Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation selected to perform systems engineering and technical direction functions for Project Atlas. Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation selected to perform systems engineering and technical direction functions for Project Atlas. Following approval by General Power, ARDC Commander, and General E.W. Rawlings, AMC Commander, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Materiel Roger Lewis approved the selection of the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation to perform systems engineering and technical direction functions for Project Atlas under the overall control of the Western Development Division.

Headquarters USAF announced that the Deputy Chief of Staff for Research and Development (DCS/R&D) would be the focal point for space projects within Headquarters USAF. Lt General James Ferguson, DCS/R&D, would possess Air Force headquarters responsibility for programs such as MIDAS, Titan III, Dyna-Soar, and others.

This training was necessary because in low level abort (under 70,000 feet) the pilot would be ejected from the spacecraft and would descend by personnel parachute. A towed 24-foot diameter parasail carried the astronauts to altitudes as high as 400 feet before the towline was released and the astronaut glided to a landing.

A Voskhod capsule is finally dropped from 10 km altitude in order to test the parachute hatch ejection mechanism. The hatch fails to deploy, the parachute never opens, and the capsule crashes to earth. Korolev claims the test capsule's electrical scheme is not representative of the production capsule, and promises to ship a production representative capsule, which he guarantees will be reliable, to Fedosiya by 22 September.

Cosmonaut Oleg Grigoryevich Kononenko dies at age of 42 in crash of Yak-38 VTOL fighter during takeoff from aircraft carrier Minsk in the South China Sea. Russian test pilot cosmonaut, 1980. Graduated from Zhukovsky Air Force Institute, 1975. Cosmonaut training December 1978 - July 1980.

AKM malfunctioned, but orbit achieved using on-board propulsion system. Ku band communications satellite. Positioned in geosynchronous orbit at 93 deg W in 1989-1996; 105 deg W in 1996-1999 As of 5 September 2001 located at 105.39 deg W drifting at 0.005 deg W per day. As of 2007 Mar 9 located at 105.31W drifting at 0.004W degrees per day.

Geostationary at 103.0W. Launch vehicle put payload into supersynchronous earth orbit with IFR/MRS trajectory option. Positioned in geosynchronous orbit at 103 deg W in 1996-1999 As of 4 September 2001 located at 103.06 deg W drifting at 0.009 deg W per day. As of 2007 Mar 11 located at 103.03W drifting at 0.006W degrees per day.

Atlantis was launched from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39B. Solid rocket boosters RSRM-75 and external tank ET-103 were used to loft the orbiter into space. The inital orbit of 72 x 328 km x 51.6 deg was circularised by the Shuttle's OMS engines at apogee.

Atlantis docked with the PMA-2 adapter on the International Space Station at 05:51 GMT on September 10. The orbiter's small RCS engines were used to gently reboost the station's orbit several times.

Astronauts Lu and Malenchenko made a spacewalk on September 11 beginning at 04:47 GMT. They rode the RMS arm up to Zvezda and began installing cables, reaching a distance of 30 meters from the airlock when installing Zvezda's magnetometer. Total EVA duration was 6 hours 21 minutes.

During their 12-day flight, the astronauts spent a week docked to the International Space Station during which they worked as movers, cleaners, plumbers, electricians and cable installers. In all, they spent 7 days, 21 hours and 54 minutes docked to the International Space Station, outfitting the new Zvezda module for the arrival of the Expedition One crew later this fall.

The Shuttle undocked from ISS at 03:44 GMT on September 18 and made two circuits of the station each lasting half an orbit, before separating finally at 05:34 GMT. The payload bay doors were closed at 04:14 GMT on September 20 and at 06:50 GMT the OMS engines ignited for a three minute burn lowering the orbit from 374 x 386 km x 51.6 deg to 22 x 380 km x 51.6 deg. After entry interface at 07:25 GMT, the orbiter glided to a landing on runway 15 at Kennedy Space Center with main gear touchdown at 07:56:48 GMT for a mission duration of 283 hr 11min.

Launch delayed from July 31. Move of launch of the Intruder naval electronic intelligence satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) from the Titan to the Atlas launch vehicle. The Lockheed Martin Atlas IIAS AC-160 put the vehicle in a transfer orbit. The phrasing of the launch commentary implied that the second burn left the payload in 'transfer orbit', but several observers saw the bright Centaur in the typical final deployment orbit of the earlier NOSS satellites. Therefore it seemed the first burn was to a transfer orbit of around 180 x 1100 km x 63 deg. The second burn at 1629 GMT put the Centaur and payload into an 1100 x 1100 km x 63 deg orbit. The design was apparently different from earlier generation NOSS satellites since only one companion satellite was deployed rather than two, in line with the lower payload capability of the Atlas. Prime contractor for the new satellites was again believed to be Lockheed Martin Astronautics at Denver. The NRL probably continued to have a management and technical role in the program under overall NRO auspices.

It was announced that the two satellites had a design life of at least two years, and would be used to probe the space environment, radiation and its effects, record space physical environment parameters, and conduct other related space experiments. The two satellites were built by the Shanghai Academy of Space Flight Technology and Dongfanghong Satellite Company under subcontract to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. The scientific instruments aboard the satellites were mainly manufactured by the China Electronics Technology Corporation. Some Western observors believed the mission of the satellites included electronic intelligence technology tests.

Fourth GSLV Mk II rocket, carrying the Insat-3DR weather satellite. The cryogenic upper stage, serial CUS-07, performed nominally. The satellite made its first orbit raising burn on Sep 9. As well as weather sensors and data relay payloads, Insat-3DR carried a transponder to support search and rescue (SARSAT).

Asteroid sample return mission launched by a ULA Atlas V. The model 411 vehicle, serial AV-067, injected O-REx on a hyperbolic trajectory; the probe entered a 0.77 x 1.17 AU heliocentric orbit on Sep 12. OSIRIS-REx had a mass of 834 kg, and carried 1230 kg of propellant and a 46 kg sample return capsule identical to the one used by the Stardust mission. OSIRIS-REx was to make an Earth flyby in Sep 2017 to change its orbit to 0.90 x 1.35 AU x 6.4 deg, allowing it to rendezvous with asteroid (101955) Bennu in Aug 2018. The spacecraft was to sample the asteroid and return to Earth in 2023.