Sep 25 1966
From The Space Library
Nike-Tomahawk sounding rocket launched from NASA Wallops Station ejected mixture of barium and copper oxide at about 125-mi. (201-km.) altitude during ascent and at 160-mi. (258-km.) altitude during both ascent and descent. Three distinct clouds, visible for hundreds of miles, were photographed and tracked in second NASA-German Ministry of Scientific Research cooperative launch to measure electric fields and wind motions in upper atmosphere [see Sept. 24]. ‘‘(NASA Release 66-248; Wallops Releases 66-46, 66-49; NASA Rpt. SRL)’’
Indications were increasing that President Johnson would accede to pressure from White House fiscal advisers to cut $1 billion from Project Apollo budget as part of effort to reduce proposed FY 1967 Government spending by $4 billion, Leslie Carpenter reported in the Washington Sunday Star. It was contended that reduction would postpone manned lunar landing by only two years, putting it between 1970-72 rather than 1968-70. NASA Administrator James E. Webb, opposing the move, argued it would raise the overall cost and permit the U.S.S.R. to beat the U.S. to the moon. ‘‘(Carpenter, Wash. Sun. Star, 9/25/66, A21)’’
Data transmitted from NASA’s PIONEER VII spacecraft (launched from ETR Aug. 17) to Johannesburg DSN station indicated spacecraft had penetrated earth’s magnetic tail at 3.25 million mi. from earth, NASA Ames Research Center announced. Spacecraft measurements of solar wind flux suggested PIONEER VII had emerged from and repenetrated tail several times. PIONEER VI (launched Dec. 16, 1965) had observed that solar wind does not flow from the sun in straight lines but blows magnetic tail from side to side; this “flapping” was reason spacecraft entered tail several times. ‘‘(ARC PAO, 9/26/66)’’
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