Weather report on N.Z.

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33096, 11 December 1972, Page 1

Weather report on N.Z.

(N.Z Press Association— Copyright)

HOUSTON, December 10. Dr Harrison Schmitt, the geologist astronaut, is proving to be a meteorologist as well.

He gives weather reports from his space view of Earth.

“It looks like New Zealand is ’probably having reasonably good weather today, although I suspect it rained last night,” the astronaut said, while running through conditions in half the world outside his window.

"That’s interesting,” said mission control, some 170,000 miles closer to the weather. “On my prog (progress chart) it doesn’t show a thing down that area. It may not be up to date yet.” In training for the flight,; Dr Schmitt—the first Ameri-! can scientist to go into space —did some extra-curricular work in meteorology. Dr Schmitt has a long string of academic honours [for a man of 37. He won a ) Fulbright Fellowship, a Kennecott Fellowship in geology, a Harvard Fellowship, a Harvard Travelling Fellowship, a

Parker Travelling Fellowship, a National Science Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship.

When he was selected as a scientist-astronaut by N.A.S.A. in June of 1965, he learned to fly and had logged more than 1665 hours flying time before setting .out on his half-million mile trip to the moon.