Feb 19 1962
From The Space Library
NASA-AEC designated the Jackass Flats area of the AEC Test Site as the Nuclear Rocket Development Station. Placed under management of the joint NASA-AEC Space Nuclear Propulsion Office (SNPO), the new station has been used since 1959 for ground tests of Kiwi reactors.
In Voice of America broadcast, Alan H. Shapley of the National Bureau of Standards' Central Radio Propagation Laboratory, reviewed the "new dimension to research in ionospheric science" added by space vehicles. He pointed out that "scientific expeditions landing on the surface of Mars or Venus, whether manned or unmanned, will have to communicate by radio with terrestrial headquarters. We must know which frequencies will get through the planetary ionosphere, and which can be used with the radio-mirror effect to talk from one part of the planet to another. So far we have had only [the earth's] ionosphere to study, but this is like the doctor with only a single case. To understand a disease he needs many cases." The Air Force Space Plan, a ten-year blue-print for military space technology, was given to a House committee by Lt. Gen. James Ferguson, DCS/R&T. The Space Plan foresaw a military need rendezvous, docking, and transfer. The USAF expected to depend on a manned rendezvous vehicle, using the two-man Gemini, built by NASA, as an initial vehicle. The Space Plan was sent to the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board for review.
Army fired Pershing ballistic missile in extended range test at Cape Canaveral, which exceeded the range of the 200-mile Redstone.
Reported that Russian Cosmonauts Gagarin and Titov were assured membership in the Supreme Soviet. Neither was opposed in election slates and both will represent their home towns. It was also reported that the U.S.S.R. Foreign Ministry's press department had denied the rumor that Russia was preparing to let Western newsmen cover the next Soviet space shot.
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