NASA Administrator Webb announced that location of the new Manned Spacecraft Center would be in Houston, Tex., the conclusion of an intensive nationwide study by a site selection team. The Manned Spacecraft Center would be the command center for the manned lunar landing mission and all follow-on manned space flight missions. This announcement was the third basic decision on major facilities required for the expanded U.S. Range and the establishment of the spacecraft fabrication center at the Michoud Ordnance Plant near New Orleans, La.

MSC made several changes in the CM's landing requirements. Impact attenuation would be passive, except for that afforded by the crew couches and the suspension system. The spacecraft would be suspended from the landing parachutes in a pitch attitude that imposed minimum accelerations on the crew. A crushable structure to absorb landing shock was required in the aft equipment bay area.

The cosmonauts are training at Area 113, and the launch will be from Area 81. The State Commission meets from 15:00 to 18:30. So far there have been six successful Proton flights and only one failure. The Proton assembly was completed in 71 working days. UR-500 s/n 7 for this launch had 138 systems requiring rework at the launch site and 120 discrepancies (an increase: Proton number 5 for the first L1 launch had 208 reworks/223 discrepancies, while Proton number 6 for the first L1 launch was down to 70 reworks/194 defects). The L1 spacecraft had 15 notable defects on delivery, but this had increased to 100 by the time of the commission. Therefore Mishin should not be certifying readiness for launch. Manned flight to the moon requires a total mission probability of 0.99 to 0.9999, and Mishin puts the current Proton/L1 system reliability at only 0.6. It certainly has to be better- this is an 'all-up mission'. It will be the world's first re-entry at parabolic velocity. On return from the moon the spacecraft has to hit a re-entry corridor only 30 km across. The range of possible touchdown points extends along a 400 km wide corridor stretching from the equator to the North Pole, and extending over the Indian Ocean, India, Central Asia, and Siberia.

The Zond 5 situation remains the same. The star trackers quit working, and the use of the back-up systems has not been completely successful. However the spacecraft is on course for a ballistic re-entry. At Area 112 Afanasyev heads the State Commission for the N1-L3 first launch. There are problems with the launch complex. The main electrical cable to the launch complex was accidentally bulldozed. The back-up cables were buried only 30 cm from the main line and both were destroyed. The cables were poorly marked. It will take 50 days to repair the damage. This will delay first launch until the second half of November 1968, and the second launch to February 1969. Most likely the first launch cannot take place until next year.

VPK Deputy Chairman Tyulin headed a state commission on the L1 programme. Mishin pushed for a manned L1 circumlunar flight in 1970. This meeting was only five days before a Ye-8-5 robot spacecraft was to have returned lunar soil from the earth. The Block D stage failed in earth orbit, and the flight was given the cover name Cosmos 300. This indicated the L1 system still did not have the necessary reliability for manned flight. Furthermore, politically, Brezhnev and the Politburo did not want to see a Khrushchev-originated project like the L1 succeed.

An Air Force repairman doing routine maintenance in a Titan II ICBM silo dropped a wrench socket, which rolled off a work platform and fell to the bottom of the silo. The socket struck the missile, causing a leak from a pressurized fuel tank. The missile complex and surrounding areas were evacuated. Eight and a half hours later, the fuel vapors ignited, causing an explosion which killed an Air Force specialist and injured 21 others. The explosion also blew off the 670-tonne reinforced concrete-and-steel silo door and catapulted the warhead 200 m into the air. The silo was later filled in with gravel.

First Israeli launch; possibly experimental surveillance mission. Experimental satellite 'Offeq-1'. Launch time 0934 GMT. Location: site on the coast south of Tel-Aviv. Launching organization: Israel Aircraft Industries, Ltd (IAI) and Israeli Space Agency (ISA). Function: 1) Experimentation in generation of solar power; 2) Experimentation in transmission reception from space; 3) Verification of system's ability to withstand vacuum and weightless conditions; 4) Data collection on space environment conditions and Earth's magnetic field.

'Readdy was ready' and he controlled the free drift with a speed of appr. 2.5 cm/sec of Atlantis to Mir during the final phase of the approach. The result was a perfect soft docking on 19.09.96 at 0313 UTC. The original operation schedule was almost executed on the minute, except for the time of the 'touch', which had been put forward by 4 minutes. For friends in Western Europa who use to monitor radio transmissions during such operations this was a blessing for it meant that the docking could take place within the window for both objects on Mir's orbit nr. 60468, 0307-0315 UTC. So at 031330 UTC they could hear Readdy reporting in Russian: 'KASANIYE' (touch). For this report he used the 130.165 mc FM and immediately after his report commander Korzun in Mir reported on 143.625 mc that he had a positive indication about the docking. Monitoring people always hope that they can pick up that important word 'kasaniye' during dockings of Soyuz- and Progress-ships, but mostly the moment of that touch takes place just a few minutes after LOS of their position, in the past this occurred a few times during Soyuz-TM dockings. Of course it is always possible to log the traffic during such dockings in the final phase of the approach. This time there was not much radio traffic before the 'touch' for Readdy had to do his job with concentration and everybody was watching the operation silently. TV-images transmitted by TV-stations revealed that there were no direct images from camera's on board Mir. So possibly the geostationary Luches: Altair-1 and 2 were not in use. During the first 3 docking missions these images could be seen simultaneously with the images from Atlantis , relayed by TDRS-s. Certainly we will get images made from inside Mir during the docking operation, but these were recorded and transmitted to earth later. During the next pass of the enormous space-complex (in orb. Mir nr. 60469, 0441-0453 UTC) the Mir-crew already had accomplished the air-seal checks and opened 2 hatches of the SO (docking compartment). They also had removed things which had been necessary during the docking and now had to be stowed away. Just before LOS for our position Korzun tried to communicate via 130.165 mc with Atlantis to get information about the proceedings there. Opening of the hatches from Atlantis to Mir took place at 0539 UTC, so not in our VHF-range. Via TV-stations receiving relays via a TDRS we could see nice images of the meeting of both crews and the first gathering on board Mir.

SAREX STS-79: During this mission there might be radio-amateur activities by the astronauts-radio-amateurs Jay Apt (N5QWL), Carl Walz (KC5TIE) and John Blaha (KC5TZQ). Sarex VHF downlink is 145.840 mc FM with uplink frequencies: 144.450 and 144.470 mc FM. Please do not use 145.840 mc FM for 'uplink' or -during Atlantis passes -local bragging. Chris v.d. Berg, NL-9165/A-UK3202

Atlantis' crew turned its attention to checking shuttle systems and packing up equipment for the return home scheduled for 2:56 a.m. CDT, Wednesday back at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The weather forecast calls for scattered clouds, a light sea-breeze, and only a slight chance of rain off the coast. Additional Details: here....

Flight Time: 2.1 hours. White Knight Pilot: Siebold. White Knight Copilot: Binnie White Knight Flt Engineer: Nichols. 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 situation awareness during the approach.

Third China-Brazil joint earth resources satellite. Much higher resolution optics and multispectral sensors expected to be useful for some military applications as well. The satellite raised its orbit to its operational altitude of 773 km two days after launch.

Zhineng hao shouji weixing (Smart Phone Satellite), a 1 kg satellite also known as NUDT-Phone-Sat, built around the motherboard of an Android smartphone. Deployed four Xingchen 100 gram picosats. The overall experiment was to control a cluster of satellites using intersatellite communications.

The XiWang-2 ('Hope') cluster of amateur radio satellites was from CAMSAT, the Chinese AMSAT chapter, and Aerospace DFH Satellite Co (Beijing). The 25 kg XW-2A carried two 1.5 kg subsatellites, XW-2E/2F, while the 10 kg XW-2B, 2C and 2D satellites were deployed directly from the rocket third stage.

The Tiantuo-3 constellation was from the National University of Defense Technology (Guofang Keji Daxue Yan) in Changsha, Hunan. Its primary satellite, the 20 kg, Luliang-1, was developed in collaboration with the municipal government of Luliang city in Shanxi, near the Taiyuan launch site, for tests of AIS (ship tracking) and ADS-B (airplane data relay) systems. Luliang-1 ejected the Zhineng hao shouji weixing (Smart Phone Satellite), a 1 kg satellite also known as NUDT-Phone-Sat,