The fourth firing of an advanced Polaris A-2, and the first from a ship, was made by the U.S.S. Observation Island as she cruised at 8 knots, 10 miles offshore from Cape Canaveral.

The Marquardt Corporation was selected by NAA's Space and Information Systems Division to design and build the reaction control rocket engines for the Apollo spacecraft. The contract was signed during April.

Former Lavochkin bureau, part of Chelomei, regained status of a separate design bureau with former Korolev deputy GN Babakin as its head. By the end of 1965 all materials on the E-6, Ye-8, and planetary probes were passed by Korolev to the Lavochkin Bureau, who took over responsibility for all future lunar and planetary unmanned probes.

MSC decided in favor of an "all-battery" LEM (i.e., batteries rather than fuel cells in both stages of the vehicle) and notified Grumman accordingly. Pratt and Whitney's subcontract for fuel cells would be terminated on April 1; also, Grumman would assume parenthood of GE's contract (originally let by Pratt and Whitney) for the electrical control assembly. - Additional details.

Soviet Decree 126-47 'On Improved Leadership of Defence Branch Industry--creation of ministries for aviation, defence, ship building. radio-technology, electronics, and general machine building for managing the Soviet defence industry'.

Launch vehicle test. Launch vehicle was to have put payload into geosynchronous transfer orbit

First RCA-built Transit.

What at first seemed to be a success, very much needed by the L1 program, ended in failure. The Proton booster lifted off in 18 m/s winds, -3 deg C temperatures, and into very low clouds - it disappeared from view at only 150 m altitude. Aircraft at 9, 10, and 11 km altitude reported the cloud deck topped 8300 m, with 1.5 to 2.0 km visibility. The spacecraft was successfully launched into a 330,000 km apogee orbit 180 degrees away from the moon. On reentry, the guidance system failed, and the planned double skip maneuver to bring the descent module to a landing in the Soviet Union was not possible. Ustinov had ordered the self-destruct package to be armed and the capsule blew up 12 km above the Gulf of Guinea. Kamanin disagreed strongly with this decision; the spacecraft could have still been recovered in the secondary area by Soviet naval vessels after a 20 G reentry. The decsion was made to recover the spacecraft in the future whenever possible.
Officially: Solar Orbit (Heliocentric). Study of remote regions of circumterrestrial space, development of new on-board systems and units of space stations.

Launched from Barter Island, Alaska - Latitude: 70.11 N - Longitude: 143.63 W.

Nothing is said of plans for launch of the DOS station, only a month away.

Conduct fifth inert captive flight, Edwards (1 hour, 39 minutes), Enterprise (OV-101)

Manned two crew. Docked with Salyut 6. Delivery to the Salyut-6 station of the first international 'Intercosmos' team consisting of A.A. Gubarev (USSR) and V. Remek (Czechoslovak Socialist Republic) to carry out scientific research and experiments jointly developed by Soviet a nd Czechoslovak specialists.

Operation of a system of long range telephone-telegraph radiocommunication, and transmission of USSR Central Television programmes to the stations of the Orbita network.

TKS manned ferry spacecraft from the cancelled Almaz OPS-4 mission. Flown unmanned to the Salyut 7 space station. Docked with Salyut 7 on 4 March 1983. Separated from Salyut 7 on 14 August. The VA re-entry capsule separated and the space station deorbited itself on September 19, 1983 at 0:28 GMT. The VA capsule continued in space for four more days, demonstrating autonomous flight, before successfully re-entering on 23 August 1983. Returned 350 kg of material from the station. - Additional details.

Photo surveillance; returned film capsule.

Stationed at 79 deg E. Investigation of outer space; experiments in relaying telegraph and telephone information in the centimetre wavelength range. Positioned in geosynchronous orbit at 80 deg E in 1984-1988 As of 28 August 2001 located at 75.35 deg E drifting at 0.041 deg E per day. As of 2007 Mar 10 located at 69.92E drifting at 0.020W degrees per day.

High resolution photo reconnaissance; returned film in two small SpK capsules during the mission and with the main capsule at completion of the mission.

Stationed at 19.2 deg E; European coverage. Astra 1B provides TV coverage to Western Europe. The satellite is owned and operated by Société Europíenne des Satellites (SES), a private company formed in 1985. Astra 1B is the second in a network of four satellites. SES acquired Astra 1B from DBS Crimson Satellite Associates while still under construction by GE Astro Space (as Satcom K3). Astra 1B is colocated with Astra 1A, and doubled the number of channels provided by the Astra network. Spacecraft: GE 5000 platform.3-axis stabilisation with momentum wheels, magnetic torquers, Earth sensors and 20 blowdown monopropellant hydrazine thrusters. Solar arrays provide 4850 W BOL, 4 50 Ahr NiH batteries. GEO insertion provided by 2 500N bipropellant motors. Payload: 16 Ku-band transponders (with six spares) Positioned in geosynchronous orbit at 19 deg E in 1991-1999 As of 5 September 2001 located at 19.20 deg E drifting at 0.002 deg W per day. As of 2007 Mar 10 located at 92.40W drifting at 6.354W degrees per day.

Earth imaging for weather, climatology, atmospheric physics; 4 deg E. Geostationary meteorological satellite, operating within the world-wide network of the World Weather Watch of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Its main missions are: imaging in the visible, infrared and water vapour region of the spectrum. Dat a reception from so called Data Collection Platforms (DCPs); data distribution to meteorological services and other interested parties (research institutes, etc). Launch time 2336:00 UT. Positioned in geosynchronous orbit at 4 deg W in 1991; 1 deg W in 1991; 4 deg W in 1991-1992; 1 deg W in 1992; 8 deg W in 1993-1997; 9 deg W in 1997-1998; 63 deg E in 1998-1999 As of 5 September 2001 located at 62.77 deg E drifting at 0.000 deg E per day. As of 2007 Mar 1 located at 63.15E drifting at 0.006E degrees per day.

Solar and space physics. Conduct of comprehensive investigations of the sun under the Koronas-I international project developed by Russian and Ukranian experimts in cooperation with specialists from Poland, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Bulgaria, France, and the United Kingdom.

Carried Astro 2 astronomy payload with 3 UV telescopes.(attached to Endeavour).Payloads: Ultraviolet Astronomy (ASTRO) 2; Middeck Active Control Experiment (MACE); Protein Crystal Growth—Thermal Enclosure System (PCG-TES) 03; Protein Crystal Growth—Single-Locker Thermal Enclosure System (PCG-STES) 02; Commercial Materials Dispersion Apparatus Minilab/Instrumentation Technology Associates, Inc. Experiments (CMIX) 03; Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment (SAREX) II; two getaway special experiments.

Released 25 Romb radar calibration subsatellites. Reentered on October 30, 2000.

Korzun, Kaleri and Ewald undocked from Mir in the Soyuz TM-24 spaceship at 03:24 GMT on March 2 and landed at 06:44 GMT near Arkaylk in Kazakstan.

Slovak astronauts trained for flights to the Mir space station.

Launch delayed from January 13, 2003, February 26 and 27, 2004.