The Air Force was now a separate service from the US Army. The agreement was made that the Air Force would only handle missiles with ranges over 1600 km. So the range requirement for the MX-770 (later the Navaho) was increased to 1600 km, while carrying a 1350-kg payload with an 800 m CEP, and it became an Air Force missile. The 800-km MX-771 (later Matador) became an Army missile. The MX-775 Snark already had an intercontinental range requirement, and became an Air Force missile.
The booster worked well, the cruise stage separated at 23.5 km altitude. The ramjets ignited, and the cruise stage accelerated to Mach 3.5. After 15 minutes, the missile began drifting off-course, and ground control took over and banked the missile. One of the ramjets flamed out, and the missile was commanded into a terminal dive and impacted 930 km downrange.
A Thor (SLV-2) booster lifted the first Aerothermodynamic/Elastic Structural Systems Environmental Tests (ASSET) program vehicle (ASV-1) on a successful suborbital flight from Cape Canaveral. The ASSET program was designed to test materials and study flight characteristics of glide reentry vehicles. SSD provided the boosters and launch services for the program, while Flight Dynamics Laboratory was responsible for overall program management. Suborbital test of small scale spaceplane model to test materials for the X-20 Dynasoar. Aero-thermodynamic structural test vehicle (ASV) for heat shield tests. Booster flew to peak altitude of 62 km, then pitched down, driving the spacecraft to separation at 59 km and 4,906 m/s. The spacecraft was sited under its parachute in the recovery zone at Ascension Island, but the flotation bag broke and it sank into the Atlantic.
The State Commission meets at Baikonur. Chertok advises that the failure of the parachute hatch to jettison in the trials in Fedosiya was due to a serious defect in the schematics of the electrical layout and will not occur again. Korolev declares he is ready to certify Voskhod ready for the final drop test at Fedosiya but would prefer to delay the launch of the spacecraft with mannequins until after the Fedosiya test. The state commission finally agrees to reschedule the launch from 28-30 September, subject to a successful test at Fedosiya on 24-25 September.
Aftrwards Tyulin calls Korolev, Mrykin, Kerimov, Rudenko, and Kamanin aside. He tells them the Communist Party and Soviet Ministers have now taken a personal interest in the crew selection for Voskhod. Korolev and Kamanin bitterly debate their competing preferred crews.
The cosmonauts visit Lyapin's institute to view progress in developing a lunar rover. During the day Kamanin has a series of unpleasant conversations with Korolev. The military want the second Voskhod flight changed from a 15-day mission with a crew of two and a physician aboard to a 20-25 day mission, with a single pilot cosmonaut and a variety of military experiments. Korolev responds that there is no unity of support within the VVS for the mission or manned spaceflight; and that he can get along quite well without the VVS, and its cosmonaut training centre, and the VVS pilot-cosmonauts.
However the board makes a big fuss over Kamanin having trained only four back-up cosmonauts to support eight prime-crew cosmonauts. A follow-up meeting is held with Smirnov and Afanasyev at 19:15, where Kamanin's training is denounced as a big failure. Nevertheless at 22:00 the word comes from the Kremlin to proceed with the missions. Kamanin points out that simultaneously with this mission he had cosmonauts in training for Soyuz s/n 17, 18, 19, 20 (Kontakt missions) and L1 circumlunar fights. Kuznetsov, Beregovoi, and several other cosmonauts are also enraged with Kamanin for bumping Nikolyaev from the Soyuz 8 crew. Kamanin maintains that in the circumstances he only had enough training resources for 8 prime + 4 back-up crew, especially for a mission scenario that would not be flown again in the future.
Smirnov recommended to the VPK Military-Industrial Commission that the flights go ahead in October. The triple Soyuz flight would make heavy demands on the Soviet tracking system. The problems were worked out in simulations and worldwide exercises conducted from the Baikonur cosmodrome.
Having departed the International Space Station last night, Atlantis' crew will now spend a day checking the shuttle's equipment and stowing away gear in preparation for the trip home, aiming for a 2:56 a.m. CDT landing on Wednesday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Additional Details: here....
Launch delayed from May 28, August 14. Hispasat 1D was a Spanish geostationary communications spacecraft. The 3.3-ton, 7.0-kW satellite carried three antennae looking in different directions to provide video, data, and Internet services to Europe, North America, and North Africa via 28 Ku-band transponders after being parked over 30° W longitude alongside Hispasat 1A, 1B, and 1C. As of 2007 Mar 9 located at 29.97W drifting at 0.014W degrees per day.
Flight Time: 2.7 hours. White Knight Pilot: Binnie. White Knight Copilot: Melvill White Knight Flt Engineer: Alsbury. Objectives: SpaceShipOne approach and landing profile review Results: Evaluated a variety of different profiles to assess ease of set-up, forgiveness to off normal starts and pilot SA during the approach.
Carried the Expedition 14 crew and space tourist Anousheh Ansari to the International Space Station. Ansari replaced tourist Daisuke Enomoto, who was removed from flight status by the Russians just 28 days before the flight. Docked at the Zvezda port of the station at 05:21 GMT on September 20. On 21 April 2007, Lopez-Alegria, Tyurin and space tourist Charles Simonyi (who was taken to the station aboard Soyuz TMA-10) boarded Soyuz TMA-9, separated from the ISS, conducted retrofire, and landed in Kazakhstan at 12:31 GMT.
First Orbital Sciences Cygnus ISS resupply spacecraft. Named SS G. David Low after the late astronaut, son of the former NASA administrator, and Orbital employee. The Cygnus consisted of a pressurized cargo module (PCM) built by Thales Alenia in Torino, and a service module (SM) built by Orbital/Dulles. The craft carried 700 kg of cargo. Intiial orbit was 261 km x 277 km x 51.6 deg; at 20:07 GMT this was raised to 274 km x 384 km. On 22 September the first attempt at rendezvous with the ISS was cancelled due to a software problem in the GPS navigation system; Cygnus passed ISS at a distance of 4 km at 08:45 GMT. On 29 September Cygnus completed its rendezvous with ISS, reaching a 250 m hold point at 09:08 GMT. The SSRMS arm captured Cygnus at 11:00 GMT, and after berthing to the Harmony module of the ISS he astronauts began unloading the ship's cargo. Cygnus unberthed from Harmony at 10:04 GMT on 22 October and was released into a 415 x 419 km orbit by the SSRMS at 11:31 GMT. On 23 October Cygnus conducted its retrofire burn at 17:41 GMT, and burnt up at 18:16 GMT over the South Pacific.