March 1962

March 1: John Glenn Day in New York City. An estimated four million people lined the streets to cheer the Mercury astronauts. Mayor Robert Wagner presented the city’s highest award, the Medal of Honor, to Col. Glenn and Robert R. Gilruth.

Third successful static-test firing of “Old Salty”-an H-1 engine that had been submerged in salt water for four hours before each of its test runs. Purpose of tests was to determine feasibility and costs of recovering, rebuilding, and reusing booster engines as opposed to cost of new engines. Early results indicated that engines could be recovered and rebuilt at a cost of about 10% of new engines.

NASA fired a Scout rocket from Wallops Station, Va. The rocket flew 135 miles high and about 800 miles downrange in a re-entry test reaching speeds of 19,000 mph.

Rift (Reactor-in-Flight-Test) bidders conference held at Marshall Space Flight Center.

NASA selected Chance-Vought Corp. as contractor to study rendezvous of space vehicles. A primary part of the contract would be a flight simulation study exploring the capability of an astronaut to control an Apollo-type spacecraft.

March 2: Mercury astronauts visited the United Nations, and John Glenn, during an informal reception given by Acting Secretary-General U Thant, said: “To be here at the United Nations this morning and have all these tributes to our project and all the people that are working on it from people of this calibre, is indeed overwhelming all over again after yesterday. . .As space science and space technology grows still further and our projects become more and more ambitious, we wil be relying more and more on international teamwork.“

Five Nike-Cajun rockets were fired from Wallom Station, Va.in a series of tests to measure atmospheric cinditions at high altitudes. At 5:47 AM NASA scientists fired the first rocket to spread a trail of water vapor up to 89 miles altitude. At 5 :54 AM the second rocket was fired. It loosed a cloud of sodium vapor starting at 26 miles and rising with the rocket to 84 miles. The cloud was spectacular in the sunrise and visible for hundreds of miles along the Atlantic coast. At 6:15 AM the third rocket jettisoned and detonated grenades one at a time at altitudes from 24 to 55 miles. Two additional Nike-Cajun rockets were fired in the evening with sodium and grenade experiments.

March 3: Astronaut John H. Glenn, Jr., was welcomed in his home town of New Concord, Ohio, by a crowd estimated at 50,000 people (normal population of New Concord, 2,127).

Capsule from Discoverer 38 recovered in midair over the Pacific by a USAF C-130 piloted by Capt. Jack R. Wilson. It was his second recovery, the 8th midair recovery, and the 12th recovery in air or sea during the Discoverer series. The capsule had been in polar orbit for 5 days since its launch on February 27.

March 5: U.S. reported to the United Nations that a total of 72 U.S. space vehicles and associated objects were in orbit around the earth as of February 15.

March 5-7: NASA Wallops Station, Va., suffered storm damage first estimated in excess of $1 million as a result of high seas accompanying series of severe storms. Facilities of the main base on Wallops Island unused by NASA were subsequently opened to evacuees from Chincoteague and surrounding areas.

March 6: Dr. Arthur E. Raymond was appointed a special consultant to the NASA Administrator. He would be concerned with organization and management of research and development programs, especially those involving advanced research and overall systems planning. Dr. Raymond retired in 1960 as senior vice president of engineering for Douglas Aircraft Co., having spent 35 years with the company. He served as a member of NACA from 1946-1956.

AEC selected the Martin-Marietta Corp. as contractor to design, build, and ground test Snap 11, the thermoelectric nuclear generator for use on NASA’s Surveyor spacecraft. Snap 11 would weigh about 30 Ibs., including shielding, and would provide a minimum of 18.6 watts of power continuously for 90-day lunar missions.

March 7: OSO 1 (Orbiting Solar Observatory) was successfully launched into orbit from Cape Canaveral, marking the seventh straight success for the Thor-Delta booster. The 458 lb satellite, with an apogee of 370 mi. and a perigee of 340 mi., immediately began sending back signals on the sun’s radiation in the ultraviolet, x-ray, and gamma ray regions from its position above the filtering action of the earth’s atmosphere. By an intricate positioning apparatus, 0SO’s 13 instruments were focused constantly on the sun with a pointing accuracy of 1 minute of arc.

NASA established the NASA Launch Operations Center at Cape Canaveral, with Dr. Kurt H. Debus as Director. Reporting to the Director of Manned Space Flight at NASA Hq., the new Center would serve all NASA projects launched from Cape Canaveral, absorbing Marshall Space Flight Center’s Launch Operations Directorate.

Escape-velocity payloads with the nuclear-engine Rift as the 3rd stage on an Advanced Saturn booster would be more than double that of a 3-stage, all-chemical Advanced Saturn and higher than that of the Nova 12-million-pound-thrust vehicle, according to testimony given to a subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics by Harold Bell, NASA’s Director of Nuclear Systems.

March 8: John L. Sloop, NASA’s Director of Propulsion and Power Generation, testifying before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, said: ‘(. . . some of the new solid propellants promise an increase in performance of over 18 percent. . . . If applied to our new Surveyor spacecraft designed to land instruments on the moon, this 18 percent increase in solid propellant specific impulse could make possible an increase in the weight of instruments aboard by more than 50 percent.”

The tracking network that operated during Glenn’s orbital flight would for the most part be suffcient to handle the 18-orbit flights to follow, according to Edmond C. Buckley, NASA’Ds irector of Tracking and Data Acquisition, in testimony before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics. For the Glenn flight, the ground stations had to provide five minutes of contact and communication for every 15 minutes of flight during the 43 hour mission. For 18 orbits the current requirement was one contact per orbit. This would require repositioning of the two ship stations and adding more telemetry-receiving equipment and command systems to some of the existing sites.

March 10: The Astronautics Committee of the 51-nation Federation Aeronautique Internationale, meeting in Paris, certified Soviet Cosmonaut Gherman Titov as holder of two new world records for space flight: duration of flight, 25 hrs. 11 min.; and length of flight, 436,911 mi. In certifying Titov’s records, the committee relaxed its rule that the pilot must land with his vehicle (Titov parachuted to earth). The heaviest payload in orbital flight still belongs to the other Soviet cosmoqaut, Yuri Gagarin (10,419 lbs.).

March 11:  The U.S.S.R. had shown a “change in attitude in recent weeks” on cooperating with the U.S. on development and use of a weather satellite system, Dr. Francis W. Reichelderfer, Chief of the US. Weather Bureau, testified before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics.

March 12: US News and World Report carried article on “Red Space Failures,” pointing to official US. policy with regard to Soviet launchings: “No Soviet feat [in space] has ever been publicly challenged in Washington and no failure publicly announced.” It reported that while Premier Khrushchev was at the United Nations in September 1960, “a Soviet cosmonaut was sent more than a hundred miles into space and killed”, that in a five-month period in 1960-61, four Soviet space probes were fired toward Mars and Venus, but failed; and that during the same period “a dozen other Soviet space shots went awry”

March 13: Dr. Abe Silverstein, Director of NASA’S Lewis Research Center, received the National Civil Service League’s Career Service Award, one of 10 Government leaders so recognized.

March 14: NASA announced that sea damage to Wallops Station, Va., occurring earlier in the month was not extensive, and that rocket firings would be resumed in a few days. Although launch pads and some tracking gear on the island itself had been damaged by water, the more important tracking and data acquisition facilities on the mainland were undamaged.

United Nations opened a public register on satellites in orbit. At the time of opening, it contained only the U.S. report submitted on March 5, which reported “72 US space vehicles and associated objects in sustained orbit or space transit” as of February 15, 1962.

March 15: NASA announced that LCdr. M. Scott Carpenter (USN) would be the pilot on the next Mercury orbital space flight (MA-7). Major Donald K. Slayton (USAF), the astronaut originally scheduled for the flight, was disqualified because of an “erratic heart rate,” after the medical findings had been reviewed by an Air Force medical board and a board of civilian cardiologists. Astronaut Walter M. Schirra was named as Carpenter’s backup pilot.

March 16: USAF Titan II ICBM successfully launched on first flight, from Cape Canaveral. Initiated less than 2 years ago, Titan II is powered by storable propellants (430,000-lbs. thrust in 1st stage, 100,000-lbs.in second stage), and will also be used as the boosters for NASA’s Gemini two-man spacecraft.

Premier Khrushchev claimed that the U.S.S.R. had a new “global rocket” and announced the orbiting of Cosmos 1 (the 16th Russian satellite). Tass released a news story on the new satellite, giving its orbital data as apogee, 609 mi. ; perigee, 135 mi. ; period, 96 min. ; and inclination, 49’ to the equator. A scientific payload included measurements of meteoric impacts, low-energy solar radiation, earth’s radiation belts, cosmic rays, earth’s magnetic field, short-wave radiation from sun and other celestial sources, and atmospheric cloud patterns.

March 19: U.N.’s reorganized 28-nation Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space opened its meetings with the reelection of Dr. Franz Matsch of Austria as chairman and his subsequent ruling that the committee would make decisions by “consensus” rather than by vote. U.S. delegate was Francis T. P. Plimpton; his deputy was Richard N. Gardner, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs. Dr. Hugh L. Dryden, Deputy Administrator of NASA, was Plimpton’s technical adviser. Dr. Homer Newell of NASA and Leonard C. Meeker of the State Department were alternate representatives. Congressional advisers were Senators Howard W. Cannon and Margaret Chase Smith, and Representatives James G. Fulton and George P. Miller. U.S.S.R. representative was Platon D. Morozov. V. Dobronravov, member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and space expert, was his scientific adviser.

March 20: NASA announced selection of Westinghouse Electric Co as contractor for constructing and testing prototype and flighit models of the S-52 scientific satellite. econd of the three satellites in this program, S-52 was scheduled for launch from Wallops Station, Va., in 1963,would contain 3 major experiments for measurement of galactic radio noise, of vertical distribution of ozone, and of micrometeorite flux.

March 21-22: Fourth meeting of the Panel on Science and Technolog of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics held. Fifteen leading American scientists and engineers plus Dr. George B. Kistiakowsky, Dr. Harrison S. Brown, and Sir Bernard Lovell discussed mapping and eodetic satellites, propulsion problems, use of boron as a fuel element in space flight, and the need to strengthen universities in the training of scientists and engineers. Dr. James Van Allen commended NASA for “marked improvement” during the past two years in its fostering of university scientific research and training programs and suggested that five per cent of the national space budget be so invested.

March 23: NASA completed work on its first major launching facility on the West Coast, a Thor-Agena pad at Vandenberg AFB, Calif. A used gantry was shipped from MSFC and installed at a $1 million saving over cost of new construction. Pad would be used for NASA polar-orbit launches, such as Echo,Nimbus, and Pogo (Polar Orbiting Geophysical Observatory).

March 25: U.S.S.R. submitted information on 16 Soviet space fights for inclusion in the U.N. public registry on space launchings. Included were the manned orbital flights by Majs. Yuri A. Gagarin and Gherman S. Titov. U.S. submitted a similar list to the U.N. on March 5, covering U.S. space launchings to Feb. 15, 1962,that were still in orbit.

March 26: U.S. and U.S.S.R. technical representatives held the fist of a series of talks on the possibility of joint cooperation in space research and exploration. Dr. Hugh L. Dryden, Deputy Administrator of NASA, represented the U.S.; Dr. Anatoli A. Blagonravov, of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, represented the U.S.S.R.

USAF announced selection of four USAF and two NASA pilots as “pilot-engineering consultants” for the Dyna-Soar program. A decision would be made later whether the men would actually fly the spacecraft. USAF officers selected were: Maj. James W. Wood, Capt. Henry C. Gordon, Capt. Russell L. Rogers, and Capt. William J. Knight. NASA pilots selected were: Neil A. Armstrong and Milton Thompson.

March 28: US. submitted to the U.N. a supplemental list of U.S. space launching, covering the period of Feb. 15 to March 15, 1962, updating the coverage of the first U.S. list submitted on March 5, 1962. This second official list did not include astronaut John Glenn’s 3-orbit flight, since the US. contended that the U.N. roster was supposed to contain only those space objects still in orbit, not those that had already re-entered. U.S.S.R. listed all its space flights in its report to the U.N. on March 26. Although the MA-6 flight was not registered, the U.S. submitted information on the Glenn fight to the U.N. on April 3.

A four-stage NASA Scout rocket carried the P-21A payload 3,910 miles into space and 4,370 miles downrange from Wallops Station, Va. In 97-minute flight measurements were taken of the ionospheric electron density profiles, ion density, and types of ions, data needed to improve communication between earth and space.

The European Launcher Development Organization (ELDO) formally came into being when a convention was signed in London between Great Britain, France, West Germany, and Italy to develop the rocket vehicle to launch a satellite from Woomera, Australia, in 1965. First stage would be the British Blue Streak rocket, second stage the French Veronique, third stage would be developed by West Germany. The Netherlands, Belgium, and Australia were expected to join the organization soon.

March 29: McDonnell Aircraft Corp. first showed Gemini capsule mock-up at St. Louis plant.