Fifty years ago today — September 12, 1959 — the Soviet Union launched the Luna-2 mission on a Vostok rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. As noted, Luna-2 was the first probe to hit the moon: it impacted east of the Sea of Serenity (Mare Serenitatis).
(Luna-2. Image from NASA’s Space Science Data Center.)
One interesting element: Luna-2 carried a flag with the USSR’s hammer-and-sickle and a “September 1959” banner, making it the first mission to plant a flag on the moon.
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Last year I posted about Patriot Day and the fact that I was supposed to be in the Pentagon.
To those still in the fight, and those who have lost loved ones in the fight — military or civilian, combatant or bystander — I salute you.
I don’t have anything to add, except: Let us never forget.
by Fifty years ago today — September 9, 1959 — the Mercury capsule test “Big Joe 1” launched from Cape Canaveral on an Atlas rocket. The booster operated nominally but its two outboard engines didn’t separate as planned, which left the payload 500 miles short of the predicted impact point; the overall test flight was still considered a success.
(Big Joe launch vehicle. Click to enlarge. USAF photo from the Johnson Space Center image collection.)
And fifteen years ago today, in 1994, Richard N. Richards, L. Blaine Hammond, Jr., Jerry M. Linenger, Susan J. Helms, Carl J. Meade, and Mark C. Lee launched from the Kennedy Space Center aboard Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-64.
(STS-64 mission patch, from NASA.)
The STS-64 mission was the first flight of the LIDAR (i.e., light detection and ranging, like radar but with lasers instead of radio) In-Space Technology Experiment, or “LITE.” Astronauts Lee and Meade accomplished the first untethered U.S. space walk in 10 years.
by Five years ago today — September 8, 2004 — NASA’s Genesis sample return capsule crash-landed in the Utah desert. The spacecraft was returning with samples collected from the solar wind, but its drogue parachute failed as it descended. It hit the ground traveling 311 km/hr.
(Genesis sample container crash site. Click to enlarge. USAF photo from NASA web page.)
The damaged container was taken into a clean room as soon as possible so NASA scientists could analyze the sample fragments. This page explains how some of the Genesis findings solved a mystery about the isotopic composition of lunar rocks brought back by the Apollo missions.
by Friday afternoon at Dragon*Con I went to “Princess Alethea’s Traveling Road Show,” in which my friends Alethea Kontis, Ada Milenkovich Brown, and James Maxey read some of their work. Before the show began, Alethea invited the audience to compose their own “Zombie Haiku” to share with everyone.
I had never written a haiku before, though I know the 5-7-5 syllable pattern. And I am not particularly a fan of the zombies, vampires, etc., that are all the rage these days. But, game for a challenge, I put one together. (I wrote it on the back of one of my business cards.)
My Zombie Haiku:
Delicious brains,
Still warm, though a little dry.
Need more blood. And salt.
For what it’s worth . . . .
by Last week controllers lost contact with the Indian lunar probe Chandrayaan-1, which was about to embark on a new series of observations in conjunction with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Now those radar observations won’t happen, as explained in this New Scientist article.
That sets back the search for ice in lunar craters, which will be vital to future lunar outposts. But this passage especially caught my eye:
Chandrayaan-1 flew over “a lot of little craters that looked like they had ice” and mapped 95 per cent of the polar regions before its mission ended,
according to Stewart Nozette of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. That sounds encouraging.
And provided that LCROSS — the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite — doesn’t experience another in-flight emergency, we should get a closer look at the contents of one crater in just a few weeks.
But no matter what any of these probes reveal: in the world of my novel, WALKING ON THE SEA OF CLOUDS, the colonists retrieve ice from the permanently shaded floor of Faustini Crater.
by To me, “The Next Dimension” is a VIB — Very Important Blog.
To you, maybe, the adventures of a U.S. student studying abroad in Japan may not be so important, but to me it’s a great source of excitement and pride. Then again, I’m always excited about and proud of my children’s accomplishments — what parent isn’t?
by Thirty years ago today — September 1, 1979 — Pioneer 11 became the first spacecraft to fly by Saturn. It flew past Saturn’s rings, passing 13,000 miles above the planet’s cloud tops.
(Pioneer-11 image of Saturn during its approach to the planet on August 26, 1979, from a distance of 1,768,422 miles. Saturn’s moon Titan is visible in the upper left. NASA image.)
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Dragon*Con is coming!
For those of you who may be interested, Anthology Builder is sponsoring a scavenger hunt at the con. Nancy Fulda, the founder and high potentate of Anthology Builder — where, as the name implies, you can build your own anthology of (mostly science fiction and fantasy) short stories — produced a series of badges which con-goers can collect and display to win a free anthology. Details of the scavenger hunt are on this page, and here’s the badge for yours truly — not sure why the first version stopped working —
(Click to enlarge.)
— made to come as close as possible to the grandmother who is the lead character in “The Rocket Seamstress,” my story on the site.
So if you’re going to Dragon*Con, look for the badges … and if you’re not, pop on over and see all the stories that are available on Anthology Builder.
by Twenty-five years ago today — August 30, 1984 — the Space Shuttle Discovery launched from Kennedy Space Center on its maiden voyage.
(STS-41D launch. NASA image.)
Astronauts Henry W. Hartsfield, Jr., Michael L. Coats, Judith A. Resnik, Steven A. Hawley, Richard M. Mullane, and Charles D. Walker made up the crew of STS-41D, which was the first mission on which three separate satellites were deployed (SBS-D, Syncom IV-2, and Telstar 3-C).
(STS-41D mission patch. NASA image.)
The mission also carried an experimental solar wing with different types of solar cells that deployed to its full size (102 feet x 13 feet) several times to demonstrate large lightweight solar arrays — not unlike those currently on the International Space Station.
by After four months of trying to find literary representation, my scorecard looks like this:
Of the 18 agents who still have my query, I expect I will never hear from many of them: some are very clear in their guidelines that they only contact people whose work they want to see. So that “rejection” number is low, but I have no way to know how low.
I never knew there were so many agents, and of course I’m only contacting those who represent science fiction and fantasy — a very small subset of the whole literary field. I still have a long list of agents I haven’t queried yet, but I admit that I’m starting to get discouraged. But I keep hoping that one day an agent will like my near-future science fiction story of survival and sacrifice on the moon, even though science fiction is lagging behind fantasy these days, and like it enough to take into those publishers who don’t accept unagented manuscripts.
And until then … we keep knocking on the metaphorical door.
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