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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 8, 1971)
Page 4 College Station, Texas Wednesday, December 8, 1971 THE BATTAUC E MOSCOW (-^P) — An unmanned Soviet space capsule parachuted onto Mars and sent television and radio signals to earth, Tass re ported Tuesday. It is the first time that a functioning manmade object had soft-landed on the planet’s dusty surface. The capsule was dispatched to Mars last Thursday from the So viet probe Mars 3, which contin ued to circle the planet in an or-* bit more than 930 miles high, the Soviet news agency announced. Dowdy under observation at hospital BALTIMORE, Md. (&) — Rep John Dowdy, D-Tex., was under observation in “satisfactory” con dition at a hospital Tuesday after complaining of feeling ill at his bribery-conspiracy trial in U.S. District Court. Prosecution and defense law yers were to meet Wednesday with the judge hearing the case to receive further reports of the veteran lawmaker’s condition. The Democrat from Athens in East Texas complained to Judge Rozel Thomas during the morn ing session of his trial in its fifth week. He was excused from the proceeding and he went to Uni versity Hospital for examination. Dowdy was admitted to the intensive cardiac care unit Tues day afternoon under care of two doctors, heart specialist Dr. Leonard Scherlis of University Hospital, and Dr. E. Coles An drus of Johns Hopkins Hospital, a spokesman at University Hos pital said. Dowdy, 59, is charged with conspiring to accept a $25,000 bribe from a Maryland home im provement firm for his help in stopping a Justice Department probe on the firm. He has suf fered from back trouble and a pulmonary infection in the past year. The veteran congressman’s ill ness has forced six delays of his trial. The morning ' session of the trial saw the continued cross ex amination of Leonard Wilson, 35, of Jasper, Ala., who has testified he was with Dowdy the whole time he was at an Atlanta air port. The government says the $25,000 was turned over to Dow dy at the airport Sept. 22, 1965. Wilson has testified he didn’t see the legislator receive a briefcase. The judge conferred with the prosecution and defense at the bench briefly during the after noon before dismissing the jury until Thursday. The judge then recessed the trial until Thursday. Dowdy, who underwent a medi cal examination at Bethesda Na val Hospital earlier this year to determine his ability to stand trial, was treated in Texas ear lier before he returned to his Washington congressional duties in March. Traphagan to give Political Forum Insurance’s side of the rising cost of coverage will be repre sented today in a Political Forum presentation at A&M by William M. Traphagan. Traphagan is Southwestern re gional manager of the Insurance Information Institute. His talk on “The Rising Cost of Insurance” will be the last Political Forum noon series for the fall semester, announced Chairman Paul Turner. Traphag an will speak in the Memorial Student Center Assembly Room in the public-free Forum series. Former district manager of the institute’s Cincinnati office, Traphagan has been with I.I.L since September, 1967. The Ohio State University graduate was an administrative assistant five years with the Ohio State Medical Association. His B.S. degree at OSU was in business administi'ation, with ma jors in advertising and public relations, Apollo 15 movie shown at physics colloquium A movie on the Apollo 15 moon mission will be shown at 7 p.m. Thursday as part of the physics colloquium series at A&M. Prof. J. T. Kent said the movie, “Apollo 15 in the Mountains,” will be shown in Physics Room 145. The public is invited. FOR BEST RESULTS TRY BATTALION CLASSIFIED First unmanned space capsule landed on Mars by Soviets r . i . i -t. .i 1 , i «i n- r rvn'tm . J il t'* o T'C? Q IVT <, T r 9Q . .~1Q Vi Q c. 1 -1 1 ■»*/? 1-1 vm. 111 ,1 1-1 »-w 1 4 Vi '14 o O 4 _ ** A ftpr S P n a ra 110 n. the aCT e nc V 1111 a TTl Plf'l<‘#4Tnnn. ,] ‘ - The agency gave no details on the shape or weight of the cap sule which landed or the next step -in its mission. Tass said, however, that the craft sent radio signals to the Mars 3 mothership, which in turn relayed them to earth Thursday through Sunday. The agency added that the vehicle also sent some “video signals” but they “were brief and suddenly discon tinued.” Mars 3 was launched May 28 and took 188 days to reach the red planet, 76 million miles from earth. It followed closely behind Mars 2, launched May 19. Mars 2 dipped into a wide el liptical orbit of Mars on Nov. 27 and began a photoreconnaissance. The Soviets said it would not at tempt a soft landing. It fired a capsule containing a hammer and sickle pennant to the surface. An American Mars probe, Mar iner 9, has been circling the plan et since Nov. 13, trying to peer through a dust storm which has ranged on the surface since Sep tember, thwarting scientists’ at tempts to map it. The Soviet space capsule ap parently found the Martian sur face solid enough to make a stable landing. American scien tists had expressed fears earlier that the dust on the surface of Mars was even thicker than that on the moon and that a craft at tempting to land might sink out of sight. Tass indicated that neither Mars 2 nor Mars 3 would be in volved in any more space spec taculars. The agency said a computer on board Mars 3 made the final cor rections in its trajectory Thurs day and put it into position for the separation of the descent craft. “After separation,” the agency continued, “the descent craft entered into the planet’s atmos phere, parachuted down and softly landed in the southern hemisphere of Mars between the Electris and Phaetonis regions.” The agency said some of the instruments involved in the Mars 3 probe were made by French specialists under the Soviet- French program of scientific and technical cooperation. William Pickering, director the Mariner 9 project, said atl Jet Propulsion Laboratory WAS* Pasadena, Calif., that he was, »lNix< surprised at the reported lanii li« ^ of the Mars 3 capsule in vie» d m 01 the two major Soviet probes i to Mars. ^ a t c “It will be very interesting i ()Vernir see what kind of data they ( ff ai(L lect on the surface,” he said,", ffh ' how they measure the dust sto itat£ that is still raging , . ^ Iona quality handsome-portable. MELAMINE DINNERWARE I SET * $ Stain resistant service for four. ... finder and power flash. LIFE-SIZE ELECTRIC FIREPLACE UNIVERSITY DRIVE AT COLLEGE AVE. : / v