ASTRONAUTS RESTING

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31119, 23 July 1966, Page 15

ASTRONAUTS RESTING

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) NEW YORK, July 22. The Gemini X astronauts, John Young and Michael Collins, rested today aboard the recovery ship, Guadalcanal, in preparation for their return to the space centre at Cape Kennedy, Florida, to begin recording a minute - by - minute account of man’s highest space flight. Their highly-successful mission ended yesterday when Gemini X splashed down in the Atlantic only four miles away from the Guadalcanal to end a 70-hour, 47-minute flight through more than a million miles of space. Doctors pronounced them “in good shape,” though they reached a height of 475 miles, close to the fringes of the Van Allen radiation belts which girdle the earth. Dr. George Mueller, director of the manned space programme, described the flight after splashdown yesterday as having considerable importance to the United States Apollo project to put a man on the moon, possibly within two years. Military Applications General Leighton Davis, a United States Air Force space director, said that Gemini X’s double rendezvous feats had maior military applications. The air force felt it must •be able to rendezvous with, and inspect, objects in space Ito make sure that they were

there for peaceful purposes, 1 he said. I In the next 10 days Young i and Collins will use miles of recording tape explaining i every detail of their flight, i Their exhaustive report is i expected to clear up two un- i solved problems—why they i used excessive fuel reaching i

the first rendezvous and what sent temporarily acrid fumes into their oxygen system. But in spite of these handicaps they achieved every major objective and lost only two of the three planned dockings with the first target and about half their minor scientific experiments.