The Space Race was a technological competition between the United States and the Soviet Union in demonstrating superiority in aerospace capabilities, including artificial satellites launches, robotic space probes to the Moon, Venus, and Mars, and human spaceflight in low Earth orbit and ultimately landing on the Moon. This blog features my collection of US and Soviet Union space events on covers and press photos.
1964-09-18 USA Saturn I SA-7 AS-102
AS-102 (also known as SA-7) was the seventh flight of the Saturn I launch vehicle, which carried the boilerplate Apollo spacecraft BP-15 into low Earth orbit. The test took place on September 18, 1964, lasting for five orbits (about seven and a half hours). The spacecraft and its upper stage completed 59 orbits before reentering the atmosphere and crashing in the Indian Ocean on September 22, 1964.
AS-102 was the first time a Saturn rocket carried a programmable guidance computer. Previous launches had used an onboard "black box" that was pre-programmed. On AS-102 it would be possible to reprogram the computer during flight so that any anomalous behavior could potentially be corrected.