The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Space Task Group met at Air Force Missile Test Center, received an orientation briefing and a tour of the Cape launching facilities. (Paper, AFBMD Support, Proj Mercury, Dec 60, prep by AFBMD Space Div (WD Z). I

NASA announced the completion of the preliminary flight rating test of the Nation's first liquid-hydrogen rocket engine. The engine, the RL-10, was designed and developed by Pratt and Whitney, of United Aircraft, for the Marshall Space Flight Center, and 20 captive firings were competed within 5 days under simulated space conditions, consistently producing 15,000 pounds of thrust. RL-10, previously known as XLR-115, was initiated in October 1958 and over 700 firings were conducted in its development.

Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara officially announced his decision to retire Atlas E,F, and Titan I ICBM weapon systems from the active operational inventory. They were said to be no longer supportable from requirements, cost, or manpower use standpoints. Moreover, the relative slow-reacting, liquid-fueled Atlas and Titan I missiles had provided the initial deterrent that was necessary and would now be replaced by the less vulnerable, more easily maintained Minuteman and Titan II ICBMs.

Martin L. Raines, MSC's Manager at the White Sands Test Facility, recommended to ASPO Manager George M. Low that he issue official direction to the two spacecraft contractors, North American Rockwell and Grumman, governing the phasedown of operations at the engine test site. Early action was needed, Raines said, for proper contractual action on the phasedown and for proper disposition of equipment and supplies. This action signaled the end of the long and difficult supportive development effort to prove out the Apollo spacecraft rocket engines for flight.

Conrad and Bean reentered the LM, checked out all systems, and at 10:17 p.m. EST on November 18 fired the reaction control system thrusters to separate the CSM 108 (the Yankee Clipper) from the LM-6 (the Intrepid). At 1:55 a.m. EST November 19, the Intrepid landed on the moon's Ocean of Storms, about 163 meters from the Surveyor III spacecraft that had landed April 19, 1967. Additional Details: here....

A Delta 2914 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral carrying the NATO IIIC satellite. The launch was successful, and the satellite performed satisfactorily in orbit. Positioned in geosynchronous orbit over the Atlantic Ocean at 50 deg W in 1979-1982 over the Atlantic Ocean 21 deg W in 1983-1986 over the Atlantic Ocean 18 deg W in 1987-1991 over the Atlantic Ocean21 deg W in 1991-1992 As of 31 August 2001 located at 122.29 deg E drifting at 6.431 deg W per day. As of 2007 Mar 10 located at 114.22E drifting at 6.438W degrees per day.

Mission STS-80 carried the Orfeus astronomy satellite, the Wake Shield Facility, and spacewalk equipment. The Orfeus satellite was deployed on November 20. It carried an ultraviolet telescope and spectrographs. Wake Shield Facility was deployed on November 22 and retrieved on November 26 . On 1996 Nov 29, crewmembers Tamara Jernigan and Thomas Jones were to conduct the first of several planned EVAs. However the shuttle's exit hatch would not open and NASA cancelled this and the other planned spacewalks of the mission. On December 4 at the astronauts retrieved the Orfeus satellite using the RMS arm. Reentry attempts on Dec 5 and Dec 6 were called off due to bad weather. Columbia finally landed at 11:49 GMT December 7 on Runway 33 at Kennedy Space Center, making STS-80 the longest shuttle mission to that date .

Unmanned resupply vessel to Mir. Docked with Mir on 22 Nov 1996 01:01:30 GMT. Undocked on 6 Feb 1997 12:13:53 GMT. Thereafter in independent orbital flight in a 377 x 395 km x 51.65 deg orbit. Failed to redock with Mir on 4 Mar 1996. Destroyed in reentry on 12 Mar 1997 03:23:37 GMT. Total free-flight time 35.70 days. Total docked time 76.47 days.

OV-102 Columbia was launched on a microgravity science mission. Spartan 201 was released a day late on November 21. However the satellite did not start its automatic orientation maneuver because the crew failed to send it the correct commands prior to release.

Spartan was recaptured by hand, during a spacewalk by Takao Doi and Winston Scott on November 25. Tests of space station tools went well, but the free-flying Sprint camera subsatellite was not deployed due to lack of time.

NASA decided not to redeploy Spartan on this mission. During an EVA on Dec 3, Doi and Scott carried out more tests of the Space Station crane. They also deployed the AERCam/Sprint 'football' remote-controlled camera for a free flight in the payload bay.

Columbia landed on December 5, with a deorbit burn at 11:21 GMT. Touchdown was at 12:20 GMT at Kennedy Space Center.

Selection of astronauts to fly the Project 921 / Shenzhou manned spacecraft began at the end of 1995. Only PLAAF pilots were considered. Review of service records identified 1504 candidates, further reduced to 886 after stricter screening. In the summer of 1996, 60 candidates passed initial testing at their home bases and were sent to Beijing for final tests and interviews. By April 1997 the candidate list had been pared down to 20, and the final 12 were selected at the end of 1997. The group was officially established in January 1998. In March, 1998, the two Chinese astronauts trained in Russia in 1996, who were also the trainers of this first group of 12 cosmonauts, joined the group officially as candidates for future spaceflights, bringing the total to 14.

The unmanned first test flight of a prototype of the Chinese Project 921-1 spacecraft took place 49 days after the planned date of October 1, 1999. Shenzhou separated from its launch vehicle and went into orbit about ten minutes after lift-off. The spacecraft was controlled from the new Beijing Aerospace Directing and Controlling Centre. The spacecraft did not manoeuvre during the flight. The first attempt to return the spacecraft to earth came on orbitt 12, but the retrofire command would not be accepted by the spacecraft's computer. A retry on the next orbit also failed.

The Yuanwang-3 tracking ship off the coast of Namibia picked up the spacecraft's signal at 18:49 UT, and commanded retro-fire. This time the spacecraft accepted the command, which probably saved the entire program. The spacecraft passed out of range of the tracking ship nine minutes later. Its trajectory arced over Africa, skimmed the coast of the Arabian peninsula, and then over Pakistan, before re-entering over Tibet.

Following re-entry, the drogue chute deployed at an altitude of 30 km with the capsules soft-landing rockets firing 1.5 m above the ground. The capsule landed at 41 deg N, 105 deg E, (415 km East of its launch pad and 110 km north-west of Wuhai, Inner Mongolia), at November 20 19:41 UT. The spacecraft had completed 14 orbits of the earth in 21 hours and 11 minutes.

After the flight it was reported that not a single primary spacecraft system had failed, so none of the back-up systems were tested. The touchdown point was only 12 km from the predicted position. The soft landing braking rocket worked well - no damage was found to the capsule structure, heat shield or the seals. The jettisoned heat shield, parachute hatch, and drogue chute were found within 5 km of the landing point. The orbital module, which separated prior to retro-fire, continued in controlled flight until 27 November, when it decayed and reentered the atmosphere. A primary payload returned by Shenzhou were 100 kg of seeds, considered valuable to the Chinese after one day of exposure to the space environment. The Chinese space tracking fleet returned from the Shenzhou mission between 12 December 1999 and 4 January 2000. During their 259-day voyage, the four ships traveled 185,000 km and experienced some heavy seas while tracking and communicating with the Shenzhou for a total of 150 minutes. Additional Details: here....

Objectives: The sixth glide flight of SpaceShipOne. Test pilot Mike Melvill's first flight with the enlarged tails. Emergency aft CG handling qualities eval and simulated landing exercise with the new tail configuration. Airspeed and G envelop expansion and dynamic feather evaluation. Additional Details: here....

Hayabusa released the second target marker at 20:30 GMT and this marker stayed on the surface, arriving at 20:36. Hayabusa then homed on the target and bounced off the surface at 21:10, followed by a firm landing at 21:30. It stayed on the surface until 21:58 - it was uncertain whether the planned surface sample had been obtained. A safe-mode command sent it Hayabusa to a distance of 100 km from the asteroid as the team considered their next move.

On 19 November a J-SSOD cubesat deployer was retrieved from the Kibo module airlock by the JEM RMS arm and moved to a deployment position; at 12:18 GMT it ejected three 1U cubesats, including two Ardusats for a demonstration of spaceborne Arduino processors for the US company NanoSatisfi.

On 19 November a J-SSOD cubesat deployer was retrieved from the Kibo module airlock by the JEM RMS arm and moved to a deployment position; at 12:18 GMT it ejected three 1U cubesats, including two Ardusats for a demonstration of spaceborne Arduino processors for the US company NanoSatisfi.

Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite R, which became GOES 16 when operational, was the first in a new series of Lockheed-Martin-built GOES weather satellites for NOAA. The satellite mass was 2857 kg dry, 5192 kg when full of propellant. GOES-R carried the Advanced Baseline Imager, a new camera similar in capabilities to those on the Japanese Himawari 8/9 series. Also aboard were the Geostationary Lightning Mapper, a Space Environment suite, a Solar Ultraviolet Imager, an EUV/X-Ray Irradiance Sensor, a Search and Rescue comm payload, and comm payloads to relay weather data.