Biological research. Launched at 0931 local time. Reached 70.8 km. USAF made first successful recovery of animals from a rocket flight when an instrumented monkey (Yorick aka Albert VI) and 11 mice survived an Aerobee flight to an altitude of 70.8 km from Holloman AFB.

First Jupiter C (a three-stage ABMA-JPL Redstone missile) was launched at Cape Canaveral, Fla., attained an altitude of 1096 km and traveled 5,300 km downrange. The first three-stage re-entry missile, was fired at 0145 hours EST from AMR. This missile attained an estimated range of 3,335 ST miles, an altitude of 682 ST miles, and reached Mach 18 velocity. The primary objective of the firing was the propulsion and separation tart of a multi-stage vehicle. The missile was a four-stage configuration with the last stage inactive. The first stage was an elongated Redstone missile, the second and third stages were up of 11 and 3 six-inch scaled SERGEANT rockets, respectively. The payload consisted of approximately 20 pounds of instrumentation attached to the inactive fourth stage. The flight was successful and the sequence of operations occurred as programmed. This vehicle could have obtained sufficient velocity to place it in orbit, if the last stage had been activated. First deep penetration of space. Serial number coding for early Redstones and related vehicles used the following substitution cipher: 1234567890 = HUNTSVILLEX

First fully successful test flight of Thor intermediate range ballistic missile. (AF Ballistic Missiles Program Status Report.) After four failures, the fifth Thor flight test missile (#105) successfully demonstrated all on-board systems. The engine operated 137 seconds to automatic shutdown, and missile impacted 1,300 nautical miles down range from Cape Canaveral. Complete USAF Thor IRBM first successfully launched from Cape Canaveral. Dummy Warhead sent to 1800 km range.

President John F. Kennedy, during an address before the United Nations General Assembly, suggested the possibility of Russian-American "cooperation" in space. Though not proposing any specific program, Kennedy stated that, "in a field where the United States and the Soviet Union have a special capacity - the field of space - there is room for new cooperation, for further joint efforts in the regulation and exploration of space. I include among these possibilities," he said, "a joint expedition to the moon. . . . Surely we should explore whether the scientists and astronauts of our two countries - indeed, of all the world - cannot work together in the conquest of space, sending some day in this decade to the moon, not the representatives of a single nation, but the representatives of all humanity." Additional Details: here....

Soft lunar landing attempt failed. Surveyor II was launched from Cape Kennedy at 8:32 a.m. EDT. The Atlas-Centaur launch vehicle placed the spacecraft on a nearly perfect lunar intercept trajectory that would have missed the aim point by about 130 kilometers. Following injection, the spacecraft successfully accomplished all required sequences up to the midcourse thrust phase. This phase was not successful because of the failure of one of the three vernier engines to ignite, causing eventual loss of the mission. Contact with the spacecraft was lost at 5:35 a.m. EDT, September 22, and impact on the lunar surface was predicted at 11:18 p.m. on that day.

The booster was supposed to be launched by 1966, but there is no way it will be finished this year, and it is highly questionable it will even get off the ground in 1968. The N1 tanks are pressurised to 2 atmospheres, and can go up to three atmospheres in an emergency. In the enormous MIK assembly hall are three N1's - one 'iron bird' ground test model and two flight vehicles. The first roll out of the mock-up will take place in 1967, and the first launch attempt is still expected in 1968 (the first launch will not be attempted until the second and third stages complete stand tests. There is no test stand for the first stage, it will be fired for the first time in flight). An explosion would destroy the pad, requiring several years of repairs. There are two pads, but even that would not be a guarantee of the availability of the rocket due to the poor expected initial reliability. The N1 project is costing 10 billion roubles, not including considerable investment required by the military. To Kamanin the whole thing is a boondoggle, showing the necessity for development of lighter air-launched boosters. He believes there are many mistakes in design and construction, but Mishin, Pashkov, Smirnov, and Ustinov support these doubtful projects of Korolev and Mishin, instead of technically sound projects such as Chelomei's UR-700 or MiG's air-launched spacecraft. If Mishin thinks the current Proton/L1 reliability is only 0.6, then that of the completely unproved N1/L3 must be even less...

MSC proposed to the NASA Office of Manned Space Flight a sequence of missions leading to a lunar landing mission. The sequence included the following basic missions:

• A - Saturn V/unmanned CSM development
• B - Saturn IB/unmanned LM development
• C - Saturn IB/manned CSM evaluation
• D - Saturn V/manned CSM and LM development (A dual Saturn IB mission would be an alternative to the Saturn V for mission D)
• E - CSM/LM operations in high earth orbit
• F - Lunar orbit mission
• G - Lunar landing mission (like Apollo 11)
• H - Lunar landing mission (Apollo 12, 13, and 14)
• I - Reserved for lunar survey missions (not used)
• J - Lunar landing missions, upgraded hardware (Apollo 15, 16, and 17)

Tereshkova is having political problems. Titov is to go to Mexico, although he still is making errors of judgement which make it questionable whether he can be trusted on foreign tours. Beregovoi is to complete his cosmonaut examinations on 27 September, and then will be certified for flight.

They want to fly Zond 8 unpiloted in December 1969, to be followed by a two-man L1 lunar flyby in April 1970. This would look bad compared to the Apollo moon landings, but there was no other manned space mission they could offer the leadership in 1970. Of the 15 L1 spacecraft built, only three remain.

Luna 16 first placed itself into a 106 x 15 km lunar orbit, inclination 71 degrees. After the trajectory was measured and calculations made on earth, it was instructed to make its Phase 1 descent using a timed burn. Phase 2 began at 600 m altitude. From this point the new-design braking rocket was controlled automatically according to height and velocity as measured by radar. At 220 m altitude the main engine shut down, and small braking rockets fired. These were shut down just 2 m above the surface. At 08:18 Luna 16 successfully made a soft landing on the moon. Getting there required 68 communications sessions over nine days of flight. At 10:00 the drill obtains the soil sample and inserts it into the return capsule.

Statsionar T. Transmission of colour and black-and-white USSR central television programmes to the network of public receiving units located in population centres in Siberia and the Far North. Positioned in geosynchronous orbit over the Indian Ocean at 99 deg E in 1977-1978 As of 5 September 2001 located at 65.77 deg E drifting at 0.168 deg E per day. As of 2007 Mar 10 located at 79.61E drifting at 0.200W degrees per day.

Russian pilot cosmonaut 1960-1970. Second person in orbit. Youngest person in space. Left cosmonaut team for brilliant career in the space forces after deciding his future spaceflight prospects were nil. 1 spaceflight, 1.1 days in space. Flew to orbit on Vostok 2 (1961).

The International Space Station's Expedition Three crew - Commander Frank Culbertson, Pilot Vladimir Dezhurov and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin - spent this week outfitting and activating the station's latest addition, a four-ton Russian airlock and docking port named Pirs that arrived at the orbiting complex Sunday. Additional Details: here....

Gsat-3 / Edusat was the first Indian satellite built exclusively for the educational sector. It was mainly intended to meet the demand for an interactive satellite based distance education system for India. Edusat was launched into a geosynchronous transfer orbit by its launch vehicle. Edusat was to reach geostationary orbit by firing, in stages, its on board Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM). In geostationary orbit the satellite was to be co-located with Kalpana-1 and Insat-3C satellites at 74 deg East longitude.

Compared to earlier satellites in the Insat series, Edusat used several new technologies. The spacecraft was built around the I-2K standardised spacecraft bus. It had a multiple spot beam antenna with a 1.2 m reflector to direct Ku band spot beams, a dual core bent heat pipe for thermal control, high efficiency multi-junction solar cells and an improved thruster configuration for optimised propellant use for orbit and orientation maintenance. The satellite used radiatively cooled Ku-band Travelling Wave Tube Amplifiers and a dielectrically loaded C-band demultiplexer for its communication payloads. Edusat carried five Ku-band transponders providing spot beams, one Ku-band transponder providing a national beam and six Extended C-band transponders with a national coverage beam. It was to join the Insat system that already provided more than 130 transponders in C-band, Extended C-band and Ku-band for a variety of telecommunication and television services.

First operational flight of launch vehicle. Launch delayed from July, August and September 10. Dry mass 820 kg. As of 2007 Mar 9 located at 73.92E drifting at 0.006W degrees per day.