Air Force Ballistic Missile Division representatives again presented a series of Washington briefings. These were to Lt General S. E. Anderson, Commander, Air Research and Development Command; the Air Staff; Secretary of the Air Force and Staff; and Director Roy Johnson, of the Advanced Research Projects Agency. The latter presentation, in addition to reporting detailed man in space planning, requested prompt program approval and emphasized the urgency of firm funds commitment if further delay was to be avoided. Johnson's response to the briefing may be summarized as follows: (a) the man in space program would not be approved at this time; (b) it appeared that $50 million would be an optimistic estimate of man in space funding until the Space Council, authorized by recent legislation, was organized and working, an event that was not probable before Thanksgiving; (c) planning anything over a $50 million program, the maximum likely to be approved under any circumstances, was wasted effort; (d) statements of prominent scientists had convinced the White House there was no currently valid reason for Man-InSpace: (e) when the Space Council became a viable organization, man in space would probably become a joint effort of the Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics; (f) The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (the National Aeronautics and Space Act creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was to become law on 29 July 1958) was already thinking of an independent but very similar space program that would cost about $40 million in fiscal 1959. After these two days of briefings it was clear that quick approval of a military man in space program was not forthcoming. (MFR, Col J. D. Lowe, Ch, Space Sys Div, AFBMD, 30 Jul 58, subj: MISS Briefing to Hq ARDC, Hq USAF, the Secretary of the Air Force and ARPA on 24-25 July 1958.)

NASA Director of Space Flight Programs Abe Silverstein notified Harry J. Goett, Director of the Goddard Space Flight Center, that NASA Administrator T. Keith Glennan had approved the name "Apollo" for the advanced manned space flight program. The program would be so designated at the forthcoming NASA-Industry Program Plans Conference.

MSC invited 11 firms to submit research and development proposals for the lunar excursion module (LEM) for the manned lunar landing mission. The firms were Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, The Boeing Airplane Company, Northrop Corporation, Ling-Temco-Vought, Inc., Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, Douglas Aircraft Company, General Dynamics Corporation, Republic Aviation Corporation, Martin- Marietta Company, North American Aviation, Inc., and McDonnell Aircraft Corporation. Additional Details: here....

Tyulin advises Kamanin that Ustinov has instructed Mishin to accept that Soyuz spacecraft will be commanded by a VVS pilot cosmonaut, with OKB-1 providing cosmonauts for the engineering support role. Mishin is to immediately send four candidates from OKB-1 to Kamanin for cosmonaut training. Kamanin feels this is only a 50% victory, and vows to accelerate submission of the letter from Malinovskiy to the Central Committee, demanding that the support cosmonaut seats also be filled by trained VVS engineer cosmonauts (e.g. Khrunov, Gorbatko, Voronov, and Kolodin). Meanwhile spacesuit designer Severin informs Kamanin that OKB-1 has insisted that the outer hatch of Soyuz will remain at 660 mm diameter, even though he has told them for a long time that the minimum diameter for a cosmonaut in spacesuit with a life support system backpack is 700 mm. Kamanin agrees to support him, but notes the change can only be made in later spacecraft; it is too late to change the first production run.

Following a series of discussions on the requirements for the lunar mapping and survey system (LMSS), the effort was terminated. An immediate stop work order was issued to the Air Force, the Centers, and the contractors in the LMSS effort. The original justification for the LMSS, a backup Apollo site certification capability in the event of Surveyor or Lunar Orbiter inadequacies, was no longer valid, since at least four Apollo sites had been certified and the last Lunar Orbiter would, if successful, increase that to eight.

MSC Director of Flight Operations Christopher C. Kraft, Jr., raised questions about lunar module number 2: Would it be possible for LM-2 to be a combined manned and unmanned vehicle; that is, have the capability to make an unmanned burn first and then be manned for additional activities? Would additional batteries in the LM provide greater flexibility for earth-orbital missions? Mission flexibility would be worthwhile only if it allowed deletion of a subsequent mission, at least on paper.

Mars probe intended to enter Martian orbit and comprehensively photograph Mars. Parameters are for Mars orbit. Mars 5 reached Mars on 12 February 1974 and was inserted into a 1760 km x 32,586 km orbit. Due to computer chip failures the orbiter operated only a few days and returned atmospheric data and images of a small portion of the Martian southern hemisphere.

First flight of Almaz radars imaging satellite taken out of mothballs after death of Ustinov. At the beginning of 1987 it was decided not to man the Almaz-T, instead operate it in a fully automatic mode. Thus the final Almaz cosmonaut training group was disbanded. Cosmos 1870 conducted remote sensing of the earth's surface, oceans and seas in the interests of various branches of science and the economy. Its side-looking radar had a 20-25 m ground resolution and functioned throughout its two year service life.

Until 1992 the fleet of tracking ships consisted of ten ships. These ships formed a part of the infrastructure of control centres and measurement points for soviet spaceflight operations. In this case the word 'operations' covers a wide variety for the assistance of the manned spaceflight program was only a small part of their duties. The role of the ships, as far as manned spaceflight was concerned, sharply deteriorated after the beginning of the use of geostationary satellites for communications between the Salyut-7 and the Mir-space stations. The TDRS system used by the Russians did not always work satisfactorily and so all experts involved in Russian spaceflight expected that the 'ships' would remain operational at least until 2000. Already in 1990 there circulated rumours about the a gradual withdrawal of that fleet, but nobody dared to take the responsibility. However the economical problems in the last year of the S.U. forced the Russians to withdraw most of the ships from service and as of January 1st 1992 the ships in the Atlantic apart from some modest exceptions ceased to assist during Mir-operations. Sometimes a ship was operational in the Atlantic to assist space-operations for other objects and organisations and now and then had to be stand-by during Mir-operations (launches of Progresses, Soyuzes, dockings, return operations, EVA's a.s.o.), but always on a secondary basis. For the last half year the Kosmonavt Pavel Belyayev operated from a position west of Africa and even played an important role during the almost fatal flight of Soyuz-TM17 on 14.01.94. After some bumps of the Soyuz-TM17 into the Mir-station the communications via the Altair (Cosmos-2054) ceased and this caused great concern at TsUP. KPB was the first to pick up radio traffic from the Soyuz-TM17 and thus shortened the awful uncertainty phase at TsUP by 10 minutes. In the past the ships relayed traffic between Mir and TsUP via Molniya satellites during the first part of Mir's footprint for our position. Nowadays the traffic between Mir and TsUP only begins at TCA for our position. The fate of the fleet: the ships belonged to the Soviet (now Russian) Academy of Sciences. The maritime part fell under the responsibility of the Baltic- and Black sea shipping. The ships which have home ports in the Ukraine (the Kosmonavt Yuriy Gagarin and the Akademik Sergey Korolyov) now belong to that country and so their role in spaceflight fully ceased. The ships made some trips for tourists, but that was not successful. Both ships have been used to evacuate Russian military personnel and their families from Cuba to St. Petersburg. From there they returned to their Ukrainian ports. The Ukraine does not know what to do with the ships and tried to sell them to the Russians. The Russians were not interested: they still have 4 ships for the Western Hemisphere and a 5th one is under construction. Spaceflight needs over the Pacific are covered by 2 ships of the Russian Navy, the Marshal Nedelin and the Marshal Krylov. The Odessa based Kosmonavt Vladimir Komarov already before the independence of the Ukraine was transferred to Leningrad to be refurbished for other purposes: ecological expeditions in the Baltic and the North Atlantic. Thus far this plan did not work: the attempts to use the ship for that purposes on a commercial base did not have success due to the lack of customers. So in St Petersburg we have 4 ships: the Kosmonavt Pavel Belyayev, the Kosmonavt Vladislav Volkov, the Kosmonavt Viktor Patsayev and the Kosmonavt Georgiy Dobrovolskiy. They are waiting for an assignment. Possibly one of them will be used in the Atlantic west of Africa in October and November 1994 to assist during the launch and docking of Soyuz-TM20 (resp. 3 and 5.10.94) and the return flight of the Soyuz-TM19 on 3.11.94. A new ship, the Akademik Nikolay Pilyugin, has already been launched and has to be fitted. Thus far it is not known whether this new ship will influence the fate of 1 or more ships of the 4 in St Peterburg. After the last expedition the Belyayev several times had contact with the crew of the Mir-complex. From this traffic I could derive the indication that the ship planned to visit Antwerp in Belgium. This enabled me to go on board and I had a long and interesting conversation with the chief of the expedition, Nikolay Burov and the captain Sivtsov. In spite of the enormous economical difficulties of their country their hospitality towards me was 100%.

(This Mir-report is derived from the reports in Dutch 221 and 222. So the next Mir-report in English will be MirNEWS.223)

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

The newest component for the ever-growing International Space Station, the Russian Zvezda Service Module, successfully linked up with the fledgling complex this evening as the two craft flew high over the northeast portion of Kazakhstan marking the arrival of the first living quarters for the permanent human habitation of the new outpost. Additional Details: here....

This was the second launch of the Arkon-1 electro-optical reconnaissance. The 17S40 Blok DM5 upper stage and satellite were placed by the Proton into a parking orbit. The DM then made two burns to place the satellite in its 1500 x 1836 km x 64.4 deg operational orbit.

Testbed communications satellite, a joint project between the European Space Agency and Inmarsat. Demonstrated a laser communications system and radio communications links in Q and V band; carried an operational extended L-band payloadto supplement Inmarsat's satellite broadband capacity. First flight of the new Astrium/Lampoldshausen 500N EAM (European Apogee Motor), a MON/MMH system with an Isp of about 325s. Dry mass iaround 3500 kg. By July 30 Alphasat was in a 25608 x 35809 km x 0.3 deg orbit.

Single launch of the first two of the third generation medium-orbit Beidou satellites. The CZ-3B launch vehicle deployed the YZ-1 upper stage in a 189 km x 18390 km x 55 deg transfer orbit. CZ-3B stage 3 coasted in a low parking orbit for only a minute or so before its second burn to the elliptical orbit. The YZ-1 then separated and made its first burn almost immediately at about 12:45 GMT, raising apogee to 22,000 km. The Beidou/YZ-1 stack then coasted to apogee and at about 16:10 GMT the YZ-1 made a second burn to circularize the orbit. The two payloads were quickly released in a 21,523 km x 22,193 km x 55 deg orbit. At about 16:20 GMT YZ-1 made a disposal burn to a 22,151 x 27,736 km x 55 deg orbit.