Robert H. Goddard offered all his research data, patents, and facilities for use by the military services at a meeting with representatives of Army Ordnance, Army Air Corps, and Navy Bureau of Aeronautics arranged by Harry Guggenheim. Nothing resulted from this except an expression of possible use of rockets in jet-assisted take-offs of aircraft.

Dornberger was promoted to Major General. But Degenkolb was still in charge of A4 production, and had sent four engineers to spy at Peenemuende, asking them to provide recommendations on reorganisation of the place, promising the four that they would be made directors of the new enterprise.

Test of separable warhead. Range achieved 31.9 km. Vertical launch. Expected range 22 km. Launched at 0450 local time. Carried two 85 kg Physical Measurement of Atmospheric Boundary (FIAR-1) containers, which were recovered but damaged; no science resulted

The RAND Corporation issued the first of a series of reports on the feasibility of a lunar instrument carrier, based on the use of an Atlas booster. A braking rocket would decelerate the vehicle before lunar landing, and a penetration spike on the forward point of the instrument package would help to absorb the 500 feet per second impact velocity. Instruments would then transmit information on the lunar surface to earth.

Air Force Ballistic Missile Division completed its fourth Man-In-Space Development Plan.This, in the form of charts rather than a formal publication, proposed use of the Atlas booster plus a second stage consisting of a Lockheed Hustler (second stage of the 117L, later called Agena) to place a man in a 150 nautical mile orbit during October 1960. Cost for this project was estimated to be $106.11 million for fiscal 1959. The plan was briefed at command and Air Force headquarters, as well as the Air Force secretariat level. (Chronological Space Hist, 1958.)

Able and Baker recovered after spaceflight. Fired from AMR at 0235 hours EST. The flight was successful with impact ranging from 0.1 to 0.4 nm from the target. The missile travelled a 1,302 nm range. The significant mission of the missile was to test the effects of cosmic radiation, increased gravity, and weightlessness on live passengers and biomedical experiments of material housed in the nose cone. On board were an American-born rhesus monkey, Able; a squirrel monkey, Baker; and the biomedical experiments -- yeast , corn, mustard seeds, fruit-fly larvae, human blood, mould spore, and fish eggs. Able and Baker were recovered unharmed within one and one-half hours after lift-off. This milestone marked the first recovery of living creatures from a flight through near space. The biomedical experiments were for NASA analysis. Telemetry data disclosed that the responses of the animals were normal for the conditions they were experiencing. During the boost phase, when the higher g-loads were being sustained, body temperature, respiration, pulse rate, and heartbeat rose but were well within tolerable limits. During the weightless period along the trajectory arc, the physiological responses of Able and Baker approached normal - so near, in fact, that according to telemetry data, Baker appeared either to doze or to become drowsy. Upon reentry, the responses rose again, but at landing the animals were nearing a settled physiological state. This flight was another milestone proving that life could be sustained in a space environment.

The DRG (German Rocket Society) launched a 40 kg rocket over a range of 14 km to the island of Neuwerk. The missile had a thrust of 508 kgf and took 30 seconds to cover the distance. 5000 postcards were carried. This fulfilled a 28 year old plan for such a rocket flight.

He tangled in the air with another member of a group jump, Aleksei Novikov. Both were killed. The Vostok 5 and 6 launch vehicles and spacecraft are both in the MIK assembly wall. Work began on them two weeks ago. Nevertheless Korolev is not happy with the results. He wants the tests run over from the start. Round-the-clock work begins from this day. The bad weather and the news of Nikitin's death produce an atmosphere of gloom. Nikitin's funeral is scheduled for 30 May. Therefore the cosmonauts have delayed their departure in order to attend the funeral and will not arrive at Tyuratam until 31 May. Kamanin was very worried about the effect of Nikitin's death on the female cosmonauts' nerves. The final decree set the launch dates as 2/3 June, with landing on 7/8 June. Kamanin gets into a heated argument with Rudenko, who wants to fly all of the cosmonauts to Tyuratam on a single aircraft. He doesn't see what the big deal is -- after all, state ministers fly together all the time.

Lockheed Propulsion Company test fired a 156-inch diameter, solid-propellant rocket motor for the first time. The one-segment test motor (156-3-L), with tab jet thrust vector control, produced more than 900,000 pounds of thrust during its 110-second firing. The test was conducted as part of the Space Systems Division's Large Solid Rocket Motor research and development program (Program 623A).

Mars probe intended to conduct of a series of scientific investigations of the planet Mars and the space around it. Parameters are for Mars orbit. The Mars 3 orbiter also carried a French-built experiment which was not carried on Mars 2. Called Spectrum 1, the instrument measured solar radiation at metric wavelengths in conjunction with Earth-based receivers to study the cause of solar outbursts. The Spectrum 1 antenna was mounted on one of the solar panels. A mid-course correction was made on 8 June. The descent module (COSPAR 1971-049F) was released at 09:14 GMT on 2 December 1971 about 4.5 hours before reaching Mars. Through aerodynamic braking, parachutes, and retro-rockets, the lander achieved a soft landing at 45 S, 158 W and began operations. However, after 20 sec the instruments stopped working for unknown reasons. Meanwhile, the orbiter engine performed a burn to put the spacecraft into a long 11-day period orbit about Mars with an inclination thought to be similar to that of Mars 2 (48.9 degrees). Data was sent back for many months. It was announced that Mars 2 and 3 had completed their missions by 22 August 1972.

Transport of various cargoes to the Salyut-7 orbital station. Docked with Salyut 7 on 30 May 1984 15:47:00 GMT. Undocked on 15 Jul 1984 13:36:00 GMT. Destroyed in reentry on 15 Jul 1984 18:52:00 GMT. Total free-flight time 2.28 days. Total docked time 45.91 days.

Military Observation satellite. Return to flight of the Shavit booster following a lauanch failure. Launch delayed from third quarter 2001. The three-stage Shavit rocket took off from Palmachim Air Force Base on the Israeli coast and flew westward to put the satellite in a retrograde orbit. The AUS-51 third stage solid motor entered a 262 x 774 km x 143.5 deg orbit and separated from the Ofeq satellite. Both coasted up to apogee at around 1620 UTC when Ofeq made a burn to increase its velocity by 33 m/s, raising the orbit to 369 x 771 km x 143.5 deg.

The Kosmos-3M rocket entered a transfer orbit of about 150 x 1000 km x 83 deg at about 1823 UTC; a second burn at apogee around 1905 UTC circularized the orbit at 950 x 1016 km. The Parus navigation satellite was placed in Plane 4, probably replacing Cosmos 2336; it was between the planes of Cosmos 2366 and Cosmos 2361.

For the long-term Russian sleep study, FE-1 Oleg Kononenko terminated his third MBI-12 SONOKARD experiment session upon wake-up by taking the recording device from his SONOKARD sports shirt pocket and later copying the measurements to the RSE-MED laptop for subsequent downlink to the ground. Additional Details: here....

First Block IIF Global Positioning System satellite. Supported the L1M and L2M military GPS channels, the L2C civilian channel and a new L5 civilian channel. Also included a nuclear explosion detection system. The IIF system replaces earlier Block I, Block II, and IIA series built by Rockwell/Seal Beach (now part of Boeing) and Block IIR satellites built by Lockheed Martin/Valley Forge.

Docked with the Rassvet module of the ISS at 02:10 GMT on 29 May after a 5 hour 39 minute flight. On 1 November 2013 Yurchikin, Nyberg and Parmitano, undocked from the Rassvet module at 08:33 GMT and flew around the station at a distance of 200 m to redock at 08:54 GMT with the Zvezda aft port freed up by ATV-4. Undocked from the Zvezda module on 10 November at 23:26 GMT and landed in Kazakhstan at 02:49 GMT on 11 November.