1966-03-17, 7:50 pm This is Mission Control in Houston. The primary propulsion system burn on the Agena has been delayed and at the present time the earliest time that the PPS burn would be scheduled by Flight Director Eugene Kranz is around 2 am tomorrow morning. This 1,600-foot-per-second burn is a burn of about 20 seconds in duration and is planned to be burned north out of plane, that is with the TDA pointing north, Target Docking Adapter pointing north, and this is to see how accurately a plane change can be made with an Agena and determine how much in-plane velocity would result from an out-of-plane of this type. As I said, this burn, this PPS burn has been postponed, or delayed, and would possibly be made around 2 am tomorrow morning by the flight controllers who will be on duty here all night. In any event they will be here monitoring the systems of the Agena, making certain that the temperatures remain normal, within the systems. They will be monitoring the guidance for consumables in the attitude control system that remain, primary propulsion system, and the secondary propulsion systems fuels. At the present time, the Agena is over China in the 22nd revolution around the Earth and some 34 hours and 51 minutes into the flight. The Flight Director wanted to make certain that St. Patrick's Day didn't pass unnoticed in the Mission Control Center and when he came in this evening he had on a green bowler. I don't believe he's Irish, with a name like Kranz, but nevertheless St. Patrick's Day did not pass unnoticed here in MCC. This will be the final announcement from the Control Center tonight and any newsmen requiring information on this burn that may be performed later tonight may obtain said information by calling the NASA News Center in Houston. This is Mission Control.

1966-03-18, 8:10 pm This is Mission Control in Houston. During the night, the flight controllers conducted some exercises with the Agena spacecraft. Two burns were performed, a plane change burn of 1,600 feet per second and a minimum impulse of 96 feet per second. The plane change burn was performed at 1:57 am CST this morning. For some reason, the yaw angle was off slightly. This caused a posigrade in-plane velocity component. Flight controllers think this is possibly caused by the center of gravity not being defined as well as it should have been. When the primary propulsion system engine started, the gyros sensed the Agena primary propulsion system was not burning through the center of gravity so the engines gimballed to make the correction so that the burn would go through the center of gravity. This introduced a dispersion into the guidance and the result that the out-of-plane burn added energy to the orbit and raised the apogee to 336.1 nautical miles, with the perigee remaining at 220 nautical miles. Actually what happened, the spacecraft was not pointing at the right angle and this caused the dispersion. However, the inclination angle that they were aiming at came out nearly as predicted. The dispersion affected the apogee only, causing it to go up. The inclination angle changed by about 1.7 degrees. Now the minimum impulse burn which was performed a little while ago at 6:43 am was a 96-feet-per-second burn. This was a retro burn with the TDA, target docking adapter, pointing west, or the Agena spacecraft was flying backward. The burn was performed over the Eastern Test Range and at perigee, this has a tendency to lower the apogee, this brought the spacecraft into a lower perigee. The perigee is now 278.6 by 219.9 nautical miles. The spacecraft is now coming up on the West Coast of North America in the 29th revolution around the Earth. 47 hours and 12 minutes into the flight of the Agena. This is Mission Control in Houston.