Rocket Expert To Go To Antarctica

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31195, 20 October 1966, Page 18

Rocket Expert To Go To Antarctica

Dr. Wernher von Braun, the Second World War German rocket expert, whose main task now is the development of Saturn space rockets for America’s Apollo lunar landing project, will visit Antarctica early next year.

He will stay there for about 10 days in January paying particular attention to the establishments at Plateau Station and the Dry Valley areas not far from McMurdo Station.

Some of the equipment to be used in the Apollo project may be tested in Antarctica. Dr. Von Braun is the director of the George C. Marshall Space Flight Centre, Alabama, and of the National

Aeronautics and Space Ad ministration.

Three other distinguished space scientists plan to accompany him. They are Dr. R. Gilruth, head of the Houston Manned Space Flight Centre; Dr. G. Mueller, assistant administrator of th" Office of Manned Space Flight at N.A.S.A. headquarters; and Dr. E. Stuhlinger, director of research at the Marshall Space Flight Centre, Alabama.

According to a report in New York recently, N.A.S.A. officials may make Antarctica the preferred emergency landing area for American and Soviet astronauts.

The report said that it would be several years before N.A.S.A. planning was sufficiently developed to enable the construction of the first emergency landing base to begin.