Mar 20 1965
From The Space Library
President Johnson, asked during a press conference, "where does our space program stand in relation to the Soviets' in the wake of their latest feat?" replied: "The Soviet accomplishment and our own scheduled efforts demonstrate, I think dramatically and convincingly, the important role that man himself will play in the exploration of the space frontier. The continuing efforts of both our program and the Russian program will steadily produce capability and new space activity. This capability, in my judgment, will help each nation achieve broader confidence to do what they consider they ought to do in space. "I have felt since the days when I introduced the Space Act and sat studying Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2 that it was really a mistake to regard space exploration as a contest which can be tallied on any box score. "Judgments can be made only by considering all the objectives of the two national programs. and they will vary and they will differ. Our own program is very broadly based. We believe very confidently in the United States that we will produce contributions that e need at the time we need them, For that reason, I gave Mr. Webb and his group every dollar in the Budget that they asked for a manned space flight. "Now the progress of our program is very satisfactory to me in every respect. We are committed to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind. We stressed that in our hearings and our legislation when we passed the bill, and while the Soviet is ahead of us in some aspects of space. U.S. leadership is clear and decisive and we are ahead of them in other realms on which we have particularly concentrated." (Transcript; Wash. Post, 3/21/65)
NASA Aerobee 300A sounding rocket was successfully launched from Wallops Station, Va., to a peak altitude of 326.2 km. (203.6 mi.). Primary objective was the nighttime measurement of the density and temperature of neutral N. using an omegatron mass spectrometer, and the simultaneous measurement of electron temperature and density using a small cylindrical electrostatic probe. A secondary objective was the testing of a lunar optical sensor especially developed for thermosphere probe application. Univ. of Michigan provided the experiment instrumentation. ( NASA Rpt, SRL)
VOSKHOD II’s two-man crew, Col. Pavel Belyayev and Lt. Col. Aleksei Leonov, rested under medical supervision at an undisclosed place in the northern Ural mountains, Tass reported. Soviet space flight headquarters at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan reported that VOSKHOD II’s antennas had burned away as the spacecraft reentered the earth's atmosphere. The descent had been tracked by radar units. Lt. Col. Andrian G. Nikolayev, Soviet Cosmonaut, said the order to use manual controls in landing VOSKHOD II was given by a Soviet ground station, Izvestia reported. It was not known whether the manual landing was part of the original program or was made necessary by a malfunction of the automatic controls. (Shabad, NYT, 3/21/65, 3)
Soviet Cosmonaut Andrian G. Nikolayev said in the press that "all these operations-the orientation of Voskhod 2 and switching on of the braking engine-were performed by my colleague cosmonauts by hand, without the help of automation. They performed this task brilliantly. They carried out this landing excellently." He did not say if they had landed in their target landing area. (Balt. Sun, 3/20/65)
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