FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1963
1963 - 0108.PDF
96 FLIGHT International, 17 January 1963 Mercury astronaut Virgil Grissom (left) was recently checked out on this paraglider at the NASA Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, California, by NASA project pilot Milton 0. Thompson Missiles and Spaceflight NEW YE;AR R;EV,OLUJTIONS The obscuring of basic facts of space activity, a process started by the US Defense Department at the end of 1961 and continued with the active co-operation of the Soviet Union throughout 1962, got off to a good start in 1963 with the launching of an unidentified satellite by an unidentified country during the first week of the new year. On the evidence available at the time of going to press, it appears that the object launched was a Soviet Earth satellite which, as on five previous occasions, has been tracked by the USA but not announced at the time by either of the launching nations. On January 1 the new international system of designating satel lites and probes came into force. Under this system, a simple numbering sequence replaces the Greek letters used from Sputnik 1 (1957 alpha) to the last satellite of 1962, Cosmos 12 (1962 beta omega). The first announced firing of 1963 was on January 7, when the USAF announced the launching of a satellite by means of a Thor Agena D vehicle from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Cali fornia. Initial orbital details of this satellite included: perigee, approximately 130 miles; apogee, approximately 245 miles; incli nation, 82.2°; and period, 90.52min. Significantly, this satellite was officially designated 1963-2 by the USA; i.e., another spacecraft, 1963-1, had been launched during the period January 1-7. On the basis of previous experience, it ap peared that the missing spacecraft was a Soviet one which had been tracked by the USA. Further information consistent with this deduction appeared on January 10, when a Swedish ground station at Enkoping reported the reception of radio signals which could have come from a new Russian satellite. The station reported that signals had been re ceived clearly between 4.51 and 5.02 p.m. GMT and also later on that day, and that the orbital period of the satellite was calculated to be 95min. MAKES GOOD Launched on December 13, 1962, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Relay experimental communications satellite relayed its first public television pictures between the USA and Europe on January 9. Subject of the transmission was a film of the unveiling by President Kennedy of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. This occasion had been preceded by test transmissions during the previous six days. Earlier, an "abnormal power drain" caused by a faulty regulator in one of the satellite's two transponders had prevented the satellite from operating. A revised command signal had succeeded in switching in the second transponder, and the satellite had begun to function on January 3. The January 9 broadcast was transmitted from the ground station at Andover, Maine, received at Pleumeur Bodou and Goon- hilly, and fed into the Eurovision network and a network serving Czechoslovakia and Hungary. THOR CONVERSIONS The Douglas Aircraft Company announced on January 9 that the first two Thor IRBMs out of an initial batch of 15 had been received at the company's Tulsa plant for modification as space boosters. This work is being carried out for the Space Systems Division of the US Air Force Systems Command at an estimated total contract cost of over three million dollars. Inspection and overhaul of the missiles' 150,0001b thrust engines will be carried out at the USAF San Bernadino Air Materiel Area in California. According to British newspaper reports, these two Thors had been withdrawn from Britain. The 60 operational Thors in this country are to be withdrawn from April onwards.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
