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Aviation History
1967
1967 - 1054.PDF
1030 FLIGHT International, 22 June 1967 The second North America X-IS flew with a dumm ramjet (with no interne airflow) mounted on t/i lower fin. The purpose c the fight was to measur the flow field round th engine, and this aircraft i now being prepared b NASA for flight at Mach 6. with full ablative coatmj external fuel tanks and th dummy engine Spaceflight VENUS 4 LAUNCHED Russia launched her fourth Venus probe at 0240GMT on June 12, two days before Mariner 5 left Cape Kennedy on the same mission. The Tass statement announcing the news did not describe the probe or its experiments but gave the weight of the space- craft as 1106kg (2,5501b). The scientific work to be done by Venus 4 is, however, unlikely to differ significantly from that of Mariner 5 (described overleaf), although there is a pos- sibility that Venus 4 may be a hard-lander. According to Tass "the scientific equipment on board will carry out a wide programme of scientific research in space during the flight." The two orbits are nearly identical and Venus 4 will, there- fore, arrive in the vicinity of Venus about mid-October. Sir Bernard Lovell said that signals from Venus 4 had been received at Jodrell Bank between 1430GMT and 153OGMT on June 13. These appeared to resemble very closely, but were much stronger than, those of the two previous Soviet probes Venus 2 and Venus 3. The first Russian Venus probe was launched on February 12, 1961. This 1,4101b spacecraft passed by the planet at a distance of about 62,000 miles. The second and third probes, Venus 2 and Venus 3, were launched respectively on Novem- ber 12 and November 16, 1965. Both weighed 2,1001b. Venus 2 passed within 15,000 miles of the illuminated face of the planet and continued in orbit around the Sun while Venus 3 reached the planet's surface on March 1 last year, carrying a pennant with the emblem of the USSR. The camera system on the spacecraft, however, stopped operating as the probe entered the planet's atmosphere. A window of a few week's duration to launch flights to Venus occurs once every 19 months, and it is therefore no coincidence that both American and Soviet probes should be launched with such a close interval between. GERMAN ROCKET IN BRAZIL A four-stage Javelin sounding rocket, the result of a co operative effort by the Brazilian Space Commission, thi Brazilian Air Force, the German Ministry for Scientific Re search and NASA, was flown on June 15 from Brazil. Th< flight took place from the Barriera Do Inferno range, nea Natal, in North East Brazil, after a delay of one day dm to rain, and a height of over 600 miles was attained. A set of experiments for the flight was designed and pre pared by the German Space Research Corporation, and thi purpose of the flight was to test scientific instrumentation fo use with a German satellite, to be launched in polar orbi within the next two and a half years. STERILISATION CONTRACTS FOR AVCO Two contracts having a combined value of $84,000 have beei awarded to AVCO Space Systems Division by NASA ii connection with the sterilisation of planetary capsules. Thi work, which follows previous research by AVCO coverinj development of a canister to encase the landing capsule, wil determine whether a capsule can become recontaminated b) Earth organisms deposited on the exterior surface of tb canister after deployment of the capsule from the canister It is believed that microbe infiltration could occur througl holes or openings in the canister containing the sterilise* capsule; such holes could be caused by impacts with micro meteoroids during flight. The reaction of organisms to a space environment wil also be studied. The work is directed initially at the Voyager programme one of the main post-Apollo projects, by which payloads wil be soft-landed on the surfaces of Mars and Venus during th( 1970s (the Voyager project was described in Flight for June 1) Dr Wernher Von Braun, whose award of the Langley Medal is described on this page, with his son Peter New Australian Tracking Station A new tracking station has been completed at Gove, in Arnhem Land, Northern Terri tory, as part of the Eldo facilities in Australia. Costing SA7 million and having a staff of 50, the new station will be used for the next ELDO launching from the Woomera range, due in July. Dr von Braun Honoured Dr Wernher von Braun, Director of the NASA Marshall Spaceflight Centre, has been awarded the Langley Medal by the Smithsonian Institution for "his creative vision of the practical application of rocket power to spaceflight." Dr von Braun, a pioneer of rocket develop- ment, is the thirteenth man to receive the medal, previous recipients of which have included the Wright brothers, Charles Lindbergh and Robert H. Goddard.
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