Aug 4 1967
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (2MB PDF)
ELDO's Europa I rocket, launched from Woomera Rocket Range after 10 postponements, crash-landed when French Coralie 2nd stage failed to ignite. Malfunction was traced to equipment associated with the release system designed to separate the Coralie from U.K.'s Blue Streak 1st stage. Rocket, which should have flown 4,828 km (3,000 mi) into the Pacific, landed 965 km (60 mi) north of Woomera in the Simpson desert. (Reuters, NYT, 8/5/67,7)
NASA announced selection of 11 civilian scientist-astronauts: Dr. Joseph P. Allen, 30, a physicist research associate at the Univ. of Washington; Dr. Philip K. Chapman, 32, a naturalized citizen born in Australia and staff physicist at MIT's Experimental Astronomy Laboratory; Dr. Anthony W. England, 25, a graduate fellow in geophysics at MIT and the youngest man ever to be named an astronaut; Dr. Karl G. Henize, 40, an astronomy professor at Northwestern Univ. and experimenter in the Gemini program; Dr. Donald L. Holmquest, 28, who would report for duty in one year after completing his medical internship at Baylor College of Medicine; Dr. William B. Lenoir, 28, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at MIT; Dr. John A. Llewellyn, 34, a naturalized citizen born in Wales and associate professor in chemistry at Florida State Univ.; Dr. Franklin S. Musgrave, 31, a post-doctoral fellow at Univ. of Kentucky with a doctorate in medicine from Columbia Univ., a Ph. D. in physiology from Univ. of Kentucky, and four other college degrees; Dr. Brian T. O'Leary, 27, who held a Ph. D. in astronomy and was in the NASA trainee program at Univ. of California Dept. of Astronomy's Space Sciences Laboratory; Dr. Robert A. Parker, 30, assistant professor of astronomy at Univ. of Wisconsin; and Dr. William E. Thornton, 38, who recently completed two-year tour of duty with Brooks AFB Aerospace Medical Div. The new astronauts, except Dr. Holmquest, would report for duty at MCS Sept. 18. After two weeks orientation, they would begin "ground school" training, which would include orbital mechanics, astronomy, computers, spacecraft orientation, general mathematics and physics refresher courses, and field trips for contractor facility orientation. In March they would start Air Force flight training to become qualified jet pilots. The new group, which increased number of NASA astronauts to 56, was sixth class to be selected and second to be chosen specifically for scientific education. They were selected from a group of 69 nominees submitted to NASA in March by NAS after evaluating 923 applications. (NASA Release 67-211; MSC Roundup, 8/18/67,13)
Conclusion in Mar. 24 Science article by Bruce C. Murray of Cal Tech and his associates about probable contamination of Mars and Venus by U.S.S.R.'s Zond II and Venus III received comment from Dr. Richard W. Porter, member of International Relations Committee of NRC's Space Science Board, and from Britain's leading radio astronomer, Sir Bernard Lovell. Murray and associates had presented information : tracking data from Jodrell Bank Experimental Station had indicated that Zond II, launched Nov. 30, 1964, had been on collision course with Mars, terminating Aug. 6, 1965; Mstislav Keldysh, President of Soviet Academy of Sciences, had said Zond II would pass within 1,4& km (900 mi) of Mars; Venus III, launched Nov. 12, 1965, may have crashlanded on Venus' surface Mar. 1, 1966; radio communications had been maintained with Venus III throughout the flight but were lost as the probe approached Venus; no telemetric data were received in final moments before impact. In a letter to editor of Science, Porter wrote: "Their conclusion with respect to Venus is based largely on what was not said by the Soviets about sterilization of the flyby bus and on the authors' assumption that the capsule separation and bus deflection maneuvers were not made automatically, even after loss of radio contact.', Porter said authors' conclusion about Mars was also based on insufficient evidence and noted that in discussions with "highly placed" Soviet scientists during spring 1965, he had received impression that Zond II's miss distance was likely to be much greater than 980 mi. In his letter to editor of Science regarding Murray and associates' statements on probable contamination of Mars and Venus, Sir Bernard Lovell noted that Zond II's signals were so strong that there should have been no difficulty in tracking the probe at Mars encounter; also, miss distance of 1,500 km (932 mi) was within the accuracy of Jodrell Bank calculations. Sir Bernard Lovell would "prefer to accept the statement of the President of the [Soviet] Academy [of Sciences (Keldysh) ] about the miss distance. . . ." (Science, 3/24/67, 1505-11; 8/4/67, 487-8)
After analysis of SURVEYOR IV failure and SURVEYOR I and III successes, NASA SURVEYOR IV Technical Review Board recommended that significant changes in spacecraft hardware be avoided. Board was unable to identify cause for failure of SURVEYOR IV mission, but indicated that spacecraft's performance had been virtually flawless from launch until communications signal disappeared abruptly less than three minutes before touchdown. (NASA Proj Off)
President Johnson appointed Paul R. Ignatius, Assistant Secretary of Defense (Installations and Logistics) , as Secretary of the Navy, succeeding Paul H. Nitze, who became Deputy Secretary of Defense July 1. John T. McNaughton, who had been nominated and confirmed as Nitze's successor in June, was killed in an aircraft crash July 19. The President approved reassignment of Thomas D. Morris, Assistant Secretary of Defense (Manpower) , to replace Ignatius. (P D , 8/7/67, 1100)
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