Apr 19 1965
From The Space Library
A detailed report on the progress of the Mars-bound MARINER IV spacecraft was presented at annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington, D.C,: MARINER IV, launched Nov. 28, 1964, was on course to fly by Mars shortly after 9 p.m. EDT on July 14. Four of MARINER IV's six experiments were still working well. The ionization experiment had ceased to function and data from the solar plasma probe were only partially interpretable. At 3 p.m. MARINER IV was 58,176,037 mi, from the earth. It had traveled 221,330,000 mi, on its journey of 325 million miles, MARINER IV had returned a considerable amount of scientific data. A cosmic ray telescope aboard the 575-lb, spacecraft had, for example, "observed" more solar protons than alpha particles from the sun, John A. Simpson of Univ. of Chicago said this indicated there was a "different kind of mechanism operating on the sun for accelerating these particles in space," A report from a team of scientists from NASA GSFC and Temple Univ. indicated that MARINER IV was encountering increasing amounts of cosmic dust as it moved further away from the sun, MARINER IV's cosmic dust detector had been hit 95 times. Dr. James A. Van Allen predicted that if Mars had a magnetic field no stronger than 1/30th the intensity of the earth's, MARINER IV would detect it in July. Richard Sloan of JPL said he and his colleagues planned to try to establish a radio lock with MARINER IV in September 1967 after it had journeyed through space and come back to within 40-50 million miles of earth. ( NASA Releases 65-117, 65-117-A, 65-117-B, 65-117-C, 65-117-D, 65-117-E, 65-117-F; Transcript)
Six Navy and Marine flyers emerged from a cylindrical chamber at Philadelphia's naval air engineering center where they had spent 34 days in a simulated journey into space in an experiment sponsored by NASA. The project was designed to collect and analyze information on long confinement in a space atmosphere, specifically, how pure oxygen would affect the blood, the lungs, thinking, and eating. Cdr. Kenneth R. Coburn, project manager, called it "a major success," noting that "we find that man can live for long periods of time-for a month anyway-without any bad effects." (AP, Chic, Trib., 4/20/65)
DOD announced award to Lockheed Missiles and Space Co. of $3,000,000 increment to existing contract for engineering support for Agena system. (DOD Release 246-65)
Edward L. Hays, chief of crew systems at NASA Manned Spacecraft Center, announced that the crew of the Gemini GT-4 flight would wear the qualified Extravehicular Activity (Eva) spacesuit during their flight. (AP, Wash. Eve. Star, 4/19/65; M&R, 4/26/65, 7)
Excerpts from comments on management of research and development activity by Dr. L. R. Hafstad, director of General Motors Research and Defense Research Laboratories, appeared in Aviation Week and Space Technology: "In the modern laboratory the basic research activity is essentially an information-gathering intelligence operation. The operatives must be trained to speak, and allowed to speak, the language of the area on which they are expected to keep informed, and to interact with other researchers in the same area. It is this apparently excessive freedom of action on the part of employees which makes for the concern of students of administration about the management of research, or the lack thereof, My conclusion is that most of this problem evaporates once it is realized that a director of research directs the research program-but certainly not the individual researchers, "The partnership of science, engineering and industry is really a rather new concept developed since the turn of the century and only now reaching maturity. An even newer concept is the partnership of science, engineering, and government. A problem we must face up to -whether we represent industry, government or science-is the effective use of research in creating a better future for everyone, "There is never a dearth of projects-the difficulty is to pick worthwhile projects. It is here that I feel that the discipline of the profit and loss statement is essential... " (Av. Wk., 4/19/65, 21)
Two teams of scientists collecting dust from Greenland and Antarctic icecaps presented their findings to the American Geophysical Union, meeting in Washington. The scientists were collecting particles by "core sampling"-boring through the ice with a thermal drill and analyzing particles to determine their origin. Team studying Greenland samples-E. L. Fireman, J. Defelice, and C. C. Langway, Jr., of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the U.S. Army-believed their dust samples to be nonterrestrial in origin. Team studying Antarctic samples-M. B. Giovinetto of the Univ. of Wisconsin and R. A. Schmidt of NASA-was not certain of the origin of these particles. They reported a high concentration of sphericles in the core samplings; the amount of these particles, which closely matched those found in volcanic eruptions, made identification of dust origin more difficult. They had collected dust from 165-ft, core of ice, representing 400 yrs. accumulation, Greenland team had drilled to depth of 1,800 ft. and expected to continue to 5,000 ft. National Science Foundation would use the same thermal drill-beginning in summer of 1967 or 1968-to drill to 8,000-ft. depth through the south polar ice. (Simons, Wash, Post, 4/20/65, 1)
Week of April 19: Cryogenic propellants were loaded for the first time into a ground test model of the NASA Saturn S-IVB upper stage to verify the design of the stage and fabrication techniques, and to demonstrate operational procedures. The S-IVB, 58 ft. long and 21.5 ft. in diameter, was being built for Saturn IB and Saturn V by Douglas Missile and Space Systems Div, for NASA MSFC. ( MSFC Release 65-98)
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