Tsien Hsue-shen submits a secret proposal to the State Council for ballistic missile development - 'Prospectus for Establishment of a National Defence Aviation Industry'. The proposal calls for the establishment of a research facility for aeronautics and missile development.

Roy W. Johnson, Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), testified before the House Committee on Science and Astronautics that DOD and ARPA had no lunar landing program. Herbert F. York, DOD Director of Defense Research and Engineering, testified that exploration of the moon was a NASA responsibility.

Ustinov wants launch of two cosmonauts within a month to answer the American Glenn flight. Of seven candidates, Nikolayev and Popovich are most likely to be selected. Meanwhile Titov has more incidents. He has driven his Volga into a bus. This is his third accident within a year.

Returned 7137 photos before lunar impact. The Atlas- Agena B booster injected the Agena and Ranger 8 into an Earth parking orbit at 185 km altitude 7 minutes after launch. Fourteen minutes later a 90 second burn of the Agena put the spacecraft into lunar transfer trajectory, and several minutes later the Ranger and Agena separated. The Ranger solar panels were deployed, attitude control activated, and spacecraft transmissions switched from the omni-directional antenna to the high-gain antenna by 21:30 GMT. On 18 February at a distance of 160,000 km from Earth the planned mid-course manoeuvre took place, involving reorientation and a 59 second rocket burn. During the 27 minute manoeuvre, spacecraft transmitter power dropped severely, so that lock was lost on all telemetry channels. This continued intermittently until the rocket burn, at which time power returned to normal. The telemetry dropout had no serious effects on the mission. A planned terminal sequence to point the cameras more in the direction of flight just before reaching the Moon was cancelled to allow the cameras to cover a greater area of the Moon's surface.

Ranger 8 reached the Moon on 20 February 1965. The first image was taken at 9:34:32 GMT at an altitude of 2510 km. Transmission of 7,137 photographs of good quality occurred over the final 23 minutes of flight. The final image taken before impact has a resolution of 1.5 meters. The spacecraft encountered the lunar surface in a direct hyperbolic trajectory, with incoming asymptotic direction at an angle of -13.6 degrees from the lunar equator. The orbit plane was inclined 16.5 degrees to the lunar equator. After 64.9 hours of flight, impact occurred at 09:57:36.756 GMT on 20 February 1965 in Mare Tranquillitatis at approximately 2.67 degrees N, 24.65 degrees E. Impact velocity was slightly less than 2.68 km/s.

Kamanin presents his plan to train 5 to 6 crews for the lunar landing mission over a 30 month period. Only experienced cosmonauts, with prior spaceflight experience, will be assigned to these crews. Kamanin lays out for the VVS leadership the complex series of events the cosmonauts will have to complete in the L3 lunar-orbit rendezvous scheme, including transfer between spacecraft of a single lunar landing cosmonaut in free space in lunar orbit. Crews need to be formed immediately, with two cosmonauts per crew - the L3 mission commander, and the second cosmonaut who will land on the moon. In order to accomplish the mission on schedule, a new air regiment needs to be formed, with the necessary flying laboratories, simulators and trainers, space suits, test stands and surface simulators, and other equipment necessary to train the crew for the mission.

NASA announced that the Apollo Applications Program had been redesignated the Skylab Program. The name Skylab, a contraction connoting a laboratory in the sky, was proposed by Donald L. Steelman, USAF, while assigned to NASA. The name was proposed following an announcement by NASA in 1968 that they were seeking a new name for AAP. Then NASA decided to postpone renaming the program because of budgetary restrictions. Skylab was later referred to the NASA Project Designation Committee and was approved 17 February 1970.

KH-4B. The launch vehicle had a very cold boattail due to a hose discovered to be leaking away warming air to the boattail. The boattail was colder than usual, below freezing. Based on earlier tests of the Thor for just that condition, as relayed by Ed Dierdorf, Thor chief engineer at the time, the temp low was of no concern.

The only problem was that those tests were made with a Thor that carried a Rocketdyne engine lubricated with "lube oil". The Thor being launched used a fuel additive, "Orinite" (like STP "super snot"). The technician that pumped the Orinite into its cannister later stated, "It wasn't for lack of orinite. I put it in just like the procedure said, and I could feel when it was full (with the hand pump). To make sure, I gave it another slug."

That "other slug" cracked the output valve that was only supposed to be cracked by turbopump output pressure. When it cracked the output valve a bit of the "honey" squirted down the tube toward engine bearing jets. This line had a low spot in it by design. The Orinite settled there. When it was chilled by the low temp air at lox loading, the Orinite formed a plug.

Unaware of this chain of circumstances, Launch Director Philip Payne made the decision to launch. The rocket (carrying Agena D and payload) flew for 18 seconds, then wiped out its gears, causing the turbine to overspeed and shed its vanes. These punctured various parts in the boattail like machine gun bullets. With loss of power, the rocket fell not far from the launch pad into Bear Creek canyon.

The final cause was therefore found to be loss of engine lubrication at startup.

The Manned Spacecraft Center was renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center by Public Law 93-8. The late President's interest and support of the space program began while he was Chairman of the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences and continued during his tenure as Vice President and President.

Central Committee of the Communist Party and Council of Soviet Ministers Decree 'On work on Energia-Buran, DOS-7K nos. 7 and 8, Gamma. Geyzer (Potok), and Altair (Luch) and cancellation of the N1' was issued. The design of an improved model of the Salyut DOS-17K space station was authorised as part of the third generation of Soviet space systems in a decree. At that time it was planned that the two stations (DOS-7 and DOS-8) would be equipped with two docking ports at either end of the station and an additional two ports at the sides of the forward small diameter compartment. Luch and Potok were elements of the second generation global command and control system (GKKRS) deployed in the first half of the 1980's. Luch satellites, analogous to the US TDRS, provided communications service to the Mir space station, Buran space shuttle, Soyuz-TM spacecraft, military satellites, and the TsUPK ground control center. They also served to provide mobile fleet communications for the Soviet Navy. Additional Details: here....

Triple Glonass launch; three satellites (Cosmos 1917, 1918, 1919) failed to separate. A Proton carrier rocket was put into staging orbit to test components, also apparatus for a space navigation system. The satellites were not put into their designed orbit owing to a malfunction in the separation assembly controls.

Triple Glonass launch; three satellites (Cosmos 1917, 1918, 1919) failed to separate. A Proton carrier rocket was put into staging orbit to test components, also apparatus for a space navigation system. The satellites were not put into their designed orbit owing to a malfunction in the separation assembly controls.

Triple Glonass launch; three satellites (Cosmos 1917, 1918, 1919) failed to separate. A Proton carrier rocket was put into staging orbit to test components, also apparatus for a space navigation system. The satellites were not put into their designed orbit owing to a malfunction in the separation assembly controls.

Glonass navigation spacecraft. Work on the Glonass global space navigation system being set up to determine the position of civil aircraft and vessels of the merchant marine and fishing fleet. Constellation 1. Put into service on 14 March 1993 and taken out of service on 23 August 1997.

Glonass navigation spacecraft. Work on the Glonass global space navigation system being set up to determine the position of civil aircraft and vessels of the merchant marine and fishing fleet. Constellation 1. Put into service on 25 August 1993 and taken out of service on 4 August 1997.

Freighter Progress-M26 docked at the aft (Kvant-1) docking port of the Mir-complex on 17.02.1995 at 182136 UTC in orb. 51427. Approach and docking took place in the automatic mode with the system Kurs. Viktorenko was ready to take over manually (by TORU) if necessary. He reported the movements of the Progress-M26 which enabled me to monitor the operation until 'kasaniye' (touch, soft docking). For TV-transmissions and phone the Russians used the geostationary Altair. This time the docking was executed in the earth's shadow. A searchlight had been installed on the Progress-M26. During the next orbit (0912 UTC) the crew reported that the airseal was good. It lasted a long time before the crew could enter the Progress-M26 due to some obstructing goods.

Decay of Progress-M25: Progress-M25 left the aft docking port on 16.02.1995 at 1303 UTC. After two autonomous orbits the Progress-M25 got an impulse at 1606 UTC to enter the dense layers of the atmosphere. She decayed in a for that purpose designated area over the Pacific East of New-Zealand. Progress-M25 did not carry a VBK (ballistic return capsule). The Russians do not equip Progress-M ships with such a capsule if the landing has to take place in the winter.

Chris v.d. Berg, NL-9165/A-UK3202.

Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission was the first of NASA's Discovery missions, a series of small-scale spacecraft designed to proceed from development to flight in under three years for a cost of less than $150 million. The spacecraft's mission was to rendezvous with and achieve orbit around the asteroid Eros in January 1999, and study the asteroid for one year. However as it flew by the Earth on 23 January 1998, a problem caused an abort of the first encounter burn. The mission had to be rescoped for a later encounter but successfully entered orbit around Eros on Valentine's Day 2000 and ended the mission by gently landing on its surface on 12 February 2001.

Geosynchronous. Stationed over 150.0E Launch vehicle put payload into supersynchronous earth orbit with IFR/MRS trajectory option. Positioned in geosynchronous orbit at 150 deg E in 1997-1998; 124 deg E in 1998-1999; 127 deg E in 1999. As of 5 September 2001 located at 127.02 deg E drifting at 0.015 deg W per day. As of 2007 Mar 7 located at 150.01E drifting at 0.008W degrees per day.

As the International Space Station continues to orbit the Earth in good shape, its automatic docking system was tested twice this week without problems in an effort to verify that the system is ready to support the rendezvous with the Zvezda service module this summer. Meanwhile, Space Shuttle and Station managers formally approved the Shuttle visit to the Station to outfit Zvezda for occupancy by the first resident crew. Additional Details: here....

Delayed from October 2004. Missile Defense Technology / EKV Prototype planned intercept attempt. The interceptor failed to leave the silo. As in IFT-13C, Orbital Sciences' booster, carrying Raytheon's production kill vehicle, was supposed to fly from Kwajalein and hit a target coming out of Kodiak, Alaska. The system shut itself down just a few seconds before launch. Arms that held the interceptor in the silo did not fully retract, and the launch software aborted the mission. MDA failure analysis resulted in a redesign of the launch mechanism and improved quality control.

The five simultaneously-launched Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) satellites were the fifth medium-class mission under NASA's Explorer Program. They formed part of a combined ground- and space- based system designed to determine what physical process in near-Earth space initiate the violent eruptions of the aurora that occur during substorms in the Earth's magnetosphere.

Docked with the ISS Zvezda module at 16:57 GMT the same day as launched. Progress M-26M's engines were used to move the ISS out of the path of some space debris on 23 April and (following a malfunction on May 16) made an ISS orbit reboost on 18 May 18. Progress M-26M undocked 14 August at 10:19 GMT; was deorbited at 13:28 GMT; and impacted the Pacific around 141:7 GMT.

ASTRO-H X-ray astronomy observatory rode H2A No. 30 to a low Earth orbit. It carried an array of five X-ray telescopes. Hitomi suffered a major anomaly on Mar 25 while observing the quasar Markarian 205. At 1910 UTC the satellite started tumbling and then at 0140 UTC Mar 26 the spacecraft partly disintegrated. US tracking found eleven debris objects in orbit. During the next scheduled pass at 0740 UTC, JAXA received only a short burst from the radio beacon and nothing more; three more such beacon detections were obtained up to Mar 28, when the spacecraft fell silent. Ground-based optical observations showed that at least two of the debris objects, 2016-012A and 012L, were bright and tumbling several times a minute. 2016-012A was probably the main spacecraft bus. It's possible that 2016-012L was the extensible optical bench with the HXI cameras, or part of the solar panels.