Jul 18 1965
From The Space Library
ZOND III automatic space station was launched into a heliocentric orbit by U.S.S.R. from a heavy artificial satellite placed in a parking orbit around the earth by a multistage carrier rocket, Tass announced. Tass said that the "trajectory of the automatic station is close to the expected one," that communications were stable, and that all systems were functioning normally. The purpose of the launch was to "check the station's systems in conditions of prolonged space flight and the holding of scientific studies in interplanetary space," Tass said, Pictures of the farside of the moon taken by ZOND III were later released on Aug. 20. (Tass, 7/18/65; Grose, NYT, 7/19/65, 1, 31; Loory, Wash. Post, 7/19/65)
A new computer technique had been designed by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center to make repeated rapid checks of effects of a man-made radiation belt of high-energy "Starfish" electrons formed from a U.S. hydrogen bomb test over the Pacific Ocean in 1962, and subsequent tests conducted for Project Fish Bowl, a high-altitude weapon test, Starfish electrons were estimated to have a possible life of up to 20 yrs., during which time electrons in the belt would slowly decay to the energy level of ordinary electrons. E. G. Stassinopoulos, designer of the program, warned that increased solar activity in years ahead would greatly affect the lifetimes of the Starfish electrons, making the computer relatively useless after 1966. (Sci, Serv, NYT, 7/18/ 65, 27)
MARINER IV's experimental solar-vane aiming system was expected to operate successfully for three and one half years in space, wrote Walter Sullivan in the New York Times. The vanes should keep the spacecraft aimed at the sun whose light shining on the vehicle's four-wing solar panels would generate electric power. Acting on pressure of sunlight and the high-velocity solar wind, the vanes would correct tendencies to drift off course. The basic attitude control system of MARINER IV consisted of 12 jets, at the tips of the solar panels, which squirted cold compressed nitroGen. The purpose of the solar vanes was to conserve the nitrogen and thereby prolong the vehicle's serviceable lifetime. (Sullivan, NYT, 7/19/65, 31)
Editorial comment on the successful transmission to earth of pictures of Mars taken by MARINER IV: "There is something absolutely staggering about the idea of a piece of machinery from this country's workshops finding its way to Mars and then pausing on schedule to make picture signals which bounce back here 12 minutes later. "Such a feat cheers up the most confirmed pessimist. After all, if man has the genius to reach back and forth into the universe, surely he will discover a way for peoples, nations and ideologies to live and survive together back here on this insignificant little planet." (Wash. Post, 7/18/65)
"Though all its findings are not yet in, it is already clear that MARINER IV's historic journey to Mars is the most successful and most important experiment man has yet conducted in space, as well as one of the most brilliant engineering and scientific achievements of all time." The triumph scored by MARINER IV in this first successful attempt at the exploration of Mars emphasizes a point suggested by the earlier achievements of instrumented probes, notably the Ranger photographic voyages to the moon. That point is that a great deal of scientific information about earth's nearest neighbors in the solar system can be obtained relatively cheaply and without risk to human life by utilizing fully the potentialities of existing instruments. Cameras and other research devices can undoubtedly be placed in orbit about or landed softly on the surfaces of the moon and nearby planets. And intensive exploitation of the capabilities of unmanned rockets can make far safer the ultimate dispatch of man into far distant space." (NYT, 7/16/65)
"Soviet propaganda needs in the wake of MARINER IV's flight to Mars appear to have been influential in determining the timing of the latest Soviet space shots," wrote Harry Schwartz in the New York Times. He continued: "Moscow's decision to send up last Friday two rockets-one putting five small satellites into orbit and the second orbiting the heaviest man-made object yet put into space-seems to Western observers to be a transparent Soviet effort to counteract the propaganda defeat Moscow suffered as a result of MARINER IV's historic voyage. That defeat was all the greater because of the failure of the Soviet Mars probe, Zond, sent on the same journey at roughly the same time MARINER IV was launched." (Schwartz, NYT, 7/18/65)
Observers in Moscow believed that the Soviet Union would shortly launch a gigantic spacecraft with as many as four to six people aboard, said an article in Poland's Trybura Ludu. The spacecraft would most likely be commanded by one of the experienced cosmonauts and would have a weight of over 12 tons. It would be placed in orbit by the booster which launched PROTON I. The latter, according to the correspondent, probably used solid fuel. The correspondent speculated that the spacecraft would remain in orbit one week and that several cosmonauts would take a "walk in space" simultaneously. (Trybura Ludu, 7/18/65)
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