H. Kurt Strass of Space Task Group's Flight Systems Division (FSD) recommended the establishment of a committee to consider the preliminary design of a two-man space laboratory. Representatives from each of the specialist groups within FSD would work with a special projects group, the work to culminate in a set of design specifications for the two-man Mercury.

A Thor/Ablestar booster placed a U.S. Navy Transit IIA research and development navigation satellite into orbit using the Ablestar second stage with a restart engine. A smaller parasitic radiation-measuring satellite, the Galactic Radiation Experiment Background (GREB), was also placed into orbit. This was the first time two satellites had been carried in "piggyback" alignment on a single booster. Also returned geodetic data. Similar to Transit 1B, it transmitted until 26 October 1962. A planned Transit 2B was considered redundant and never built.

ELINT satellite, retransmitting to US ground stations signals from Soviet radar stations. Classified at time; official purpose and secondary payload collected solar radiation data. Officially: Spacecraft engaged in research and exploration of the upper atmosphere or outer space (US Cat B).

Meeting with Webb/Dryden, work on Saturn C-2 stopped; preliminary design of C-3 and continuing studies of larger vehicles for landing missions requested. STG push for 4 x 6.6 m diameter solid cluster first stage rejected for safety and ground handling reasons.

MSC Director Robert R. Gilruth reported to the Manned Space Flight Management Council that the selection of the ablative material for the Apollo spacecraft heatshield would be made by September 1. The leading contender for the forebody ablative material was an epoxy resin with silica fibers for improving char strength and phenolic microballoons for reducing density.

In addition, Gilruth noted that a reevaluation of the Saturn C-1 and C-1B launch capabilities appeared to indicate that neither vehicle would be able to test the complete Apollo spacecraft configuration, including the lunar excursion module. Complete spacecraft qualification would require the use of the Saturn C-5.

The big day for the cosmonauts. Departure for Moscow was scheduled for 10:30, with the meeting with Khrushchev at Vnukovo planned for 15:00. A sensitive issue - who would exit the aircraft first - Tereshkova, the main celebrity, or Bykovskiy, the senior cosmonaut and the first one launched? An enormous motorcade takes the entourage from the house on the Volga to the airport. Tereshkova and Kamanin are in the lead automobile, followed by Bykovskiy in the second, then the correspondents and so far in others, at five minute intervals. Huge crowds all along the route chant 'Valya! Valya! During the flight to Moscow Kamanin goes over Tereshkova's speech with her. When she and Bykovskiy get off the plane and march up to the tribune, a completely new life will begin for them. After the immense reception at the airport, they go with the leadership to a huge rally at Red Square.

Thirty years since the start of World War II, Kamanin muses. He thinks of the weight of those years - of Stalinist repression, war, loss of his oldest son, evacuation to Ashkabad and Tashkent, death of Komarov, and finally the heaviest loss of all - the death of Gagarin. Kamanin will be 63 in October, and the war memories still engulf him. He is so tired. Time to retire, make way for the younger men. There are some good men in the first cosmonaut team. Meanwhile, all is normal aboard Salyut 1 on the 17th day of Soyuz 11's mission.

The Air Force accepted the first Titan IIIE (E-1) from the Martin Marietta Corporation. The vehicle was then shipped to the Eastern Test Range for final assembly, checkout, and mating with Centaur upper stage prior to the planned proof launch in January 1974. SAMSO procured the Titan HIE, a Titan HID modified to accept a Centaur upper stage, for NASA's use in its Viking Mars Lander program and other future projects.

Second successful flight of the Almaz manned military space station. It had taken only 60 days and 1450 man-hours to prepare Almaz 0101-2 for flight, using the services of 368 officers and 337 non-commissioned officers. The tracking ships Academician Sergei Korolev and Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin were stationed in the Atlantic and Caribean to provide communications when out of tracking range of the USSR. Salyut 5 operated for 409 days, during which the crews of Soyuz 22 and 24 visited the station. Soyuz 23 was to have docked but its long-distance rendezvous system failed. Soyuz 25 was planned, but the mission would have been incomplete due to low orientation fuel on Salyut 5, so it was cancelled.

During the flight of Salyut 5 a 'parallel crew' was aboard a duplicate station on the ground. They conducted the same operations in support of over 300 astrophysical, geophysical, technological, and medical/biological experiments. Astrophysics studies included an infrared telescope-spectrometer in the 2-15 micrometer range which also obtained solar spectra. Earth resources studies were conducted as well as Kristall, Potok, Diffuziya, Sfera, and Reatsiya technology experiments. Presumably Salyut 5 was equipped with a SAR side-looking radar for reconnaissance of land and sea targets even through cloud cover.

The film capsule was ejected 22 February 1977 (and sold at Sotheby's, New York, on December 11, 1993!). The station was deorbited on 8 August 1977. In addition to the human crew two Russian tortoises (Testudo horsfieldi) and Zebrafish (Danio rerio) were flown.

The results of the Salyut 3 and 5 flights showed that manned reconnaissance was not worth the expense. There was minimal time to operate the equipment after the crew took the necessary time for maintenance of station housekeeping and environmental control systems. The experiments themselves showed good results and especially the value of reconnaissance of the same location in many different spectral bands and parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Additional Details: here....

SAMSO awarded a FY 1977 contract to Bell Aerospace Company for the production of 59 Propulsion System Rocket Engines for the Minuteman III. The contract was partially terminated on 11 July, then revised on 15 November to procure a total of 40 motors for the FY 1977 purchase.

Stationed at 128 deg. E. Radio telephone and telegraph communications and transmission of television programmes. Positioned in geosynchronous orbit at 128 deg E in 1984-1988 As of 4 September 2001 located at 29.81 deg E drifting at 0.199 deg E per day. As of 2007 Mar 8 located at 18.52E drifting at 0.067E degrees per day.