AM-5, carrying America's first tactical type re-entry nose cone, was fired from AMR at 0005 hours EST. This was also the first flight test. for first and second stage separation. Impact was 28.3 nm under and 15.6 nm to the right at a range of about 1,275 nm after approximately 960 seconds of flight. In less than five hours, the nose cone was recovered - the world's first recovery of an IRBM nose cone.

Kamanin reports the sad state of affairs. There is no Soviet state organ tasked with systematic management of the space program (the VPK and Smirnov only handle this as one of many tasks): within the Ministry of Defence there is no single organ that promotes and guides military space interests (TsUKOS under Karas only works to order, and does not formulate plans or policy); there is no one at the Academy of Sciences, in industry , or the Ministry of Defence charged with managing manned spaceflight (only 4% - 8 of 200 launches by the Soviet Union - have been on manned missions); in the last six years no new manned spacecraft has been flown (Voskhod being merely a modification of Vostok); the new Soyuz spacecraft is 3 to 4 years behind schedule due to the insistence it be capable of fully automatic docking in space; no adequate trainers for manned spacecraft have ever been delivered.

Final dress rehearsal in lunar orbit for landing on moon. LM separated and descended to 10 km from surface of moon but did not land. Apollo 10 (AS-505) - with crew members Thomas P. Stafford, Eugene A. Cernan, and John W. Young aboard - lifted off from Pad B, Launch Complex 39, KSC, at 12:49 p.m. EDT on the first lunar orbital mission with complete spacecraft. The Saturn V's S-IVB stage and the spacecraft were inserted into an earth parking orbit of 189.9 by 184.4 kilometers while the onboard systems were checked. The S-IVB engine was then ignited at 3:19 p.m. EDT to place the spacecraft in a trajectory toward the moon. One-half hour later the CSM separated from the S-IVB, transposed, and docked with the lunar module. At 4:29 p.m. the docked spacecraft were ejected, a separation maneuver was performed, and the S-IVB was placed in a solar orbit by venting residual propellants. TV coverage of docking procedures was transmitted to the Goldstone, Calif., tracking station for worldwide, commercial viewing.

On May 19 the crew elected not to make the first of a series of midcourse maneuvers. A second preplanned midcourse correction that adjusted the trajectory to coincide with a July lunar landing trajectory was executed at 3:19 p.m. The maneuver was so accurate that preplanned third and fourth midcourse corrections were canceled. During the translunar coast, five color TV transmissions totaling 72 minutes were made of the spacecraft and the earth.

At 4:49 p.m. EDT on May 21 the spacecraft was inserted into a lunar orbit of 110.4 by 315.5 kilometers. After two revolutions of tracking and ground updates, a maneuver circularized the orbit at 109.1 by 113.9 kilometers. Astronaut Cernan then entered the LM, checked all systems, and returned to the CM for the scheduled sleep period.

On May 22 activation of the lunar module systems began at 11:49 a.m. EDT. At 2:04 p.m. the spacecraft were undocked and at 4:34 p.m. the LM was inserted into a descent orbit. One hour later the LM made a low-level pass at an altitude of 15.4 kilometers over the planned site for the first lunar landing. The test included a test of the landing radar, visual observation of lunar lighting, stereo photography of the moon, and execution of a phasing maneuver using the descent engine. The lunar module returned to dock successfully with the CSM following the eight-hour separation, and the LM crew returned to the CSM.

The LM ascent stage was jettisoned, its batteries were burned to depletion, and it was placed in a solar orbit on May 23. The crew then prepared for the return trip to earth and after 61.5 hours in lunar orbit a service propulsion system TEI burn injected the CSM into a trajectory toward the earth. During the return trip the astronauts made star-lunar landmark sightings, star-earth horizon navigation sightings, and live television transmissions.

Launch is set for 31 May with an 18 day mission duration. Afterwards Serbin asks why the Soviet Union is not conducting more manned spaceflights. Kamanin tells him, because no more spacecraft have been built. And why no spacecraft, Serbin asks. Kamanin replies that GUKOS, the General Staff, and Mishin were all opposed to production of 10 additional Soyuz ships for military flights.

A sub-scale model of an extendible nozzle exit cone (ENEC), developed by Hercules Incorporated for Missile X second and third stages, was successfully tested at the AFRPL. This was the first successful deployment of an ENEC over a rocket motor plume which did not result in structural damage to the nozzle.

TDV-1, the first of three technology development vehicle flights in CY 1977, was successfully launched from Vandenberg AFB to the Kwajalein missile range on a Minuteman I booster. It successfully conducted complex experiments dealing with nosetip materials, aerodynamics, and electronics.

Docked with Mir. Mir Expedition EO-09. Carried Anatoli Artsebarski, Sergei Krikalev, Helen Sharman to Mir; returned Artsebarski, crew of Soyuz TM 8 to Earth. Second commercial flight with paying British passenger. Sponsoring British consortium was not quite able to come up with money, however. Flight continued at Soviet expense with very limited UK experiments.

During their 2d EVA on 17.05.1995 the cosmonauts were not able to accomplish their task due to a threatening lack of oxygen. This EVA was the 2d one in a series of 4. There was a possibility to use 2 so called 'contingency-EVA's'. The first of these contingency EVA's will take place on 22.05.1995. The time of the opening of the hatch and the duration are still unknown. This EVA -so now to be counted as the 3d one- will be made to complete the transfer of a solar battery from Kristall to Kvant-1 (37KE). The cosmonauts will have to install, deploy and activate that solar panel. To fill up the gap in the energy supply the solar panels of the freighter Progress-M27 are now also delivering energy to the Mir-complex. Thus far is not known when the EVA on schedule for 24.05.1995 will be made.

Launch of Spektr:

The Spektr technological module will be launched by a Proton carrier from Baykonur on 20.05.1995 at 0330 UTC.

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

TERRIERS was part of NASA's Student Explorer Demonstration Initiative (STEDI), which was a precursor program to the UNEX (University Explorer) series. STEDI was managed by USRA (the Universities Space Research Association) for NASA, while UNEX was to be more directly managed by NASA-GSFC. TERRIERS was to be operated by the space physics group at Boston University for ionosphere studies, and carried TESS, a set of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) spectrographs to get electron density and thermosphere emission profiles. The GISSMO instrument measured the solar EUV flux. The spacecraft was built by AeroAstro and based on HETE. TERRIERS was placed in the correct orbit, but it failed to orient its solar panel to the Sun and ran out of battery power by May 20. Controllers were optimistic that when its orbit processes to a better sun angle the satellite could be revived. Air dropped in Point Arguello WADZ. Additional Details: here....

After deploying the TERRIERS satellite, the conical Payload Adapter Fitting (1998-26E) was jettisoned at 05:21 GMT, leaving the disk-shaped MUBLCOM satellite attached to the Pegasus XL PRIMEX HAPS-Lite stage. The second HAPS burn at 05:22 GMT raised apogee to 775 km, followed by a third, apogee burn at 06:10 GMT which circularised the orbit. MUBLCOM was deployed to a 769 km x 776 km x 97.7 degree orbit. The final HAPS burn then placed the depleted HAPS stage in a lower 388 km x 722 km x 97.1 degree disposal orbit. MUBLCOM (Multiple beam Beyond Line-of-sight Communications) was an experimental satellite funded by DARPA and managed by the US Army's Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM) at Ft Monmouth, New Jersey. It was built by Orbital Sciences using the Microstar (Orbcomm type) bus and carries a payload testing hand-held radio satellite communications for the armed forces.

Six years later MUBLCOM was the target for the DART Autonomous Rendezvous Technology mission. On April 16, 2005, DART closed within 100 m of MUBLCOM satellite, then evidently began a series of out-of-control maneuvers resulting in an in-space collission and MUBLCOM being bumped into a 3 to 5 km higher orbit. DART was deorbited while MUBLCOM, still functioned, continued on in space. Air dropped in Point Arguello WADZ.

Military Communications Technology flight. Launch delayed from March 1, April 25, May 2 and 17. GeoLITE, US National Reconnaissance Office spacecraft was into placed by the Delta launch vehicle into a geostationary transfer orbit. GeoLITE was a TRW T-310 class satellite with a mass of about 1800 kg, including a solid apogee motor. The satellite carried an experimental laser communications payload and an operational UHF data relay payload.

The Nanoracks NRCSD-7 cubesat deploys were completed on May 18 with the release of four Lemur-2 satellites from Spire Global. The Lemur system carried AIS and GPS radio occultation meteorology payloads. The distortion of the radio signal from a GPS satellite as it passes through the Earth's atmosphere and out again to the STRATOS detector on Lemur-2 depends on the temperature, pressure and humidity of the region of the atmosphere the signal was passing through - so STRATOS can infer the weather. Lemur's SENSE payload contributes to the network of automatic identification of shipping (AIS), relaying position and identification data from ships at sea. The four satellites, built in Glasgow, are named Theresacondor, Kane, Nick-Allain and Jeff after Spire employees. (Theresa Condor was VP Corp.Development for Spire. Nick Allain was their director of brand. Kane was probably named after Megan Kane, a Spire manager, and Jeff was possibly Spire satellite engineer Jeff Kuehne.) The two Nanoracks Cubesat Dispensers launched on OA-4 (Dec 2015, NRCSD-7) and OA-6 (Mar 2016, NRCSD-8) were stored on ISS until May and repacked to allow the high priority Dove 0D-class and Spire Global Lemur satellites to be deployed sooner