Jun 8 1972
From The Space Library
Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird, in secret testimony before Senate Committee on Armed Services, had disclosed that U.S.S.R. was flight-testing multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV). Dept. of Defense spokesman Jerry W. Friedheim later confirmed that Laird had made statement. To date, MIRVS had remained a U.S. monopoly. (Gwertzman, NYT, 6/9/72, 1)
President Nixon accepted resignation, effective July 15, of Kenneth M. Smith as Deputy Administrator of Federal Aviation Administration. (PD, 5/12/72, 1008)
Institute of High Energy Physics at Serpukhov, near Moscow, inaugurated experimental complex which could extract proton cluster with maximum energy from 70-bev proton accelerator in millionth fractions of a second. (Tass, FBIS-Sov, 6/9/72, Li)
June 8-9: NASA'S Mariner 9 spacecraft-orbiting Mars since Nov. 13, 1971-began photographing Mars after two-month rest period. Clear photos of Mars south and north poles-not clearly visible with earth-based telescopes and obscured from spacecraft by clouds in winter and spring-were taken June 8 and stored before transmission June 9 to Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Goldstone Tracking Station. Pictures were taken during 418th revolution in orbit with 16 900-km (10 500-mi) apogee and 1650-km (1000-mi) perigee. Mariner 9 would take about 500 pictures during next nine weeks. It had taken 6876 photos covering 85% of planet between Nov. 13, 1971, and April 2, 1972, before it entered occultation period. (NASA Release 72-123)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
