Nov 12 1963

From The Space Library

NASA launched an Aerobee 150A sounding rocket from Wallops Station, Va., sending a 156-lb. payload to an altitude of 137 mi. Payload was a photospectrometer to measure ultraviolet light emissions from atomic oxygen at various altitudes in the upper atmosphere to learn more about the amounts and properties of the oxygen atoms. (Wallops Release 63-101; NYT, 11/13/63, 29)

As ComSatCorp Board Chairman Leo D. Welch and President Dr. Joseph V. Charyk left the U.S. for a meeting in Bonn, Germany, with the European Conference of Posts and Telecommunications, there was increasing evidence that European nations would de­mand a substantial role in the management of a global communi­cations satellite operation in return for joining the U.S. ComSat­Corp effort rather than build a competing system of their own. (Finney, NIT, 11/13/63, 17)

Soviet Cosmonaut Major Andrian Nikolayev, touring India with his bride, Cosmonaut Valentina Nikolayev, said in New Delhi that U.S.S.R. was planning a spacecraft capable of sustaining the life of a crew for three years. This was the estimated time for a manned flight to Mars or Venus and return, with some 14 months of this actual roundtrip flight time and the other two years wait­ing on the planet for the proper orbital relationship for the re­turn flight. (AP, Wash. Eve. Star, 11/12/63)

Rep. Thomas M. Pelly (R.-Wash.) read into the Congressional Record an editorial from Life Magazine on priorities in the U.S. space program : "The United States needs a reasoned and balanced space program that is more than a series of jumpy reflexes to things Khrushchev may or may not be doing. The first priority is not the moon. It is the conquest of inner space (up to 500 miles high), the true military high ground from which our world can be photographed, weather surveyed, perhaps atom policed. Beyond that lie vast challenges in the quest for knowledge of space, where the moon is only one way station. The challenges must be met, the United States must be a space-faring nation; but at a rate and in an order set by our own capacity and deliberation." (CR, 11/12/63, A7016)

• November

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