Satellite Navigation, a Half Century Ago

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Fifty years ago today — April 13, 1960 — the first navigational satellite was launched from Cape Canaveral on a Thor Able-Star booster.


(Transit satellite. Smithsonian Institute image from http://www.nasm.si.edu/exhibitions/gps/before.html.)

Called Transit-1B (the 1A spacecraft had been lost in September 1959 when the launch vehicle’s third stage failed), the small spin-stabilized Navy satellite and its later companions proved the feasibility of using satellite signals for geolocation. Transit paved the way for the Global Positioning System we know today.

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Not Space Politics: a Politician in Space

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Twenty-five years ago today — April 12, 1985 — Space Shuttle Discovery, which is in space right now, lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-51D.


(STS-51D launch. NASA image.)

The Discovery crew consisted of astronauts Karol J. Bobko, Don E. Williams, Margaret Rhea Seddon, S. David Griggs, Jeffrey A. Hoffman, and Charles D. Walker, plus astronaut/Senator E. “Jake” Garn. Senator Garn was the first active member of Congress to fly into space, but he was uniquely qualified to do so, having been a Naval aviator and then a pilot in the Air Force Reserve.

They deployed two satellites, Telesat-1 (also known as Anik-C1) and Syncom-IV (also known as LEASAT-3), though the latter did not spin up properly and its boost motor failed to ignite. It was recovered and repaired on a later shuttle mission.

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Triskaidekalunia — The Launch of Apollo-13

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Forty years ago today — April 11, 1970 — the Apollo-13 mission launched from Cape Canaveral. Astronauts James A. Lovell, Jr., John L. “Jack” Swigert, Jr., and Fred W. Haise, Jr., were on their way to the Fra Mauro region of the moon.


(Apollo-13 launch. NASA image.)

Everything went well for the first two days, but on April 13th the Apollo-13 Service Module suffered a crippling explosion. The number two oxygen tank ruptured, causing a cascade of failures throughout the spacecraft’s systems — including the loss of all the oxygen from the number one tank as well.


(View of the damaged Service Module, taken by the Apollo-13 crew. NASA image.)

NASA aborted the Moon landing and turned their full attention to getting the astronauts home alive. The crew splashed down successfully on April 17th.

This page has a good explanation of the cause of the accident.

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Satellite Communications Go Commercial

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Forty-five years ago today — April 6, 1965 — the “Early Bird” satellite (also known as Intelsat-1) was launched by a Thor-Delta rocket out of Cape Canaveral.


(Thor-Delta rocket on the launch pad, with Echo-1 satellite, 1960. NASA image. Click to enlarge.)

Placed in geosynchronous orbit over the Atlantic Ocean, Early Bird was the first commercial communications satellite. It operated for three and a half years, and was the precursor to the dozens of spacecraft providing global communications today.

For more information, see this short history of communication satellites.

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First Pegasus Launch, Twenty Years Ago

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On April 5, 1990, the first live launch of a Pegasus rocket carried the PEGSAT experimental satellite into orbit.


(July 1991 picture of a Pegasus rocket being carried by NASA’s B-52. NASA image.)

PEGSAT was an interesting combination of an instrumentation package to monitor this first Pegasus launch; a small Navy communications relay satellite; and a science experiment involving the release of barium to observe “interactions of photoionized barium with magnetic and electric fields in the Earth’s magnetosphere and ionosphere.”

The Pegasus rocket was carried aloft from Edwards AFB and released by the same NASA B-52 that had conducted drop tests and launches of various experimental aircraft, including the X-15. Later, Orbital Sciences Corporation commissioned its own L-1011 carrier aircraft, which they kept at Vandenberg AFB.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I was on the Flight Readiness Review Committee for this launch, so this space anniversary is special to me. And somewhere I have a picture of me in front of Orbital Sciences’ L-1011/Pegasus combination….

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Last Mission to Mir

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Ten years ago today — April 4, 2000 — cosmonauts Sergei Zalyotin and Alexandr Kaleri launched aboard a Soyuz-U rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on mission Soyuz TM-30. It was the last Soyuz mission to the Russians’ Mir space station.


(View of Mir from Shuttle Atlantis during mission STS-86. NASA image. Click to enlarge.)

In hopes that the newly-formed MirCorp space venture would be able to run the station, Zalyotin and Kaleri were sent to repair it. The effort involved not only their Soyuz mission but also two Progress resupply missions with fuel and consumables. They were successful with some of their repair actions, as discussed on this page, and returned to earth on June 16th, but the Mir station was never inhabited again.

Mir re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere on March 23, 2001.

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Nukes in Space! (Well, One Little Nuclear Reactor…)

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Forty-five years ago today — April 3, 1965 — an Atlas Agena-D rocket launched from Vandenberg AFB carrying SNAP-10A, the first nuclear reactor to be launched into space.*


(SNAP-10A reactor undergoing testing. US Department of Energy photo.)

Part of the System for Nuclear Auxiliary Power (SNAP) program, the reactor tested nuclear power generation in the space environment.

The SNAP reactor was designed to be remotely started and operated in space. In this manner, any hazardous radiation associated with the nuclear fission reaction is not produced until after the reactor safely reaches orbit. The hazards to ground personnel are minimized and since radioactive fission products are not present before the reactor is operated, less of a hazard exists during launch if an accidental reentry should occur….

Twelve hours after launch, the nuclear reactor was automatically brought up to operating temperature and initially produced more than 600 watts of electrical power. Following 43 days of successful operation, the reactor was shut down as the result of a high voltage failure in the electrical system of the Agena spacecraft. All flight test objectives were met with the exception of the expected length of operation. The reactor remains in polar orbit today.

Also on this date, 15 years ago, a Pegasus rocket launched from its L-1011 carrier aircraft out of Vandenberg, carrying three small satellites. It launched the lightning mapping satellite MICROLAB-1, along with two ORBCOMM transponders. (To anyone else, that launch is probably not significant, but every Pegasus launch resonates with me because I played a very small role in that program when I was stationed at Edwards AFB.)

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*Several sources agree that this launch did indeed carry the SNAP-10A reactor; in contrast, the National Space Science Data Center page for this launch states that it carried a SNAP-9A radioisotope thermal generator (the same type to power the Transit series of navigational satellites). Normally the NSSDC pages are quite authoritative, but in this case I believe it has a typo. (As of today, anyway.)

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First Weather Satellite (No Foolin')

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Fifty years ago today — April 1, 1960 — TIROS-1 (Television and InfraRed Observation Satellite 1) was launched on a Thor rocket from Cape Canaveral.


(First television image sent back by TIROS-1. NASA image.)

TIROS-1 was the first weather satellite, and transmitted the first television images of the Earth from space. It only operated until the middle of June 1960, but during that time it sent back thousands of images and proved the feasibility of global weather observation from space.

In related non-news, TIROS-1 was mentioned by President Kennedy in his “we choose to go to the moon” speech at Rice University in September 1962. And many years later, yours truly wrote TIROS-1 into a much less important speech for one of his bosses in the Pentagon.

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Farewell to the First U.S. Satellite

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Forty years ago today — March 31, 1970 — Explorer-1 burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere. The first successful U.S. satellite, it had been launched on January 31, 1958.

Explorer-1’s primary scientific instrument, a cosmic ray detector, returned lower than expected results, which led Dr. James Van Allen to postulate that

the instrument may have been saturated by very strong radiation from a belt of charged particles trapped in space by Earth’s magnetic field. The existence of these radiation belts was confirmed by another U.S. satellite launched two months later, and they became known as the Van Allen Belts in honor of their discoverer.

During its lifetime, Explorer-1 orbited the Earth over 58,000 times and traveled 1.66 billion miles (2.67 billion kilometers).

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Another Honorable Mention

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I see on their blog that the story I sent in last December received an Honorable Mention in the Writers of the Future contest. This is my 3rd or 4th HM, which used to be known as “quarter finalist.”

Skimming the rest of the list, I recognized a couple of other names: Rick Novy and Brian Dolton, two of my friends from the Codex Writers’ Group. Rick had a short story in the issue of Tales of the Talisman that ran a “flash fiction” piece I wrote; he also has about a dozen Honorable Mentions from WotF. (I also see something called a “Silver Honorable Mention,” but I have no idea what that is.)

Now, to try to sell the story to a magazine. And maybe the new story I mailed to WotF last Friday — more science fiction than fantasy, this time — will do better.

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