trates how these aircraft would provide the necessary coverage for a particular day's mission.

The requirement for instrumented aircraft support for APOLLO has been levied on the Department of Defense through normal channels. Meetings with the Air Force have been held and are continuing to determine the type of aircraft in the Air Force inventory best suited for this purpose as well as the total number of instrumented aircraft required for both NASA and DOD purposes. The Air Force will modify and operate these aircraft; the funds requested are for the electronic equipment required specifically for APOLLO support as well as aircraft structural modifications for the required antennas.

29-063 064-pt. 2-26

IMPLEMENTATION SCHEDULE

The final chart (fig. 372) details the APOLLO network implementation schedule. As noted, the implementation of facilities at the three MSFN IMPLEMENTATION SCHEDULE

existing GEMINI network stations at Hawaii, Guaymas, and Texas, plus the additions at Ascension Island, and the new station at Guam must begin in fiscal 1965 in order to be ready to support that portion of the SATURN IB program requiring the unified-frequency system and to support the SATURN V program with full network capability. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BUCKLEY. If I may pick up now for approximately three pages.

The CHAIRMAN. Surely.

NETWORK COSTS DECREASING

Mr. BUCKLEY. The network augmentation that we are going through for APOLLO is a major part of our budget this year. But I would like to mention that the network costs, as a proportion of the total program costs for which they are built, are decreasing significantly.

On MERCURY, the network cost was approximately 46 percent of the program cost. By using the MERCURY network as we move into APOLLO, the net work cost for GEMINI will be about 14 percent of the total program cost. We expect the cost of augmenting the network for APOLLO will be only about 5 percent of the total program cost.

Tracking and data acquisition costs will reach a peak of 308 million during the current fiscal year of 1964 primarily because we are concurrently completing the augmentation of the manned space flight network for GEMINI and initiating procurements to convert the network for APOLLO. In fiscal year 1965, the costs will decrease approximately 11 percent. Looking to the future, we expect that total costs will remain approximately at the same levels in the next few years or will decrease slightly. In general, capital costs, equipment and components and construction of facilities categories, will decrease. Operations costs, however, will rise as the pace of GEMINI and APOLLO flight activity steps up and as the number of unmanned lunar, planetary, and orbital flights increase.

NETWORK WORKLOADS INCREASING

I would like to give a few workload statistics and performance data for the networks. At the present time, the satellite network is supporting 17 satellites and it will increase to an average support level of 30 satellites in fiscal year 1965. In the last year, 31 satellites were supported by that network of which 12 were DOD satellites. It is interesting, perhaps, that in terms of station passes, these stations record approximately 25,000 satellite passes per year.

Another way to measure the workload is the number of data points recorded. I have a chart (fig. 373) which shows how the amount of

data collected has grown since 1962 and is expected to continue to grow. In 1962, data was collected from satellites by ground stations at the rate of about half a million data points per day. Even though there were fewer satellite launches in 1963 than 1962, the total number of data points per day increased to 6 million. During 1964, the rate is expected to increase to 40 million data points per day and in 1965 to 250 million per day.

Despite this severalfold increase in the amount of data to be processed, the data processing operations costs will increase only 45 percent in fiscal year 1965 due to improved equipment and systems being installed at Goddard Space Flight Center. This increase in data is partly due to the greater number of spacecraft to be supported, but primarily due to the introduction of the highly complex observatory class satellites.

ACTIVITY OF DEEP SPACE NETWORK

The next chart (fig. 374) will indicate the activity of the deep space network. Six missions each are scheduled in 1964 and 1965 which DEEP SPACE NETWORK

LUNAR & PLANETARY REQUIREMENTS (UNMANNED)

will increase to 14 in 1966 and 12 in 1967. Some of these missions will require 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week coverage for several months. It is certain that we will have requirements for the support of several spacecraft concurrently.

In closing, I would like to state that since I last reported to the committee the networks have successfully supported all mission requirements without delay or failure. The single exception was the

Cooper flight which was delayed 1 day by an equipment module associated with the radar at the Bermuda station. After replacement of this module, the network performed perfectly enabling the capsule, as you recall, to impact approximately 1 mile from the planned point. This concludes my statement, Mr. Chairman.

(Mr. Buckley's prepared statement follows:)

STATEMENT OF EDMOND C. BUCKLEY, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF TRACKING AND Data ACQUISITION, NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

PROGRAM MANAGEMENT

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, the Office of Tracking and Data Acquisition was created to provide a single office responsible directly to the Associate Administrator for all tracking and data acquisition activities of NASA. These activities include not only meeting the ground support requirements of all NASA projects but also serving as a focal point for requesting cooperation from the Department of Defense and arranging for support requested by the Department of Defense. The Office of Tracking and Data Acquisition also provides a single managerial and technical point of responsibility for the arrangements and assistance needed in other countries.

Ground support is provided in the areas of tracking, data acquisition, command control, communications, and data processing. Responsibilities include not only assuring the availability and proper operation of required equipment and facilities but also assuring their reliability, accuracy, responsiveness, and flexibility to changes in mission needs.

Projects supported include scientific satellites, applications satellites such as those for communications and meteorological purposes, manned space flight, lunar and planetary probes as well as research aircraft and sounding rockets. Every project is dependent upon the system of ground support for proper mission control and for collection of the scientific data which results.

The requirements for providing ground support for the various NASA projects come to the Office of Tracking and Data Acquisition from the NASA program offices after review and validation by the appropriate Associate Administrator, i.e., Dr. Mueller, Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight, Dr. Newell, Associate Administrator for Space Science and Applications, and Dr. Bisplinghoff, Associate Administrator for Advanced Research and Technology. response to these requirements, the Office of Tracking and Data Acquisition prepares a plan for providing the necessary tracking and data acquisition support.

In

To meet the diverse support requirements of these projects, NASA has developed a variety of facilities which can be adapted to meet the specific requirements of individual space and aeronautical flight missions.

Three functionally oriented worldwide tracking and data acquisition networks have been established to meet the requirements of the three broad categories of space flight missions. We have a network for the unmanned scientific and applications earth satellites, with their requirements for broad-band data flow in a variety of orbital configurations. We have a deep space network for the unmanned lunar and planetary exploration spacecraft. The requirements here dictate very specialized electronic systems capable of extreme sensitivity at moderate data flow rates. We also have the manned space flight network which is evolving from the original highly successful Mercury network and is now being augmented for Gemini and Apollo.

Although each of these worldwide networks has been developed to support the specialized needs of the three primary types of space vehicles and normally provides support to NASA space programs along these general lines (and also to certain of the Department of Defense space programs), they can also be combined in any required configuration to provide cross support. This is done through the medium of a centralized communications control center and computation center in the Goddard Space Flight Center at Greenbelt, Md. The recent highly successful Saturn SA-5 launch, for example, was supported by facilities of the manned space flight network as well as the Minitrack and