Small U.S. Satellite To Be Launched Soon

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28435, 15 November 1957, Page 15

Small U.S. Satellite To Be Launched Soon

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyright)

(Rec. 10 p.m.) REDLANDS (California), Nov. 14. A spokesman for the firm making the thirdstage rocket for the Vanguard project said today it had been notified that a six-inch satellite would be launched from Florida on December 1.

The spokesman said o last night to the Grand i at nearby Mentone.

•(levs came from the Navy Central Rocket Company,

The firing of the fir had originally been set f Canaveral, Florida, the of given for moving the date

st United States satellite For December 8 at Cape ficial said. No reason was up a week, he said.

A United States Navy spokesman. questioned in Washington about the report, said that no firm date had been set for the test launching.

The spokesman added that the position was as stated by President Eisenhower and other officials that the first test sphere would be launched some time in December.

The first fully-instrumented United States satellite is due to be launched next March.

Colonel J. H. Swenson, of the Office of Guided Missiles. Washington. gave details in an interview today of how a man-made

"meteor” shot into outer space and then returned and how frogmen had aided in its recovery.

The “meteor" was the nose cone of a Jupiter-C missile, which President Eisenhower showed on television last Thursday night. Mr Eisenhower said that the cone had been hundreds of miles to outer space and back and had been recovered completely intact. Colonel Swenson said the problem was not in getting the missile into the trajectory that would assure its return to earth, but recovering it. after it landed.

He said advanced rocketry caused the nose cone to do the following to aid in its recovery: glow like a falling star; “think’’ for itself; expel a parachute to slow it down; toss out a balloon and inflate it; eject and explode bombs; turn itself into a radio broadcasting station; light a flashing beacon; mark its landing spot in the Atlantic Ocean; and finally spread shark repellant. Frogmen dipped intp the water among sharks, Colonel Swenson added. The importance of the recovery, he said, lay in the information that could be obtained from taking a first-hand look at a meteor after its trip into space. In answer to critics who have complained about the lack of co-

operation in United States defence, Colonel Swenson said the meteor was fired by the Army at an Air Force installation and “fielded’’ by the Navy.