Main landing gear doors failed to close; ground control of aircraft lost (ET-33 aircraft took over control of the X-10); main gear failed to lock on contact with runway; pilot drag chute deployed late; brake failure caused damage to two tires. But the drone was recovered.

The Rocket and Satellite Research Panel, established in 1946 as the V-2 Upper Atmosphere Research Panel and renamed the Upper Atmosphere Rocket Research Panel in 1948, together with the American Rocket Society proposed a national space flight program and a unified National Space Establishment. The mission of such an Establishment would be nonmilitary in nature, specifically excluding space weapons development and military operations in space. By 1959, this Establishment should have achieved an unmanned instrumented hard lunar landing and, by 1960, an unmanned instrumented lunar satellite and soft lunar landing. Manned circumnavigation of the moon with return to earth should have been accomplished by 1965 with a manned lunar landing mission taking place by 1968. Beginning in 1970, a permanent lunar base should be possible.

Eagle-Picher Company completed qualification testing on the 25-amperehour reentry batteries for the CM. Shortly thereafter, Eagle-Picher received authorization from North American to proceed with design and development of the larger 40-ampere-hour batteries needed for the later Block I and all Block II spacecraft.

In a letter to NASA Administrator James E. Webb, AC Spark Plug reported that the first Apollo guidance system completed acceptance testing and was shipped at 11:30 p.m. and arrived at Downey, California, early the following day. AC reported that in more than 2,000 hours of operation they had found the system to be "remarkably reliable, accurate and simple to operate."

OGO 2 was a large observatory instrumented with 20 experiments designed to make simultaneous, correlative observations of aurora and airglow emissions, energetic particles, magnetic field variations, ionospheric properties, etc., especially over the polar areas. Soon after achieving orbit, difficulties in maintaining earth lock with horizon scanners caused exhaustion of attitude control gas by October 23, 1965, 10 days after launch. At this time, the spacecraft entered a spin mode (about 0.11 rpm) with a large coning angle about the previously vertical axis. Five experiments became useless when the satellite went into this spin mode. Six additional experiments were degraded by this loss of attitude control. By April 1966, both batteries had failed, so subsequent observations were limited to sunlit portions of the orbit. By December 1966, only eight experiments were operational, five of which were not degraded by the spin mode operation. By April 1967, the tape recorders had malfunctioned and only one third of the recorded data could be processed. Spacecraft power and periods of operational scheduling conflicts created six large data gaps so that data were observed on a total of about 306 days of the 2-yr, 18-day total span of observed satellite data to November 1, 1967. The spacecraft was shut down on November 1, 1967, with eight experiments still operational. It was reactivated for 2 weeks in February 1968 to operate the rubidium vapor magnetometer experiment.

Orbital manoeuvres for the Soyuz 7-8 docking have proceeded normally. The automated rendezvous system is supposed to kick in when the spacecraft are 250 km apart. The plan is that Soyuz 7 and 8 will dock while Soyuz 6 observes from only 50 m away. However when Soyuz 7 and 8 are only a kilometre apart, the Igla automated docking system fails. The crews could conduct a manual rendezvous, but the this is not allowed by the technical flight controller. Additional Details: here....

Communist Party Meeting at the cosmonaut centre. Keldysh calls later. Six specialists are to be sent to the United States to discuss design of a common USA/USSR docking system. Kamanin yet again goes through the correct answers and prepared speeches to be given to the press by Nikolayev and Sevastyanov on their visit to West Germany.

Surplus Atlas 31F was launched from Vanden-berg AFB carrying a Reentry Vehicles Technology and Observables (RVT0-3A-1) payload. This successful launch and flight marked the apparent end of the use of Atlas D,E, and F ICBMs in support of various Advanced Ballistic Reentry Systems (ABRES) and other governmental agency programs. Since Atlas 159D was launched from Vandenberg AFB on 26 October 1962 in support of the Nike Targets Program, a total of 113 Atlas missiles - 54Ds, 4Es, and 55Fs - have been launched with only 11 failures.

The Soyuz 23 ferry spacecraft suffered a docking system failure. Sensors indicated an incorrect lateral velocity, causing unnecessary firing of the thrusters during rendezvous. The automatic system was turned off, but no fuel remained for a manual docking by the crew.

Maritime communications. Spacecraft engaged in practical applications and uses of space technology such as weather or communication (US Cat C). Positioned in geosynchronous orbit over the Indian Ocean at 73 deg E in 1976-on. As of 26 August 2001 located at 33.84 deg W drifting at 0.011 deg W per day. As of 2007 Mar 10 located at 34.60W drifting at 0.007W degrees per day.

This freighter docked to Mir's aft docking port (Kvant-1) on 13.10.93 at 2325 UTC. The approach and docking took place in the automatic mode under observation of the crew. The docking took place a little bit later than expected after Mir's pass in orbit 43764 from 2309-2314 UTC. During this pass the transmitters of Progress-M20 still could be monitored on 922.755 mc and in the 166 and 165 mc bands. Mir also worked with packet radio on 145.550 mc. During the passes in orb. 43765 (14.01 0043-0050 UTC) and 43766 (0221-0227 UTC) the crew and TsUP spoke about the just arrived freighter. The crew was satisfied: the ship was clean and they got the badly needed dairy-products, which they ordered only recently. Progress-M20 has a V.B.K. (ballistic return capsule) on board. The arrival of the Progress-M20 is good news for the Dutch University in Nijmegen for she safely delivered their experiments in the Biokrist-package.

PROGRESS-M19:

To enable Progress-M20 to dock with the complex the Progress-M19 had to disappear. Nowadays the Russians undock the old freighter as soon as they are sure about the right orbit and the good functioning of the new one. So Progress-M19 separated from Mir on 12.10.1993 at 1759 UTC. Before burning up in the atmosphere Progress-M19 jettisoned the V.B.K. and this landed safely in the designated area on 13.10.93 at 0022 UTC. The crew on board Mir did not go asleep but observed the whole operation. The were enthusiastic about this interesting event. They saw how the engines of Pr-19 worked, how the V.B.K. separated from Progress-M19 and they even could see the burning up of the rest of the freighter. They made a lot of video-films and images. During the pass in 43751, on 13.10.93 at 0135 UTC they reported about these observations to TsUP. In the course of 13.10 they transmitted their films to TsUP via the geostationary satellite Altair.

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

China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite. China's first earth resources satellite, known as ZY-1, weighed 1,540 kilograms. Chief designer was Chen Yiyuan. The satellite, a joint project of China and Brazil, was designed to gather information on the environment, agriculture and urban planning through remote sensing images and data transmitted to China, Brazil and other countries. Planned lifetime was two years. The satellite circled the Earth 14 times a day and the groundtrack repeated after 26 days. By 23 February 2000 it had taken more than 20,000 high quality images. It was formally handed over for operational use on March 2 2000. The High Resolution CCD Camera had a resolution of 20 meters in the visible spectrum. The camera could point up to 32 degrees to either side of vertical, imaging the earth's surface stereoscopically. After 177 days the Wide Field Imager failed in early May 2000. Other devices, including the high resolution CCD camera, continue to work normally.

During the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) annual congress in Rio de Janeiro, China unveiled deatils of its new CZ-5 heavy launch vehicle family. Powered by kerosene/LOX/LH2 engines and four strap-on boosters, the new 800-ton, 50-55-meter high launcher would be capable of lifting 23 tonnes into LEO and 11 tonnes into geostationary transfer orbit. The CZ-2E(A), equipped with new avionics from the man-rated CZ-2F, was to be tested by 2003. The CZ-1D small launcher was slated to make its first flight in 2001, while yet another small launcher, a 4 stage solid rocket, was under design.

Soyuz TMA-5 docked with the Pirs module on October 16 at 0416 GMT. Aboard the spacecraft were the EO-10 crew of Sharipov and Chiao, and guest cosmonaut Shargin. After a week at the station, the EO-9 crew of Padalka and Fincke, together with Shargin, entered Soyuz TMA-4 at 18:14 GMT on October 23 and returned to earth. Chiao and Sharipov continued as the ISS skeleton station crew.

Communications satellite for SES Americom, equipped with Ku-band and Ka-band transponders. The Briz-M upper stage made three burns, then released the satellite on October 15 at 03:58 GMT into a 7132 x 35780 km x 18.6 deg orbit. AMC-15's on-board engine would be used to maneuver the spacecraft into its final geostationary orbit. As of 2007 Mar 11 located at 105.02W drifting at 0.003W degrees per day.

Communications satellite to provide Ku and C band communications services for the Americas, Europe and Africa from 53 deg W. First Star-2 class satellite to be directly inserted into geosynchronous orbit by its launch vehicle rather than using spacecraft liquid apogee motor burns from a transfer orbit.

The pair of SJ-9 satellites carried technical experiments and to perform orbital rendezvous, intercept, and formation flying exercises under the control of the China Resources Satellite Applications Center. On 19 October SJ-9A began maneuvers, lowering its orbit to 619 km x 644 km and then returning to a 623 km x 650 km orbit on October 22-23.