Apr 10 1966
From The Space Library
Main battery system of OAO I Orbiting Astronomical Observatory had failed, NASA officials at KSC announced: "Overheating of the OAO. primary battery, a problem which became critical late yesterday, has resulted in complications leading to degradation of the power supply from all three batteries aboard the spacecraft, and telemetry signals no longer are being received. "Efforts to overcome the problem have been unsuccessful and the OAO mission appears to have been lost." Officials added, however, that before satellite had failed it had demonstrated a key maneuver of the OAO program by successfully locking into a series of stars for precise aiming. OAO I had been launched from ETR April 8. (AP, NYT, 4/11/66, 71; AP, Wash. Eve. Star, 4/11/66, B10; AP, Balt. Sun, 4/11/66)
The 19 astronauts selected by NASA April 4 would be "too late to take part in the first lunar landings . . . [but they] should get into some of the follow-on Apollo flights and take some 60-day space trips," Dr. Charles A. Berry, Chief of Medical Programs, MSC, said in a press interview in Colorado Springs. (Gibney, Denver Post, 4/10/66)
First full-scale checkout version of 365-ft. Saturn V rocket had been assembled at KSC to aid installation of electrical and plumbing connections on three mobile launching towers. (Marshall Star, 4/6/66, 1)
Aviatrix Geraldine Mock-who in 1964 became first woman to make a solo flight around world-set a new world nonstop distance record for women in a 4,550-mi., 31-hr. flight from Honolulu, Hawaii, to Columbus, Ohio, in single-engine Cessna 206. Previous distance flight record of 3,671 mi. had been set by three Russian women in 1938. (NYT, 4/12/66, 25; Wash. Eve. Star, 4/11/66, A3)
USNS Kingsport, first ocean link in U.S. research in satellite communications, was retired from NASA's networks and returned to DOD. In July 1963 Kingsport had participated in world's first demonstration of communications by satellite in synchronous orbit when a message was sent in 45,000-mi. loop from Kingsport anchored in Lagos harbor, Nigeria, to SYNCOM II comsat and back. Several days later, she was part of first direct exchange of radio message via satellite, linking Lakehurst, N.J., terminal station with land circuits at Lagos. On Aug. 4, Kingsport and Lakehurst transmitted and received via SYNCOM II first satellite exchange of news copy and photo facsimile. Several days later, caught in a squall 40 mi. offshore, she became first terminal station to establish satellite communications from the open sea. Two months later, she participated in first trans-ocean press conference by satellite: stationed at Rota, Spain, she connected SYNCOM II communications between United Nations in New York City and NASA Hq. in Washington, D.C., with the International Telecommunications Union Conference in Geneva. Kingsport first demonstrated the practicality of communications by satellite during manned space missions March 16, 1966, by relaying voice reports from GEMINI VIII Astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and David R. Scott via SYNCOM II to Hawaii ground station. (NASA Release 66-79)
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