Feb 14 1965
From The Space Library
Dr. Fred L. Whipple, director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, had suggested landing on a comet. Dr. Whipple also speculated that if a space vehicle were sent near a comet scientists could use a low-velocity probe that could be put into an orbit in the comet's vicinity for a week or more to study the velocities of gas and dust particles boiled off the comet by solar radiation. The probe would also be able to take core samples of the comet to give direct measurement of one of the oldest physical processes in the solar system, Dr. Whipple said. (NYT, 2/14/65, 50)
JPL scientists had sent notices to professional and amateur astronomers asking them to keep the strip of Mars over which MARINER IV would fly next July 14 under surveillance from now on, with special emphasis on photography in March, "We don't know what we may learn through this procedure," a JPL spokesman said, "but we want all the information we can get. Suppose, for example, MARINER photographs what looks like a dust storm. We'll have a better chance of determining that fact if we have pictures of the same phenomenon taken through earth telescopes, even though it's a different storm months earlier." (AP, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 2/15/65)
The Royal Astronomical Society of London had awarded gold medal to Gerald Maurice Clemence, senior research associate and lecturer in the department of astronomy at Yale Univ., for his "application of celestial mechanics to the motions in the solar system" and for his "fundamental contributions to the study of time and the system of astronomical constants." (NYT, 2/15/65, 17)
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