Nov 4 1966
From The Space Library
U.S.S.R. had launched Yantar I ionospheric laboratory equipped with gas plasma ion engine to altitudes of 100 to 400 km. (62 to 249 mi.) in October "to study the outlook for guided flight in the upper layers of the atmosphere," Tass announced. Data on propulsion-system performance in electrically charged ionosphere would be analyzed and results published in magazines of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Both NASA and USAF had already conducted several ground and flight tests of electric engines, and another series was scheduled to begin in late 1966. Jerome P. Mullin, of OART's Nuclear Systems and Space Power Div., told the New York Times in a telephone interview that electric engines had "demonstrated their practical utility" for maneuvering and stabilizing spacecraft in flight. (Tass, 11/4/66; Grose, NYT, 11/5/66, 12; Wilford, NYT, 11/5/66, 12)
Cosmonaut-pilots would head crews of all spacecraft landing on the moon in the future because landing "cannot be fully trusted to machines," Soviet Cosmonaut Pavel Belyayev predicted in Aviatsiya i Kosmonavtika. Belyayev, who manually landed VOSKHOD II March 19, 1965, said that two methods of braking were possible: jet engines and use of aerodynamic forces. (Tass, 11/4/66)
Fourth stage of Mu-1, Japan's newest and most powerful booster, was successfully tested in low-pressure chamber in Noshiro, Univ. of Tokyo scientists reported. Mu was scheduled to orbit Japan's first satellite by 1968. (AP, Balt. Sun, 11/8/66)
U.S. Ambassador-at-Large and newly appointed Ambassador to U.S.S.R. Llewellyn E. Thompson and Soviet Minister for Civil Aviation Yevgeni F. Loginov signed agreement authorizing direct commercial airline flights between New York and Moscow at State Dept. ceremony. Service would begin in spring 1967 with weekly flights by Pan American World Airways and U.S.S.R.'s Aeroflot. (Eder, NYT, 11/5/66, 1; Roberts, Wash. Post, 11/5/66, A1)
Radioastronomers were relying increasingly on ancient Oriental records of novae and supernovae because the phenomena could be observed so rarely, Xi Ze-zong and Po Shu-jen, Academia Sinica, Shanghai, reported in Science. Only one supernova had appeared within Milky Way during last 360 yrs., and few of the average of 50 novae that appeared annually could be seen with the naked eye. (Xi and Po, Science, 11/4/66, 597)
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