Jan 2 1959

From The Space Library

U.S.S.R. launched LUNIK I into a solar orbit, with a total weight of a reported 3,245 pounds, the first manmade object placed in orbit around the sun. It was called MECHTA. ("dream") by the Russians.

Defense officials indicated fiscal year 1960 budget would' begin major integration of long-range missiles into weapons arsenal and replacement of manned aircraft on a large scale.

In a staff report of the House Select Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration, Wernher von Braun of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency predicted manned circumlunar flight within the next eight to ten years and a manned lunar landing and return mission a few years thereafter. Administrator T. Keith Glennan, Deputy Administrator Hugh L. Dryden, Abe Silverstein, John P. Hagen, and Homer E. Newell, all of NASA, also foresaw manned circumlunar flight within the decade as well as instrumented probes soft-landed on the moon. Roy K. Knutson, Chairman of the Corporate Space Committee, NAA, projected a manned lunar landing expedition for the early 1970's with extensive unmanned instrumented soft lunar landings during the last half of the 1960's.

U.S. Congress, House, Select Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration, The Next Ten Years in Space, 1959-1969, Staff Report, 86th Congress, 1st Session (1959), pp. 96, 122, 211.