First attempt to launch the subscale prototype of the Magdeburg Pilot Rocket. A launch stand 9 m tall is erected in the countryside near Magdeburg. However the rocket develops insufficient thrust to clear the tower. Other attempts on 10 and 11 June are also unsuccessful, due to leaky valves and other quality problems. The rocket is returned to the shop for rework.

The United States Weather Bureau estimated that it would require $50,000 during fiscal year 1961 in support of Project Mercury. Bureau responsibilities included weather forecasting for Mercury launching and recovery activities, climatological studies along the area of the Mercury ground track, and environmental studies of specified areas. With reference to the last item, a study was completed in early August 1960 of annual conditions along the Atlantic Missile Range including wind velocity, visibility and cloud coverage.

A Titan I liquid-fueled engine was strapped to the side of a 175-ton solid-propellant rocket motor, and the configuration was test fired by Aerojet-General Corporation. This evaluated the compatibility of liquid and solid engines for SSD's Titan III space launch vehicle. The combination generated 700,000 pounds of thrust.

Vostok 5 is rolled out to the pad at 9 am. It is erected and then tested from 11:00 to 13:30. All is well and it is declared ready for launch. At 16:00 the cosmonauts take the traditional pre-launch walk along the Syr Darya. All is filmed for posterity, including the cosmonauts fishing for their dinner.

Robert C. Seamans, Jr., Deputy Administrator of NASA, prepared a memorandum to the file concerning the selection of North American Aviation as the CSM prime contractor. The memorandum, a seven-page document, chronologically reviewed the steps that led to the selection of North American and followed by about a month the statement of NASA Administrator James E. Webb in response to queries from members of the Congress.

Robert O. Aller, NASA OMSF, told Apollo Program Director Samuel C. Phillips that considerable analysis, planning, and discussion had taken place at MSC on the most effective sequence of Apollo missions following the first manned flight (Apollo 7). The current official assignments included three CSM/LM missions for CSM/LM operations, lunar simulation, and lunar capability. MSC's Flight Operations Directorate (FOD) had offered an alternate approach of that sequence by proposing that the third mission be a lunar-orbit mission rather than a high earth-orbit mission. Aller preferred the FOD proposal, since it would offer considerable operational advantages by conducting a lunar-orbital flight before the lunar landing. He recommended Phillips consider that sequence of missions and that consideration be given to including it as a prime or alternate mission in the Mission Assignments Document. "Identifying it in that document," Aller said, "would initiate the necessary detailed planning."

Preparation of Apollo 11 was on schedule for a July 16 launch date. Lunar landmark and landing site mosaics were delivered for flight crew training. A flight readiness test, begun on June 4, had been completed June 6 despite an MSC Mission Control Center power outage that delayed the test for several hours.

All continues normal aboard the station. Television sessions are held with the crew. They have now put on their training suits, and are urged to do regular physical training as required by the program. There are enough ECS consumables, fuel, water, and food aboard for the station to continue in manned operation until 20 August. The return of he Soyuz 11 crew is planned for 30 June, with launch of Soyuz 12 on 20 July. The first of the daily landing commission meetings is held. Emergency landing sites and procedures for the following day are discussed and set.

Replaced Molniya 3-14. Operation of the long-range telephone and telegraph radio communications system in the USSR; transmission of USSR Central Television programmes to stations in the Orbita network and within the framework of international cooperation.

Voice, TV coverage for Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands. Spacecraft engaged in practical applications and uses of space technology such as weather or communication (US Cat C). Positioned in geosynchronous orbit at 123 deg W in 1982-1992 As of 5 September 2001 located at 132.07 deg W drifting at 3.816 deg W per day. As of 2007 Mar 10 located at 135.75E drifting at 3.802W degrees per day.

The group was selected to provide pilot, engineer, and scientist astronauts for space shuttle flights.. Qualifications: Pilots: Bachelor's degree in engineering, biological science, physical science or mathematics. Advanced degree desirable. At least 1,000 flight-hours of pilot-in-command time. Flight test experience desirable. Excellent health. Vision minimum 20/50 uncorrected, correctable to 20/20 vision; maximum sitting blood pressure 140/90. Height between 163 and 193 cm.

Mission Specialists: Bachelor's degree in engineering, biological science, physical science or mathematics and minimum three years of related experience or an advanced degree. Vision minimum 20/150 uncorrected, correctable to 20/20. Maximum sitting blood pressure of 140/90. Height between 150 and 193 cm.. 10 pilots and 9 mission specialists, 6 civilians and 13 military officers, chosen from 2,962 applicants, of which 122 screened in June-August 1994. 4 additional international astronauts.

The crew of Discovery was not able to restore the transmissions of TV images via the Ku-band. Nevertheless the Russians did not increase the use of their geostationary satellite. An American press release characterised the Russian Altair-2 system as a Spartan system. Unfortunately the Russians did not seize the opportunity to show the possibilities of that Spartan system by putting this system at the disposal of the STS-91 mission for public relation purposes, i.e. TV-live events, also from the Shuttle itself. Possibly there also have been problems with that system for on 6.06.1998 something was wrong with a TV-link between TsUP and a tracking station. During a press-conference only voice communications were possible.

The TV-reports from Mir of which only a few reached us via CNN were relayed by tracking stations inside Russia via UHF-channels. This could be derived from the use of the command code Anna-86 during VHF communications. These video links lasted shorter than those via Altair-2 and the quality was not so good and sometimes only black and white images were possible. From the Russian segment of the combination Discovery-Mir the Russians communicated with TsUP via their own VHF-channels. Discovery used for voice communications with Houston the S-band channel via the TDRS-es. During one of the communication windows on 5.06.98 Musabayev tried to get in contact with TsUP for a long time. He asked Charlie Precourt to warn TsUP Moscow via one of the American channels and this helped. The last months the Mir-crew regularly called TsUP in vain for long periods, even via Altair-2. Deteriorated motivation of the Capcoms at TsUP?

Andy Thomas:

On 5.06.98, so 1 day after the docking of Discovery, Andy settled himself into the Shuttle and became a member of STS-91's crew. He regularly showed up inside the contours of the Mir-complex, but did no longer communicate from there with TsUP Moscow. Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin: This leading designer of RKK Energiya and former Salyut-6 cosmonaut needed only a few days extra to bring his spaceflight record up to 365 days, so a full year. On 5.06.1998 he passed this limit and both crews celebrated this jubilee on board Mir. Musabayev offered for this opportunity guitar music. All styles were possible: Beatles, Russian- or Kazakh folk songs, even that of Vysotskiy. For Ryumin as a high-ranking official of RKK Energiya it was an excellent opportunity to execute an extensive inspection of Mir's systems.

Musabayev and Budarin were very pleased that this earthling could see by his own eyes the situation about which cosmonauts so often complained. He was displeased about the enormous mess within the station. In his opinion the abundance of useful, but also of superfluous and useless things, makes the work for cosmonauts, in particular new ones, extremely difficult. Behind a panel he found a lot of rubbish and he asked TsUP permission to get rid of that. Among this rubbish were some cables and TsUP did not give him this permission. He grumbled a little bit, but did not press the matter for he himself had ordered that cosmonauts always have to stick to decisions from flight control. During conversations with TsUP about technical matters Musabayev sometimes referred to Ryumin. For instance about the problems they had with the installation of camera's to document the departure of the Discovery. The brackets near certain portholes to fix these camera's did not fit. Ryumin said that the man at TsUP had to write this down in his report in red capital letters.

I have been listening to the voices of cosmonauts for some decades and it was a real sensation to hear this old stager again via my headphones. It felt as if a time machine had put me back 20 years.

Module Spektr:

Almost for a year the experts are struggling along with the 1000 dollar question how to locate the leakage in the hull of the Spektr module. Previous attempts to find these leakage by pumping fluorescent gasses through Spektr were unsuccessful. Mission STS-91 gave the last opportunity to try this again. The first test was executed on 6.06.1998 during the VHF-pass in orbit 70242, between 1756 and 1807 UTC. Budarin opened the valve of Spektr's hatch and inflated the fluorescent gasses into the module. Musabayev gave a count down so that everybody on board of Discovery could be alert with camera's and at portholes. During the test Budarin reported the pressures inside Spektr. These values were relatively low, not more than 55 MM mercury. Precourt reported that nothing could be seen with the naked eye. The test was repeated after the undocking of Discovery on 8.06.98. At 1124 UTC Discovery was station keeping right in front of the Mir-station while Musabayev and Budarin repeated the procedure and again Precourt reported that they did not see anything.

Let us hope that analyses on earth of the video recordings and photographs will help.

Departure of Discovery:

During the undocking communications went via VHF-channels. This took place during the pass in orbit 70272 (1554-1602 UTC). After some camera problems the images were transmitted via tracking stations in Russia. Altair-2 was not active. During the following orbit (70273) Altair-2 was active and images could be seen of the autonomously flying Discovery. The crew also transmitted video recordings of the farewell party just before the closing of the hatches to Discovery. Altair-2 stopped transmitting at 17.23.40 UTC, so just before the separation burn of Discovery, which took place at 1724 UTC. From 1732 UTC Mir communicated via the VHF channels in the 143 and 130 mc bands.

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

A photograph of the CZ-2F manned spacecraft launch vehicle and its vertical assembly building was posted anonymously on the Internet. It was said to have been taken in May 1998 at the Jiuquan launch site by a contruction contractor. Some believed the photograph to be a phony but events later proved it to be real and a deliberate leak.

Launch delayed from June 8. The first of the Intelsat 9 series provided telecommunications (Internet, video and telephone) services from a geosynchronous position at 18 deg W over the Atlantic Ocean. Intelsat 901 was an FS-1300HL, an improved version of the long-standing Space Systems/Loral (originally Aeronutronic Ford) FS-1300 platform. The satellite was to provide voice and video services to Europe and the Americas through 44 C-band and 12 Ku-band transponders. The satellite had C-band beams for the Atlantic region and a Ku-band spot beam for Europe, and an R-4D liquid apogee engine. Dry mass was 1972 kg and launch mass of 4723 kg. The International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (ITSO), beginning with its first satellite, Early Bird (1965-028A), had as of this date successfully launched 54 satellites, 19 of which were operational. As of 27 August 2001 located at 54.26 deg W drifting at 1.105 deg E per day. As of 2007 Mar 8 located at 18.01W drifting at 0.008W degrees per day.

The spacewalk was made from the Quest airlock, which was depressurized at around 1522 UTC and the hatch was opened at 1524 UTC. The suits went to battery power at 1527 UTC. The astronauts installed the PGDF grapple fixture on the P6 truss, stowed some space debris shields on the PMA-1 adapter, and prepared the Mobile Base System (MBS) in the Shuttle cargo bay. The hatch was closed at 2234 UTC and the airlock began repressurization at 2242 UTC.

Satellite with the DirecTV Latin America 2 (DLA-2) Ku-band payload was launched into a supersynchronous transfer orbit. The Proton second stage suffered an early shutdown of one of its 4 engines, leaving the vehicle 28m/s slow at stage 3 separation. Fortunately the Briz-M stage was able to correct the problem by adjusting its burn times and delivered the satellite to the correct orbit.