Apr 6 1962
From The Space Library
NASA sponsored a day-long technical symposium in Washington on results of the MA-6 three-orbit space flight. Astronaut John H. Glenn, Jr., and officials of Project Mercury reviewed the findings of the Feb. 20 flight and stressed the conclusion that the presence of the astronaut had been indispensable to successful completion of the three-orbit mission. On the Glenn effect—the firefly-like particles Glenn reported seeing outside his capsule during each of the three sunrises—Dr. John A. O'Keefe, Assistant Chief, Theoretical Division, Goddard Space Flight Center, reported that study had shown them to be flakes of paint from the spacecraft.
NASA research pilot Glenn W. Stinnett and Stanford physiologist Dr. Terence A. Rogers emerged from 7-day confinement in a simulated lunar spacecraft. Unique study by Ames Research Center involved performance of continuous and realistic professional tasks while under confined space flight conditions.
Soviet Union announced launching of COSMOS II satellite (975-mile apogee, 133-mile perigee, 49° inclination, 102.5-minute period). Cosmos II reportedly had the same instrumentation as Cosmos I launched on March 16: investigation of radio transmission, radiation belts, magnetic field of the earth, distribution and formation of cloud cover, and to test "elements of space vehicle construction." Test flight of first Atlas-Centaur rocket canceled because of heavy cloud-cover at Cape Canaveral.
In ejection capsule test, brown bear "Big John" rode in capsule ejected from B-58 at 1,060 mph and 45,000 ft. and parachuted to earth near Edwards AFB, Calif.
In testimony before Senate subcommittee, Federal Communications Commissioner Craven reported that talks with Russian and other representatives had been encouraging on establishment of a global communications satellite system. FCC Chairman Newton N. Minow said that FCC "could live with" the proposed U.S. corporation with stock to be owned by the public and by communications companies. The FCC was, Minow stated, ill equipped to handle a Government-owned system.
Dr. Homer E. Newell, NASA's Director of Space Sciences, speaking to a sectional meeting of the American Society for Engineering Education at Texas Technological College, Lubbock, Texas, said: ". . . accomplishing the space mission absolutely requires the strong and vigorous participation of our colleges and universities, which in turn requires that NASA bear its fair share of the support required to make it possible for the universities and colleges to participate. The universities must bear their share of responsibility to the space program and allocate an appropriate fraction of their material, as well as human, resources to the effort. In such a partnership, NASA stands ready to invest an appreciable fraction of its resources." Soviet Academician Leonid Sedov denied in interview with Trud that U.S.S.R. had launched other men into orbit besides Majs. Gagarin and Titov. U.S. press had speculated that as many as five Russian cosmonauts had been killed in unsuccessful flights.
Space-age religion must be an "open undogmatic religion which itself reaches out for undiscovered truth," Rabbi Sheldon H.
Blank, professor at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, said in Williamsburg, Va. If space exploration discovers rational people living on other planets, religious people on earth "will have to abandon parochialism and reach for a God who is less comfortably near than we have wanted to believe."
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