKV payload. Launch delayed from August, September, and December 18, 2003. Booster Verification Test -5 tested a three-stage booster configuration for use with the Missile Defense Agency's Ground-based Midcourse Defense System. Built by Lockheed Martin Corp., the booster was one of two slated for use with the GMD system. The system was designed to intercept and destroy long-range ballistic missiles.

CDR Whitson and FE-2 Tani started out 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 SLEEP session file on the HRF-1 laptop for downlink. Additional Details: here....

First Chinese civil high-resolution stereoscopic Earth mapping satellite. The mission objective was to produce 1:50,000 scale maps and data for resource mapping, environmental surveying, disaster monitoring, city planning and national security needs. Project go-ahead was March 2008. For this mission the satellite had better positioning and attitude accuracy, multispectral capabilitym and high-data-rate data transmission to the ground - 2 x 450 Mbit/s. The satellite had a swath width of 51 km with a resolution of 2.1 m. The orbit provided a revisit period of 59 days.

Delivered 1,261 kg of cargo to the ISS. The Cygnus cargo ship SS C. Gordon Fullerton entered an initial 221 x 259 km x 51.6 deg orbit to begin its rendezvous sequence with ISS. Arrived at 250 metres from ISS at 10:01 GMT January 12; moved in to the 10 m capture position; then captured by the Canadarm-2 at 11:08 GMT and berthed on the Harmony module's nadir port at 13:05 GMT. It contained 1465 kg of cargo for ISS, including two bags with a total mas of 152 kg containing a set of 28 Dove 3U Earth-observing cubesats (about 5 kg each) for Planet Labs and five 1U/2U cubesats. Unberthed from the Harmony module and released by the robot arm at 11:42 GMT 18 February. After two orbital maneuvers Cygnus underwent destructive reentry over the Pacific with loss of signal at 18:23 GMT February 19. First launch of Orbital's Antares 120 variant, with a more powerful ATK Castor 30B second stage replacing the Castor 30 used on earlier flights.

See Jilin-1 Video-03 (Jilin Linye 1). Kuaizhou-1A quick-response rocket test. The earlier KZ-1 rocket was used for two low orbit imaging satellites which remained integrated with the upper stage; in the commercialized KZ-1A version the 4th stage separates from the payloads, and launch services are provided by EXPACE, the commercial arm of KZ-1A builder CASIC (which also builds the DF-21 missile that KZ-1/1A was based on). The main payload was Chang Guang Satellite Technology Ltd's "Jilin-1 linqiao shipin xing 03 xing", also called Jilin Linye 1 Weixing (Jilin Forestry 1 satellite). The 165 kg sat has a 1m resolution Earth imager. Two 2U cubesats were also carried. 1030LT SSO.