Jul 7 1965
From The Space Library
Some Presidential advisers who had once recoiled at the idea of a supersonic race were now wondering how long this country could delay without losing the bulk of the world market, wrote Evert Clark in the New York Times: "For a variety of reasons, most of the controversy over timetables has been kept out of the public forum, mainly because of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, the chief Presidential advisor on the plane ... Mr. McNamara swore the Government officials and private citizens on the advisory committee to secrecy at their first meeting, and that secrecy has been maintained." (Clark, NYT, 7/7/65, 21)
NASA's MARINER IV began feeling the gravitational pull of Mars a week before it was scheduled to take the first close-up pictures of the planet. The tug w as noticed at 5 p.m. EDT in a slight change in speed as the 575-lb. spacecraft, 128,054,720 mi, from earth and 1,721,770 mi. from Mars, neared the end of its 228-day trip. At noon, the speed relative to Mars was 9,879 mph. Tracking engineers said the speed, which had been dropping two mph every six hours, would lessen because of Mars' gravity at a rate of one mph every six hours through July 10 when the speed would begin to increase, No further sensing of the planet's presence in space was expected until July 14 when instruments aboard MARINER IV might detect an increase in radiation. (AP, NYT, 7/8/65, 13; AP, Orl, Sent, 7/7/65)
Paul P. Haney, Public Affairs Officer at NASA Manned Spacecraft Center, said no extravehicular activity (EVA) was planned for the eight-day Gemini V mission scheduled for August 17 or for October's two-day Gemini VI flight. Astronauts Frank Borman (Maj. USAF) and James A. Lovell (LCdr. USN), primary crew for Gemini said they would attempt to communicate with a ground station via laser beam during their 14-day mission planned for early 1966. The laser-a beam of intense light-can transmit voices or other messages. Ground station at White Sands, N. Mex, aiming by radar, would fire the first laser signal at Gemini VII as it passed overhead. The Gemini VII crew would attempt to answer by pointing their capsule downward, aiming, and shooting a 10-lb., hand-held transmitter toward the ground. (Transcript; AP, Balt, Sun, 7/7/65; UPI, Wash, Post, 7/7/65; UPI, NYT, 7/7/65, 20)
The radar set that would guide Gemini astronauts on rendezvous missions in space, beginning with the August 19 Gemini V flight, was demonstrated by Westinghouse Corp.-working under an $18 million contract with NASA--at Friendship International Airport, Baltimore, Astronauts Leroy Gordon Cooper (Maj., USAF) and Charles Conrad (LCdr. USN) would carry a self-contained Rendezvous Evaluation Pod (Rep) into orbit on the back end of their spacecraft. An Agena rendezvous radar transponder and flashing beacons would be packaged in the Rep along with batteries and antenna, Midway through the second revolution, at 2 hrs, 25 min, after liftoff, command pilot Cooper would yaw the Gemini V spacecraft 90° to the right. Explosive charges would eject the Rep from its canister northward at 5 fps. Gemini V would then maneuver away from the Rep to attain a position six miles below and 14 mi, behind the Rep. Subsequent phase adjustment would place Gemini V in a co-elliptical orbit-that is, the spacecraft would be at constant altitude below the Rep but reducing the trailing distance, since the spacecraft in its lowest orbit would be traveling faster than the Rep. Range and range-rate data would be displayed to the Gemini V crew by the rendezvous radar system. The radar system would continuously compute distance and angles from the spacecraft to the Pod, and calculate the maneuvers necessary to effect rendezvous. At five hours and 36 min, after liftoff, if the mission went as planned, Gemini V should be closing in on the Rep just north of the Carnarvon, Australia, tracking station, Gemini V would not physically dock with Rep; the experiment would simply provide training for Gemini VI and other rendezvous missions and evaluate the rendezvous radar hardware to be used on the Agena target vehicle in later missions. (Clark, NYT, 7/8/65, 12; Hines, Wash. Eve, Star, 7/8/65; MSC Roundup, 7/23/65, 1, 2)
The new Magnetic Field Components Test Facility at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center-which would create the precisely-controlled magnetic environment necessary for testing and calibrating spacecraft instruments intended to measure the low magnetic fields in outer space-became operational. The facility was also equipped to demagnetize the spacecraft carrying the magnetic measuring instruments. (GSFC Release G-16-65)
Leo D. Welch, the first Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ComSatCorp, announced his intention to retire from active direction of the Corporation, Mr. Welch said he had privately informed the ComSatCorp Board of Directors on May 21 that he wished to slow down the pace of his activity. (ComSatCorp Release)
Tass released a picture of what was described as a working model of an orbiting space station. Six hermetically sealed compartments branched out from a central stem. The compartments included a control desk, a laboratory, a garden, an orientation system, radar section, and a heliostation with a system for carrying on conversation with incoming spaceships. (Tass, AP, Wash, Post, 7/8/65, D5)
M. I. Kiselev and E. B. Galitskaya had worked out a method of controlling spaceships by means of solar pressure. They proposed a system of reflecting black and white blades which would work like a propeller or a "solar rotary mill." By regulating the inclination of the blades, one could obtain a torsional moment and change its direction and deceleration, Under conditions of weightlessness, the large size of the blades needed to provide the required torsional moment did not present any difficulties, and the blades would eliminate the need for additional energy sources for maneuvering in space. (Kazakhstanskaya Pravda, 7/7/65, 3)
Photos of the rim of the terrestrial globe and of the twilight aureole taken by VOSTOK VI revealed two turbid layers in the stratosphere, Prof. Georgiy Rozenberg was reported in National Zeitung as saying at a space physics conference. The two layers contained relatively dense water-and-ice-covered particles at heights of 11,500 and 19,500 m. (37,950 and 64,350 ft.), Prof. Rozenberg assumed that sulphuric oxide emitted by volcanoes played an important role in the formation of the layers, He concluded that the colored luminescense following major volcanic outbreaks was related to this phenomenon. (National Zeitung, 7/7/65, 6)
Consensus of W. German observers at the International Air Show (June 11-20), as reported in Der Spiegel, was that the Soviet aircraft were obvious copies of Western models, but with inferior workmanship (often hand-made details) and instrumentation: the Ilyushin-62 was a poor copy of the British VC-10; the Tupolev-134 was a hybrid of the French Caravelle and British BAC 111; the Antonov-24B was obviously copied from the Dutch "Friendship" and the British "Handley Page Herald"; the navigational instrument used on the Tu-134 was the American World War II Eyeball Mark One; the design model of the Tu-144 so resembled the Concorde that it was humorously referred to as the Concordovich. (Heumann, Der Spiegel, 7/7/65, 86-87)
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