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

ASTRONAUTICAL AND AERONAUTICAL EVENTS OF 1962 39
March $1: NASA announced selection of Westinghouse Electric Co
as contractor for constructing and testing protot and flig ‘1: t
models of the S-52 US.-U.E. 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 distri-
bution 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. Fiz
teen 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 eement 7 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 22: Experimental ejection-seat capsule for use in supersonic
aircraft was ejected from USAF B-58 at 870 mph and 35,000 ft.
Bear and capsule landed safely by parachute near Edwards AFB.
Calif., 7 min. 49 sec. later.
USAF launched a Minuteman from a silo at AMR and sent it 4,000
miles downrange, the seventh straight success in the Minuteman
silo-launch test series.
Sir Bernard Lovell, Director of the Jodrell Bank Experimental
Station in England, testified before the House Science and
Astronautics Committee that life on other planets was a real
possibility, estimated that four per cent of the billions of stars in
the universe must have planets capable of sustaining life. Listening
for messages from other planets would not be worthwhile on a
random basis; if disarmament came, military radar might be
devoted to this purpose, he said.
NAA announced that Mrs. Constance Wolf would receive the 1961
Montgolfler Award from the FAI for her balloon flight from Big
Springs, Tex., to Boley, Okla., on November 19-20,1961. Claiming
15 world records, Mrs. Wolf would be the first woman to receive
this international award.
March 23: President Kennedy, speaking at the University of California
in Berkeley on the occasion of the University’s Charter Day
and the awarding to the President of an honorary degree of Doctor
of Laws, said: ((. . . history may well remember this week
for . . . the decision by the United States and the Soviet Union
to seek concrete agreements on the joint exploration of space . . .
the scientific gains the joint effort would offer might be small
compared to the gains for world peace. For a cooperative
Soviet-American effort in space science and exploration would
emphasize the interests that unite us instead of the conflicts that
divide us. It offers us an area in which the stale, sterile dogmas
of the cold war can be left literally a quarter of a million miles
behind. And it would remind us on both sides that knowledge,
not hate, is the passkey to the future-that howled e transcends
national antagonisms-that it speaks a universaf languagethat
it is the possession, not of a single class, a single nation or
a single ideology, but of aJl mankind.”