Various nuclear warheads were considered for the Navaho. The G-26 would only be capable of carrying the XW-12, XW-5, or XW-13 fission warheads, or the XW-15 thermonuclear device. North American proposed that the production Navaho be enlarged to carry a 4500 kg payload in a 148 inch x 70 inch diameter envelope. This would allow a high-yield thermonuclear device to be carried.
Lt General S. E. Anderson, Commander, Air Research and Development Command. outlined the command concept of the missile division's space mission. This was in reply to General Schriever's proposals of 18 December 1957. Said Anderson: "It is our intention to make maximum use of the peculiar talents of your Division while at the same time bringing capabilities of all elements of the Command to bear upon the problems in this area. " Therefore it was the view of the commander that the division should concentrate on ". .,. the development and model improvements. of certain scheduled space systems to include both planning and management associated therewith.: " In application this policy meant that the division would in "certain instances perform technical developments in astronautics.," The Deputy Commander for Research and Development at Command Headquarters was to retain over-all responsibility for formulation of the Astronautics Technical Development Program. (Ltr, Anderson to Schriever, ZZ Jan 58, subj: Proposal for Future Air Force Ballistic Missile and Space Technology Development.)
Tactical Test. The first Chrysler production qualification missile was fired from AMR at 1910 hours EST. The nose cone impacted in the pre-selected target area at a range of 1,302 nm. Miss distance was 3 nm over and 1 nm to the left of the target. The overshoot was caused by failure of the vernier engine to cut off high resistance of the squib firing circuit. Primary missions were successfully accomplished.
Addressing an Institute of Aerospace Science meeting in New York, George von Tiesenhausen, Chief of Future Studies at NASA's Launch Operations Center, stated that by 1970 the United States would need an orbiting space station to launch and repair spacecraft. The station could also serve as a manned scientific laboratory. In describing the 91-m-long, 10-m-diameter structure, von Tiesenhausen said that the station could be launched in two sections using Saturn C-5 vehicles. The sections would be joined once in orbit.
The first Force Modernization Minuteman II research and development missile (FTM 2022) was launched from a modernized Minuteman I silo at Vandenberg AFB. Performance through first and second stage ignition was satisfactory, but malfunctions forced the missile to be dumped 150 miles down range. The Force Modernization launch program concluded on 11 May 1967 after nine launches.
NASA launched Apollo 5 - the first, unmanned LM flight - on a Saturn IB from KSC Launch Complex 37B at 5:48:08 p.m. EST. Mission objectives included verifying operation of the LM structure itself and its two primary propulsion systems, to evaluate LM staging, and to evaluate orbital performances of the S-IVB stage and instrument unit. Flight of the AS-204 launch vehicle went as planned, with nosecone (replacing the CSM) jettisoned and LM separating. Flight of LM-1 also went as planned up to the first descent propulsion engine firing. Because velocity increase did not build up as quickly as predicted, the LM guidance system shut the engine down after only four seconds of operation, boosting the LM only to a 171 x 222 km orbit. Mission control personnel in Houston and supporting groups quickly analyzed the problem. They determined that the difficulty was one of guidance software only (and not a fault in hardware design) and pursued an alternate mission plan that ensured meeting the minimum requirements necessary to achieve the primary objectives of the mission. The ascent stage separated and boosted itself into a 172 x 961 km orbit. After mission completion at 2:45 a.m. EST January 23, LM stages were left in orbit to reenter the atmosphere later and disintegrate. Apollo program directors attributed success of the mission to careful preplanning of alternate ways to accomplish flight objectives in the face of unforeseen events.
Kamanin and four cosmonauts return to Moscow from Tyuratam aboard an Il-18. It has been nearly nine years since Gagarin's flight, and now America looks like the winner of the space race, with the successful flight of Apollo 8 around the moon. Kamanin attributes the loss to the mistakes made by Ustinov and Smirnov in the erratic management of the Soviet program, coupled with the insistence of Korolev and Mishin to develop completely automated spacecraft that do not require intervention by the cosmonaut.
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).
University of Surrey experimental satellite. The first of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd's modular microsatellites. Launched on the Ariane ASAP; carried an operational store and forward communications payload with extensive radiation monitoring experiments for SatelLife and Data Trax Inc (USA). Still operational in 2000. Owner/operator University of Surrey, Dept of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Guildford, Surrey GU2 5XH.
Technology demonstration mission carrying transponder, solar cell, CCD camera technology experiments. Customer: University of Surrey/European Space Agency. Launched alongside UoSAT-3, the microsatellite operated perfectly for 2 days before a failure occured in the downlink. Owner/operator University of Surrey, Dept of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Guildford, Surrey GU2 5XH. Box shaped 350 x 350 x 650 mm. Four solar panels and 6 m gravity gradient boom.
Manned seven crew. Carried International Microgravity Laboratory-1. Payloads: International Microgravity Laboratory (lML)-1, getaway special (GAS) bridge with 10 getaway specials, IMAX camera, Gelation of Sols: Applied Microgravity Research (GOSAMR)-1, Investigations Into Polymer Mem-brane Processing (IPMP), Radiation Monitoring Equipment (RME)-lll, Student Experiment 81-09: Convection in Zero Gravity, Student Experiment 83-02: Capillary Rise of Liquid Through Granular Porous Media.
The signal received was very faint with no telemetry received. NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) did not detect a signal during the final contact attempt on 7 February 2003. The last time a Pioneer 10 contact returned telemetry data was 27 April 2002. NASA had no additional contact attempts planned for Pioneer 10. Pioneer 10 was at 82 AU, or 12.3 billion km from Earth. The last signal took 11 hours and 20 minutes to reach earth. The spacecraft was headed in the direction of the star Aldebaran, 68 light-years away. It would reach the vicinity of the red giant star in about two million years.
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....
Second Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle, delivering equipment and supplies to the International Space Station. Detached from the station by the station's robot arm and released into space on 28 March at 15:46 GMT. Following retrofire burned up over the Pacific Ocean on 30 March at 03:09 GMT on 30 March.