FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1962
1962 - 0006.PDF
Oscar (orbiting satellite carrying amateur radio) payload is installed aboard Discoverer 36 prior to the Thor Agena 8 launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California on December 12 6 FLIGHT International, 4 January 19( 2 Among the experiments to be carried in the first Orbiting Ge> - physical Observatory are several designed to investigate solar cosm c rays, trapped radiation in the outer Van Allen belt, magnetic field,, VLF noise and propagation, positron and gamma radiation, galact c cosmic rays and meteoroids. The sponsors of the experiments con e from a number of United States Universities and research institute,, including Prof James Van Allen of the State University of Iowa, an j from US Government establishments such as the Naval Researci Laboratory and the Goddard Space Flight Center. Into Orbit Quietly A USAF announcement on December 22 stated: "A satellite employing an Atlas Agena booster combination was launched by the Air Force today at Point Arguello. It is carrying a number of classified test components." As in the case of an almost identically announced USAF launch on November 22 (Flight November 30 and December 14, 1961), no international designation was subsequently allocated to the December 22 satellite by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Missiles and Spaceflight . NASA civilian engineer and one of the six pilots assigned to the X-15 programme. He had made two previous X-15 flights, both in aircraft equipped with the original LR-11 engine. Release took place near Silver Lake, some 110 miles north-east of Edwards AFB. The LR-99 rocket engine, capable of 57,0001b thrust, was throttled to 50 per cent thrust during the powered portion of the mission, which lasted about 104sec. The entire flight took some 9min. EXPERIMENTS FOR OGO Nineteen experiments have been chosen by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration for the first Orbiting Geophysical Observatory (OGO), to be launched by Atlas Agena from Cape Canaveral in 1963. Three OGO spacecraft are being built for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center by Space Tech nology Laboratories of Los Angeles. The design is based on a standardized craft capable of accommodating a large number of varied types of experiments. The spacecraft (illustrated on page 5) will be approximately 6ft long by 3ft square, with two 6ft square solar cells paddles and a number of extending booms. Total weight will be approximately 9001b. Zeus Intercepts Hercules The first live interception test of the Nike Zeus weapon system was successfully accomplished on Decem ber 21, when a Zeus fired from White Sands Missile Range inter cepted a Nike Hercules anti-aircraft missile travelling at approxi mately 3,000 m.p.h. The Zeus carried a spotting charge in lieu of a nuclear warhead, and this can be seen bursting in the accompanying photographic record. These pictures may suggest that the miss- distance was considerable (a rough guess is 300ft), but the US Army describe it as "well within the lethal radius of the warhead planned for operational use." The Hercules was fired first; it climbed to "a high altitude" (probably some 150,000ft) in the northern part of the range and was then sent plunging down like a re-entry vehicle towards the range's south-eastern extremity. USAF Lose Monkey An attempt by the USAF to recover from the South Atlantic a capsule containing a 41b rhesus monkey named Scatback after an Atlas-boosted 5,000-mile flight from Cape Canaveral failed on December 19. It was reported that a maximum height of 600 miles was achieved, and that the object was to test the practicability of using surgically implanted instru ments in human astronauts. Dyna-Soar Speed-up The USAF has cancelled its contract with Martin for modified Titan 2 launch vehicles intended for sub orbital flights of the Dyna-Soar manoeuvrable space glider. Omitting the suborbital phase, a new contract will be negotiated for a more-powerful booster capable of placing the spacecraft directly in Earth orbit. As noted above, Nike Zeus successfully intercepted a downward-plunging Nike Hercules over the White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, on December 14. From the left: launch of Hercules; launch of Zeus; and a sequence showing the Hercules swooping down beside the Zeus spotting charge (the larger bright patch). Height and range of the interception were not given
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
