The Western Development Division (WDD) and the Special Aircraft Project Office (SAPO) awarded a contract to Aerojet-General Corporation for development of liquid oxygen-hydrocarbon ICBM engines. The contract covered design and fabrication of booster, sustainer, and vernier engines and was intended to provide an alternate propulsion system should the North American Aviation effort encounter delays.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower directed NASA Administrator T. Keith Glennan "to make a study, to be completed at the earliest date practicable, of the possible need for additional funds for the balance of FY 1960 and for FY 1961 to accelerate the super booster program for which your agency recently was given technical and management responsibility."

During testing, it was found that blast effects of the linear charge for the CM/SM umbilical cutter caused considerable damage to the heatshield. To circumvent this problem, North American designed a vastly improved pyrotechnic-driven, guillotine-type cutter. MSC readily approved the new' device for both Block I and II spacecraft.

Korolev dies at age 59 during what was expected to be routine colon surgery in Moscow. The day began for Kamanin with firm plans finally in place for the next three Voskhod and first three Soyuz flights. Volynov and Shonin will be the crew for the first Voskhod flight, with Beregovoi and Shatalov as their back-ups. That will be followed by a female flight of 15-20 days, with the crew begin Ponomaryova and Solovyova, with their back-ups Sergeychik (nee Yerkina) and Pitskhelaura (nee Kuznetsova). Tereshkova will command the female training group. Training is to be completed by March 15. After this Kamanin goes to his dacha, only to be called by General Kuznetsov around 19:00, informing him that Korolev has died during surgery.

Kamanin does not minimise Korolev's key role in creating the Soviet space program, but believes the collectives can continue the program without him. In truth, Kamanin feels Korolev has made many errors of judgment in the last three years that have hurt the program. Mishin, Korolev's first deputy, will take over management of Korolev's projects. Kamanin feels that Mishin is a clever and cultured engineer, but he is no Korolev. Over the next three days the cosmonauts console Korolev's widow.

Korolev's surgery was done personally by Petrovskiy, the Minister of Health. Korolev was told the surgery would take only a few minutes, but after five hours on the operating table, his body could no longer endure the insult, and he passed away.

Soyuz 4 is launched with Vladimir Shatalov aboard without further problems at 10:30. This time the rockets gyroscopes, the capsule communications, and the television camera all functioned perfectly. Volynov and his crew for Soyuz 5 watched the launch from Area 17. Later Soyuz 4 would dock with Soyuz 5, and following a transfer of two cosmonauts, return with Shatalov, Yevgeni Khrunov and Alexsei Yeliseyev from Soyuz 5. Official purpose: scientific, technical and medico-biological research, checking and testing of onboard systems and design elements of space craft, docking of piloted space craft and construction of an experimental space station, transfer of cosmonauts from one craft to another in orbit. This mission finally successfully completed the simulated lunar orbit docking and crew transfer mission attempted by Soyuz 1 in April 1967. In making the transfer Khrunov and Yeliseyev avoided the most spectacular survivable incident of the space age - the nose-first reentry of Soyuz 5, still attached to its service module.

Kamanin discusses with Kutakhov the need for the VVS to back Chelomei rather than Mishin. As for the Spiral, the support of Dementiev, Afanasyev, Kalmykov, and Zverev have been lined up for the program. But Grechko is still blocking it. And Kutakhov is unwilling to challenge Grechko on the issue.

Manned Spacecraft Center Robert R. Gilruth was appointed to the newly created position of NASA Director of Key Personnel Development. He would integrate NASA planning to fill key positions, identify actual and potential candidates, and guide them through appropriate work experience.

Christopher C. Kraft, Jr., MSC Deputy Director, was named Director of MSC. Both Kraft and Gilruth were original members of the NASA Space Task Group established in 1958 to manage Project Mercury.

Unmanned resupply vessel to Mir. Delivered new life support equipment to replace life-expired equipment aboard. Docked with Mir on 16 Jan 1991 16:35:25 GMT. Undocked on 15 Mar 1991 12:46:41 GMT. Destroyed in reentry on 15 Mar 1991 18:07:26 GMT. Total free-flight time 2.30 days. Total docked time 57.84 days.

Atlantis (mission STS-81) has been launched on 12.01.1997 at 09.27.33 UTC for her 5th docking mission. At 0950 UTC Atlantis was within our range and commander Baker could be heard on 259.700 Mc AM/W in a short contact with Houston via Zaragossa in Spain. The rendezvous operations will begin on 14.01.1997 at 2212 UTC. Atlantis arrives near Mir on 15.01 at 0247 UTC and will dock 15.01 at 0353 UTC. Let us hope that the docking will take place a few minutes earlier for the window during the first pass of both enormous objects within our range will close at 0352 UTC. Hard mate will take place on 15.01 at 0427 UTC and the hatches will be opened on 15.01 at 0537 UTC. John Blaha will conclude his experimental activities on board Mir with some experiments related to the docking and immediately thereafter he will be relieved by Jerry Linenger. Blaha will remain in space for a while as payload specialist on board Atlantis and Linenger will continue his flight as 2d Board Engineer/researcher in Mir.

Radio traffic: If they stick to the same frequencies as in the past we can expect radio traffic on 121.750, 130.165 and 143.625 Mc. Extensive use of the American TDRS-s after the docking van be expected. Possibly the Russians will now and then use their (almost) geostationary satellites Altair-1 and 2. During the 4th docking mission (STS-79 in Sept. 1996, most communications took place via the American TDRS-s.

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

The spacewalk was made from the Pirs module. Depress was around 2050 UTC, with hatch open at 2059 UTC and egress around 2110 UTC. The astronauts moved the Strela-2 crane from PMA-1 to Pirs and installed it there; the Strela-1 crane was already functional on Pirs. They also installed an amateur radio antenna on Zvezda. On Jan 15 at about 0254 UTC the crew jettisoned two pairs of Orlan spacesuit gloves and a pair of towels used to wipe the spaceuits down, because of concerns about contamination from Zvezda thrusters. They reentered Pirs at 0255 UTC, with hatch close at 0302 UTC and repressurization above 50 mbar at about 0304 UTC.

See Iridium-NEXT 102. The first cluster of second generation communications satellites for Iridium Communications was launched, aboard the first SpaceX Falcon 9 to fly since the Amos-6 pad accident the previous year. The Falcon 9 placed all ten satellites in the correct orbit, and the first stage landed on the barge 'Just Read The Instructions'. The Falcon 9 second stage was expected to be deorbited over Antarctica. However, JSpOC was tracking 11 objects in orbit rather than the expected The Iridium satellites carry communications payloads for global mobile communications coverage as well as Aireon ADS-B airplane data relay payloads and, on four of the 10 satellites, AIS ship tracking payloads for the Canadian company ExactEarth.

See TRICOM 1. Japan attempted to launch a single cubesat into orbit with a launch vehicle massing less than 3 tonnes. The SS-520 sounding rocket was furnished with a 78 kg third stage which was intended to orbit a 3U, 3 kg cubesat, TRICOM-1. The mission was flight SS-520-4 (SS-520-1 and 2 were normal sounding rocket flights; 3 has not yet flown.) However, telemetry was lost 20 seconds into flight, during first stage burn. Following range safety rules, the command to ignite stage 2 was not sent and the vehicle flew a suborbital path to about 200 km altitude and then splashed down in the ocean. The record smallest successful orbital launch vehicle remains the 9.4-tonne Lambda 4S, also Japanese, which was retired in 1979.