American test pilot astronaut 1962-1974. Third person on the moon. Only astronaut to fly Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab. Commander of first successful space station mission. 4 spaceflights, 49.2 days in space. Flew to orbit on Gemini 5 (1965), Gemini 11, Apollo 12, Skylab 2.

OSCAR II was launched piggyback with a United States Air Force satellite. OSCAR II was very similar to OSCAR I. Differences included (1) changing the surface thermal coatings to achieve a cooler internal spacecraft environment, (2) modifying the sensing system so the satellite temperature could be measured accurately as the batteries decayed, and (3) lowering the transmitter power output to 100 mW to extend the life of the onboard battery. OSCAR II lasted 18 days ceasing operation on June 20, 1962 and re-entered June 21, 1962.

At 09:00 the State Commission members and 36 military officers board an aircraft to return to Moscow. Kamanin, the Soyuz 9 back-up crews, Kuznetsov, Shatalov, and 14 other officers board an Il-18 for the flight to mission control at Yevpatoriya. Conversation aboard the flight is about the weather, football - nothing about space. After four hours the plane arrives at Saki. The first communications session with Soyuz 9 is with Issuriysk at 15:40. In a three-minute conversation the crew confirms that all is normal. At 19:00 the first of the daily landing commission meetings takes place. This commission's role is to assess the flight status and to establish contingency plans for the next day in case an emergency return to earth is required.

In the evening Kamanin calls Tereshkova, and promises to tell Nikolayev that she and Aleuka were fine, worried, to kiss him, and the looked forward to meeting him on his return. On 8 June Aleuka will be six years old, and Tereshkova would like to fly to Yevpatoriya to give her a surprise communications session with her father. At 21:25 Kamanin relays the news from his family to Nikolayev during a pass over Yevpatoriya. Kamanin observes that the tracking station is not suited to serve as mission control over a long spaceflight. There is no transport, and no recreational facilities. The only diversions are gymnastics, chess, and billiards. Furthermore there seem to be a lot of unnecessary staff at the command point.

From 09:00 to 13:00 the Soyuz 11 cosmonauts and engineers discuss the best approaches for docking, contingency plans, and so on. A concrete solution is provided for every possible problem they might encounter aboard the station - bad air, water contaminated, stuck exit hatch, and so on.

Venera 15 was part of a two spacecraft mission (along with Venera 16) designed to use side-looking radar mappers to study the surface properties of Venus. The two spacecraft were inserted into Venus orbit a day apart with their orbital planes shifted by an angle of approximately 4 degrees relative to one another. This made it possible to reimage an area if necessary. Each spacecraft was in a nearly polar orbit with a periapsis at 62 N latitude. Together, the two spacecraft imaged the area from the north pole down to about 30 degrees N latitude over the 8 months of mapping operations. Data is for Venus orbit.

The final shuttle-Mir mission, STS-91 recovered NASA astronaut Andy Thomas from the Mir station and took Russian space chief and ex-cosmonaut Valeri Ryumin to Mir for an inspection tour of the ageing station. This was the first test of the super lightweight Aluminium-Lithium alloy external tank, designed to increase shuttle payload to the Mir / International Space Station orbit by 4,000 kg. At 22:15 GMT Discovery entered an initial 74 x 324 km x 51.6 deg orbit, with the OMS-2 burn three quarters of an hour later circulising the chase orbit. Discovery docked with the SO module on Mir at 17:00 GMT on June 4. NASA equipment was retrieved from the station, and Discovery undocked at 16:01 GMT on June 8, and landed on Runway 15 at Kennedy Space Center at 18:00 GMT on June 12.

Hypersonic scramjet vehicle test. The X-43A/Pegasus booster combination was air-launched at 7600 m altitude. However the booster disintegrated at Max-Q. The redesign of the launch profile and modifications to the booster would take NASA almost three years. Air dropped in Point Arguello WADZ.

Europe's first probe to Mars. Mars Express had a mass of 637 kg dry, including science payload and Beagle separation device, together with 480 kg of propellant and the 69 kg Beagle 2 lander, for a total of 1186 kg. In addition to this a 37 kg adapter remained attached to the Fregat upper stage. Mars Express was placed into a 1.014 x 1.531 AU x 0.2 deg orbit around the Sun, following a course correction on June 5. The launch was first moved forward from June 1 and May 31 to May 23. Then delayed to June 6, then moved forward to June 2.

The Expedition 13 crew wore Russian Orlan suits and exited the station through the Pirs module hatch, which was opened at 22:48 GMT. On the Zvezda module, the crew installed a vent valve for the Elektron oxygen system, cleared an obstruction on the WAL-2 antenna, and retrieved the Kromka and Biorisk experiments. On the station truss, they replaced a camera on the Mobile Base System.