SPACE: Flying High

Last week’s space-age notes:

¶ Three engines burning furiously, an Air Force Atlas missile shot into the sky on a successful but limited (3,000 miles) test flight. It was the third fully powered (360,000-lb. thrust) flight for the 6,000-mile-plus ICBM. In preparation: a full-range shot, early this fall.

¶ The Navy gave the full story on what happened to a Vanguard satellite that got lost in the skies on its way to orbit last May. The Vanguard, the Navy explained, was supposed to have climbed to 300-400 miles, then gone into its orbit. Instead, the second-stage engine failed to cut off, kept the Vanguard going up instead of letting it turn parallel to the earth’s surface. When the third stage fired at the wrong angle, the rocket just kept on going—straight up to 2,200 miles. The Navy’s reading of Cape Canaveral instruments showed that the satellite landed near the west coast of South Africa, 7,500 miles from Florida—if, that is, the whole thing did not burn up when it re-entered the earth’s atmosphere.

¶ The Soviets, famed for their spaceborne dog Laika, said they rocketed two more dogs 280 miles up somewhere over European Russia, recovered the animals—alive. The hermetically sealed passengers were both female, the Russians added, named Belyanka (Whitey) and Pestraya (Spot). Total weight of the rocket and dogs: 3,700 Ibs.