Feb 26 1962
From The Space Library
John Glenn Day in Washington, D.C. An estimated 250,000 persons lined the rain-drenched parade route from the White House to Capitol Hill. In 20-minute address to the joint session of the Congress, Astronaut Glenn paid tribute to the Project Mercury team and pointed to the unbounded future of space exploration: . . I feel that we are on the brink of an area of expansion of knowledge about ourselves and our surroundings that is beyond description or comprehension at this time.
"Our efforts today and what we've done so far are but small building blocks on a very high pyramid to come . .
"We're just probing the surface of the greatest advancement in man's knowledge of his surroundings that has ever been made . . . There are benefits to science across the board. Any major effort such as this results in research by so many different specialties that it's hard to even envision the benefits that will accrue in many fields.
Click here to listen to John Glenn's historic address to Congress.
"Knowledge begets knowledge. The more I see, the more impressed I am not with how much we know but with how tremendous the areas are that are yet unexplored . . ."
In NAS lecture for Voice of America broadcast, Dr. Joseph W. Chamberlain of the University of Chicago's Yerkes Observatory predicted that Space-age research techniques may soon provide final answers to questions about the aurora that have eluded scientists for centuries. "Better understanding of physical processes producing the aurora," he said, "should allow the spectroscopist to derive even more information from his observations of the auroral spectrum about the physics and chemical processes in the high atmosphere." He suggested that space probes may detect auroras on other planets which will provide an entire new set of data different from terrestrial phenomena with which to test hypotheses for auroral bombardment mechanisms.
Technical difficulties with third stage of Thor-Delta booster postponed launching of OSO satellite at AMR.
Senators Estes Kefauver and Wayne Morse proposed legislation calling for a government-owned corporation to operate space satellite communications network.
Soviet representative at the United Nations, Valerian A. Zorin, told a news conference that the U.S.S.R. would cooperate with the U.S. and other member nations of the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space meeting on March 19. Zorin said that he hoped that the committee would be able to agree on a work program for "mutually beneficial and advantageous cooperation."
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
