Russian engineer cosmonaut 1989-1999. Engineer, first Russian woman to fly in space for other than propaganda reasons. Was married to astronaut Valeriy Ryumin. Civilian Engineer, Energia NPO 2 spaceflights, 178.4 days in space. Flew to orbit on Soyuz TM-20 (1994), STS-84.

Space Task Group personnel visited the Atlantic Missile Range at the invitation of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency to observe a Jupiter launch vehicle firing and the procedures followed on the day preceding the firing. The group toured the blockhouse and received briefings on various recorders that might be used in the centralized control facility for Mercury-Redstone and Mercury-Jupiter flights.

Martin-Baltimore submitted a "Description of the Launch Vehicle for the Gemini Spacecraft" to Air Force Space Systems Division. This document laid the foundation for the design of the Gemini launch vehicle by defining the concept and philosophy of each proposed subsystem.

The military has over a tonne of military experiments they want flown, which would require at a minimum manned flights of Voskhod s/n 6, 7, 8, and 9. Development of a military version of Soyuz is proceeding slowly. It would be best to use these existing spacecraft to fly these experiments as soon as possible, but MOM and OKB-1 have decided only to complete spacecraft s/n 6 and 7.

Ministry of General Machine Building (MOM) Decree 145ss 'On approval of the 7K-TK as transport for the Almaz station' was issued. It was decided that the 11F71 Soyuz-R space station would be cancelled and the Almaz would be developed in its place. Almaz was assigned the index number previously allocated to the Soyuz-R station, and Kozlov was ordered to hand over to Chelomei all of the work completed in relation to the station. However Kozlov's Soyuz 7K-TK ferry was to continue in development to transport crew to the Almaz.

Given the on-pad explosion of the LVI-2 launch attempt, plans to crew the upper VA re-entry capsule in the next test was abandoned. LVI-3 (VA's 102P and 102L / Cosmos 997 and Cosmos 998) was launched unmanned four months behind the original schedule. Both capsules were recovered after one orbit. One source indicates that one of the capsules was 009P, on its third launch and second flight to orbit. This was said to have demonstrated the multiple re-entry capability of the heat shield and the first planned reuse of a spacecraft (Gemini 2 was refurbished and reflown as MOL-1 in the 1960's, but was not designed for that purpose).

A launch on April 24 will see Atlantis - fresh off a year-and-a-half of refurbishment and maintenance - dock two days later to an orbiting space station for the first time since it arrived at the Russian Mir space station on STS-86 in September 1997. The orbiter and its external fuel tank/solid rocket booster stack was moved to the launch pad last Saturday and the Spacehab double module was installed into the payload bay earlier this week. A countdown test that includes the seven astronauts will be conducted next Thursday and Friday at the Kennedy Space Center to mirror the events that will take place on launch day. Additional Details: here....

Communications satellite. Moved from Proton M to Proton K booster. Launch delayed from November 26, 2001, and March 4, 2002. The three stage Proton booster put the DM3 upper stage and payload on a suborbital trajectory. The first DM3 burn reached a circular 160 km orbit at 1742 UTC. The second burn at 1838 UTC raised apogee to about 35800 km, and a third burn near apogee at 2339 UTC raised perigee to about 3500 km and lowered inclination to 25 deg. Blok DM3 separated from the Intelsat 903 payload at 0008 UTC on March 31. By April 5, Intelsat 903 was in a 31653 x 35817 km x 0.7 deg near-synchronous orbit. Intelsat 903 had a launch mass of 4726 kg and a dry mass around 2350 kg, and carried C and Ku band antennas. It was built by SS/Loral using a derivative of the FS-1300 platform. As of 2007 Mar 5 located at 34.50W drifting at 0.011W degrees per day.

Soyuz TMA-8 docked with the Zarya nadir port of the ISS at 04:19 GMT on April 1. It undocked from Zarya on 28 September at 21:53 GMT, with the return crew of Vinogradov, Williams and space tourist Ansari aboard. It landed in Kazakhstan at 01:13 GMT on 29 September.

A repeat of the test four days earlier, this time with a Japanese-designed scramjet. The nosecone of the rocket failed to jettison and therefore scramjet ignition was not achieved. The scramjet and second stage remains were located in the desert and recovered after only 20 minutes of searching.

First in the Beidou-3 generation of Chinese navigation satellites. For the first time the CZ-3C rocket used an additional fourth stage, the Yuanzheng-1 (Expedition-1). The stage used UDMH/N2O4 storable propellants like the Briz-M or Fregat, but had an even lower thrust - only 6.5 kN - and so will need yet longer burn times.

Kimbrough and Whitson carried out spacewalk EVA-41. The Quest airlock was depressurized at 1122 UTC and repressurized at 1833 UTC. The astronauts, in suits 3008 and 3006, emerged between 1136 and 1144 UTC. The old EXT-1 MDM computer, MDM-16E-0103, was removed from S0 and replaced by a new one. Whitson removed the fabric cover from the relocated PMA-3 docking unit, but needed Kimbrough's help to stuff it into the cover bag needed to take it back to the airlock, which was done by 1319 UTC. The next task was to install debris shields on the newly empty axial port on Node 3. Four shields were taken from near the airlock to Node 3 bundled in pairs. Unfortunately shield 1, being installed by Kimbrough, came loose and floated away at about 1357 UTC; it was cataloged in orbit as 1998-067LF (SSN 42434). After the remaining shields were installed, the astronauts retrieved the PMA-3 cover bag once more, unpacked the cover and pinned it down to cover the empty quadrant. Finally, additional shields were added to the base of PMA-3 in its new location.

See SES 10. SpaceX launched the 5300 kg SES-10 communications satellite into a 246 x 35673 km x 26.2 deg geotransfer orbit. After several orbit raising burns SES-10 reached a 35775 x 35796 km x 0.1 deg geostationary orbit at 68.5W on Apr 11. The Falcon 9 F9-033 second stage reduced its apogee slightly, ending up in a 235 x 33407 km orbit. The first stage was Falcon 9 core B1021, which had previously flown on the F9-023/CRS-8 mission in Apr 2016. The reused stage performed successfully and landed for a second time on the ASDS drone ship 'Of Course I Still Love You' in the Atlantic.