Astronautical and Aeronautical Events of 1962 - NASA's History Office

10 ASTRONAUTICAL AND AERONAUTICAL EVENTS OF 19 6 2
January 66: RANGER 111 was launched from AMR; excessive acceleration
by the Atlas 1st-stage booster caused the 727-113. payload to
pass 22,562 miles in front of the moon on January 28 instead of
impacting as had been planned. Failure of a high-gain antenna
to home on the earth rendered signals too weak to provide usable
television photographs from the ones RANGER took of the moon
as it passed it. RANGER 111 went into orbit around the sun.
The
flight proved out many of the systems within the payload, includ-
ing the mid-flight guidance mechanism.
During hearings of the Joint Senate and House Economic Com-
mittee, Senator Paul H. Douglas stated that “the public has
never really had a chance to consider” the space program and
that one third of the members of the American Astronautical
Society had indicated in a poll that “a man ltmding on the moon
was not desirable.” Budget Director David IC. Bell stoutly
defended the space program. Senator Sparknian questioned
Senator Douglas: “1 wonder whether Congress felt the same way
when it put up money for Samuel Morse” to develop the tele-
graph.
January $7: With the countdown at T-29 minutes, NASA postponed
the first US. manned orbital flight until February 1 because of
cloud cover at the launching site that would have precluded
adequate tracking of the vital first minutes of the flight. Astro-
naut John H. Glenn had been in the Mercury capsule atop the
Atlas launch rocket for more than 5 hours when the launch was
postponed.
January 29: NASA announced selection of three firms to submit final
proposals on the design and development of the Rift (Reactor-
In-Flight-Test) rocket stage that would flight-test the Nerva
nuclear rocket engine. The firms were General Dynamics/
Astronautics, Lockheed Missile and Space Company, and Martin
Marietta Corp. When selected, the contractor would be re-
sponsible for designing the Rift stage, fabricating and assembling
it at the Michoud Operations Plant, and conducting tests and
checkouts related to eventual flight test. The three firms were
selected from five who submitted initial bids on January 3, fol-
lowing a first-phase preproposals conference at Marshall Space
Flight Center on December 7 attended by 33 firms.
The last test model of the USAF Titan I ICRM was successfully fired
from AMR. It was the 47th Titan I launching from Cape
Canaveral, of which 34 were successes, 9 partial successes, and
4 failures.
January 50: NASA announced at Cape Canaveral that manned MA-6
launch would be postponed until February 13 because of “tech-
nical difficulties with the launching booster.” John A. Powers,
NASA press spokesman, quoted Astronaut John Glenn as saying:
“Sure, I’m disappointed, but this is a complicated business.
I don’t think we should fly until all elements of the mission are
ready. When we have completed all our tests satisfactorily then
we’ll go.”
0 NASA announced that Cdr. Forrest S. Petersen (USN), one of six
research pilots assigned to the x-15 flight project, returned to
Navy duty after 3j4 years with the X-15.