Clifford I. Cummings, Jet Propulsion Laboratory spacecraft program director, announced at a meeting of the Aviation Writers Association in Los Angeles, Calif., that the spacecraft which would carry television and a detachable instrumented capsule to be crash-landed on the moon would be called "Ranger."

Titov and Kamanin meet journalist Drew Pierson, who claims that five Soviet cosmonauts died before Gagarin flew. They are introduced to Wernher Von Braun. In the afternoon they go to a barbecue at Glenn's house in Virginia. Kamanin carefully notes the technical information he has gleaned: Glenn wore no parachute; the Mercury's solid fuel retrorockets fire in 28 seconds, much more quickly and with more force than the Vostok's low-thrust liquid propellant engine; it is planned to launch a modernised version of Mercury on a one-day flight by the end of 1962; the astronauts train in the centrifuge to 16 G's (versus 12 G's for the cosmonauts); the NASA manned space headquarters is moving to Texas; Mercury is only capable of water landings, no work has been done on land landings or equipping the capsule with an ejection seat; several Amerrican women are considered fit for spaceflight, and the first American woman could make a three-orbit flight in the second half of 1962.

Only today is Kamanin informed that a dual flight has been decreed within the next 3 to 6 weeks. The women are ready, but Bykovskiy and Volynov need a few parachute jumps and training in the hot mock-up. Leonov and Khrunov need additional centrifuge training as well. Bykovskiy and Volynov should be ready by 30 May, and Leonov and Khrunov by 15 June. Therefore earliest possible launch date is 5 to 15 June. Alekseyev's bureau is as always the pacing factor. He can adapt one of the female ejection seats for Bykovskiy, but not for Volynov. The space suit for Leonov will only be completed by 30 May. Kamanin talks to Korolev about dumping Alekseyev's bureau in the future. Cosmonaut parachute trainer Nikitin agrees that Bykovskiy can complete his parachute qualification at Fedosiya on 9-10 May. Further bad behaviour by Titov is reported during a trip to Kiev. He insulted an officer ('I am Titov, who are you?') and then had general's wives intervene on his behalf to get him out of trouble.

Technical personnel at MSC became concerned over an RCS oxidizer tank failure that occurred in February 1965, during propellant exposure and creep tests. The failure had previously been explained as stress corrosion caused from a fingerprint on the tank shell before heat treat. NASA requested that the test be repeated under tighter controlled procedures.

Directions had been prepared to designate mission AS-501 formally as Apollo 4, AS-204/LM-1 as Apollo 5, and AS-502 as Apollo 6, NASA Apollo Program Director Samuel C. Phillips informed Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight George E. Mueller. Phillips said he thought it was the right time to start using the designations in official releases and appropriate internal documentation. Mueller concurred.

It is decided that the TsPK will be named for Gagarin. Meanwhile 400 soldiers and 50 officers have combed the Gagarin crash site, recovering pieces of the aircraft. Gagarin's widow will receive a one-time payment of 5000 roubles, plus 200 roubles/month pension, plus 100 roubles/month for Gagarin's daughter. This is in addition to base amounts of 150/month for the widow and 75/month for the daughter.

At 10:00 the Soyuz 10 crew has the traditional post-flight meeting with the Central Committee, followed by speeches at 15:00 before the workers and engineers at TsKBEM. The truth about the flight is not revealed. Mishin is still pushing for an EVA on Soyuz 11; Kamanin tells him the idea is absurd. Kamanin fumes that Mishin still hasn't reliable solved the problem of automated space docking, on which he began work in 1962.

LAGEOS (Laser Geodetic Satellite) was a very dense (high mass-to-area ratio) laser retroreflector satellite which provided a permanent reference point in a very stable orbit for such precision earth-dynamics measurements as crustal motions, regional strains, fault motions, polar motion and earth-rotation variations, solid earth tides, and other kinematic and dynamic parameters associated with earthquake assessment and alleviation. The performance in orbit of LAGEOS was limited only by degradation of the retroreflectors, so many decades of useful life can be expected. The high mass-to-area ratio and the precise, stable (attitude-independent) geometry of the spacecraft, together with the orbit, made this satellite the most precise position reference available. Because it is visible in all parts of the world and has an extended operation life in orbit, LAGEOS can serve as a fundamental standard for decades. Additional Details: here....

The second FLTSATCOM satellite was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on board an Atlas/Centaur booster. Spacecraft engaged in practical applications and uses of space technology such as weather or communication (US Cat C). Launch vehicle put payload into geosynchronous transfer orbit Positioned in geosynchronous orbit at 23 deg W in 1979-1980; 72 deg E in 1980-1992 As of 5 September 2001 located at 90.48 deg W drifting at 6.234 deg W per day. As of 2007 Mar 9 located at 12.01W drifting at 6.223W degrees per day.

SAR radar imaging of the Venusian surface, gravitational field mapping. The Magellan spacecraft was deployed from shuttle STS-30 on May 5, 1989, arrived at Venus on August 10, 1990 and was inserted into a near-polar elliptical orbit with a periapsis altitude of 294 km at 9.5 deg. N. The primary objectives of the Magellan mission were to map the surface of Venus with a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and to determine the topographic relief of the planet. At the completion of radar mapping 98% of the surface was imaged at resolutions better than 100 m, and many areas were imaged multiple times. The mission was divided up into 'cycles', each cycle lasted 243 days (the time necessary for Venus to rotate once under the Magellan orbit - i.e. the time necessary for Magellan to 'see' the entire surface once.) The mission proceeded as follows: 10 Aug 1990 - Venus orbit insertion and spacecraft checkout;15 Sep 1990 - Cycle 1: Radar mapping (left-looking); 15 May 1991 - Cycle 2: Radar mapping (right-looking); 15 Jan 1992 - Cycle 3: Radar mapping (left-looking); 14 Sep 1992 - Cycle 4: Gravity data acquisition; 24 May 1993 - Aerobraking to circular orbit; 3 Aug 1993 - Cycle 5: Gravity data acquisition; 30 Aug 1994 - Windmill experiment; 12 Oct 1994 - Loss of radio signal; 13 Oct 1994 - Loss of spacecraft. A total of 4225 usable SAR imaging orbits was obtained by Magellan. Magellan showed an Earth-sized planet with no evidence of Earth-like plate tectonics. At least 85% of the surface is covered with volcanic flows, the remainder by highly deformed mountain belts. Even with the high surface temperature (475 C) and high atmospheric pressure (92 bars), the complete lack of water makes erosion a negligibly slow process, and surface features can persist for hundreds of millions of years. Some surface modification in the form of wind streaks was observed. Over 80% of Venus lies within 1 km of the mean radius of 6051.84 km. The mean surface age is estimated to be about 500 million years. A major unanswered question concerns whether the entire surface was covered in a series of large events 500 million years ago, or if it has been covered slowly over time. The gravity field of Venus is highly correlated with the surface topography, which indicates the mechanism of topographic support is unlike the Earth, and may be controlled by processes deep in the interior. Details of the global tectonics on Venus were still unresolved.

Streched Rohini Satellite Series; measured ionospheric plasma and gamma rays. SROSS-C2 satellite carries two scientific payloads: (i) Retarding Potential Analyser (RPA), consisting of two planar detectors to measure plasma parameters and investigate energetics of the equatorial ionosphere. (ii) Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) detectors, cons isting of two scintillators to study celestial gamma ray bursts in the energy range of 20 keV to 3000 keV. Launch vehicle Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle ASLV-D4.

Remote Sensing satellite. Last launch of Ariane 42P version. Launch delayed from April 10. The Ariane 42P, with two PAP solid boosters, flew north from Kourou. The third stage burn occurred off the east coast of North America, with engine cutoff at 0150 UTC and stage separation at 0151 UTC. Venting of the remaining third stage propellant was seen by observers in the US. SPOT Image's SPOT 5 was built by Astrium/Toulouse. The main instrument was the HRVIR imaging camera payload including a 2.5-meter resolution imager. A secondary experiment was the 5-band VEGETATION-2 instrument with 1-km resolution.

The Idefix amateur radio payload consisted of two small 6 kg boxes attached to the Ariane third stage. The payload was operated by AMSAT-F, the French branch of the amateur radio organization. (The first French satellite was nicknamed Asterix after the famous comic book character; Idefix was Asterix and Obelix's pet dog.)

Climatology and environment satellite. Launch delayed from December 20, 2001, and January 30, April 18 and 26, May 2. NASA's Aqua remote sensing satellite was placed in a 185 x 707 km x 98.1 deg transfer orbit at 1006 UTC. A second burn of the second stage of the Delta at 1048:58 UTC put Aqua in a 676 x 687 km x 98.2 deg orbit.

The loss of the shuttle Columbia on the STS-107 mission grounded the shuttle fleet and meant that the Soyuz TMA-1 attached to the ISS would be used in its lifeboat role for the first time. Soyuz TMA-2 carried the EO-7 skeleton crew to the ISS with the mission of keeping the station in operation until shuttle flights could resume. This allowed the EO-6 crew, after their extended stay aboard the ISS, to finally return home. They readied the TMA-1 for landing and then undocked from the ISS at 22:40 GMT on 2 May. This marked the first return of American astronauts in a Soyuz capsule (though several had ridden Soyuz capsules to the Mir station). During the re-entry, the first for the Soyuz TMA-1 model, the guidance failed and the capsule reverted to a rolling ballistic re-entry. This subjected the crew to over 8 G's, as opposed to under 3 G's for a normal Soyuz lifting re-entry. It also resulted in a landing 460 km short of the target. Soyuz TMA-1 landed at 2:07 GMT, but htere was a delay of over two hours before recovery forces arrived at the capsule.

Astra 1L provided direct-to-home broadcast services to Europe from its location at 19.2º East. It also strengthened the SES in-orbit backup system, extended fleet coverage from the Canary Islands eastwards up to the Russian border, and allowed Astra 2C to be moved from 19.2º East to 28.2º to fulfill high capacity demand from the U.K. and Ireland. Astra 1L was equipped with 29 Ku + 2 Ka active transponders, which would be reduced to 27 active transponders after its first five years of operation.