Nimbus-1 Weather Satellite: From Launch to STAR TREK

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Forty-five years ago today — August 28, 1964 — the Nimbus-1 satellite, “the first in a series of second-generation meteorological research-and-development satellites,” launched from Vandenberg AFB on a Thor-Agena rocket.


(Nimbus Satellite Diagram, from www.ucsb.edu)

According to the National Space Science Data Center,

a short second-stage burn resulted in an unplanned eccentric orbit. Otherwise, the spacecraft and its experiments operated successfully until September 22, 1964. The solar paddles became locked in position, resulting in inadequate electrical power to continue operations.

Nevertheless, Nimbus-1 produced the first nighttime cloud-cover images from space and was followed by six more satellites in the Nimbus series.

So where does STAR TREK come in? According to Memory Alpha, a diagram of Nimbus-1 in its polar orbit was part of the data accessed by the Talosians when they scanned the Enterprise‘s data banks in the original pilot episode “The Cage.”

Science fact meets science fiction … I like it.

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Space History: Voyager-2 at Neptune

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Twenty years ago today — August 25, 1989 — the Voyager-2 spacecraft made its closest approach to the planet Neptune. It was the first man-made craft to visit the distant planet.

Passing about 4,950 kilometers (3,000 miles) above Neptune’s north pole, Voyager 2 made its closest approach to any planet since leaving Earth 12 years ago. Five hours later, Voyager 2 passed about 40,000 kilometers (25,000 miles) from Neptune’s largest moon, Triton, the last solid body the spacecraft will have an opportunity to study.

You can read more about Voyager’s encounter with Neptune on this NASA page.

[BREAK, BREAK]

Speaking of space history, I recently added a new history section to the North Carolina Aerospace Initiative web site. It’s part of our “aerospace education” function, and as we add to it I hope teachers and other folks will find interesting tidbits on it. Here’s the link to the first installment: August aerospace history.

Hope you enjoy it!

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My Guest Spot on the Magical Words Blog

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Yesterday I had the honor of being the guest blogger at the “Magical Words” blog. My entry was called, “Some Writers Make My Job Easy, And I Hate Them For It.”

“Hate” is really too strong a word for my feeling; yes, it’s in the title, but it’s hyperbole. If you make my job too easy, I won’t actually hate you; in fact, I probably won’t invest much emotional energy in even disliking you. In truth, we might get along as people, outside the strictly business relationship — offer to buy me a drink at Dragon*Con in a couple of weeks and I won’t turn up my nose at you — but if you make my job too easy then I’m likely to dismiss you as a writer.

I’m very grateful to Misty Massey, Faith Hunter, and David B. Coe for letting me join them on their blog. Hope you enjoy it!

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Dual-Use Space Technology in Space History

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Forty-five years ago today — August 19, 1964 — a Thor Delta rocket launched the Syncom-3 satellite out of Cape Canaveral.


(Syncom-3 satellite. Image from NASA’s Space Science Data Center.)

The rocket was the first Delta to use strap-on solid rocket motors, and the spacecraft was the first geostationary satellite. Its predecessor, Syncom-2, had been the first geosynchronous satellite, the difference being that Syncom-2’s orbit was inclined slightly with respect to the equator while Syncom-3’s orbit was more precisely equatorial. The satellite, orbiting over the Pacific, relayed live television coverage of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

The Space Science Data Center also notes that

Operations were turned over to the Department of Defense on 1 January 1965, [sic] Syncom 3 was to prove useful in the DoD’s Vietnam communications.

I find this immensely interesting, since from 2001-04 I worked in the Defense Technology Security Administration and enforced restrictions on the export of satellite and launch vehicle technology. Even back in 1964, when I was a “wee bairn,” it was clear that space technology could be dual-use: useful, that is, for civil and military purposes.

Our government seemed to forget that simple fact during the late 1980s and early 1990s, and allowed companies to export space technology a bit more freely; during that time, a few U.S. companies managed to help other countries solve technical problems that enabled them to improve their space technologies. My job at DTSA was to protect those technologies, which not only protected our military advantage but also — though the companies were loathe to admit it — protected the technological edge our U.S. corporations had built up over the years.

Now we seem to be in danger of turning the calendar back and allowing companies to be more laissez faire in exporting militarily critical technologies. The current Administration, under pressure from industry groups that would rather sell technology today even if it means giving up their technological advantage tomorrow, is considering taking satellites off of the U.S. Munitions List. (See this article from July, and this article from last Friday.)

Let me go on record as saying I think this is a bad idea. One, because we don’t need to be giving potential adversaries — or even friendly competitors — the same tools on which we may rely in a conflict. Two, because we don’t need to spare them the years of research and development it will take to catch up — which cost us billions of dollars and included many failures from which we learned valuable lessons — and thereby put them in better positions to compete with us in the future.

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Three Nations, One Space Mission: AMPTE

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Twenty-five years ago yesterday* — August 16, 1984 — a Delta rocket launched from Cape Canaveral carrying three different satellites known as the Active Magnetospheric Particle Tracer Explorers, or AMPTE. The three spacecraft were:

  • The U.S.-built Charge Composition Explorer
  • The Federal Republic of Germany’s Ion Release Module
  • And the mysteriously-named United Kingdom Satellite

One interesting feature of the mission were “active ion releases” by the German spacecraft:

two releases of clouds of lithium ions in the solar wind in front of the magnetosphere (September 11 and 20, 1984), barium “artificial comet” releases in the dawn and dusk magnetosheaths (December 27, 1984 and July 18, 1985), and two each releases of lithium and barium ions in the near magnetotail (March 21; April 11, 23; May 13, 1985)

to study the interactions between the cool injected material and the “hot, magnetized, rapidly flowing natural plasmas of the magnetosphere and solar wind.”

For more on the U.S. part of the mission, visit the AMPTE/CCE Science Data Center.

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*Yes, I realize I’m late with this space history item. Sundays are busy days for me, and yesterday was busier than usual, so I didn’t get it done. If you’re curious about why Sundays are so busy for me, I refer you to this blog entry (and especially the associated free download).

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Ignore the Tour Guides, If You Can (Free Download)

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Have you ever gone to a museum and been annoyed by overzealous or talkative tour guides who kept you from enjoying the experience?

Have you ever gone to a worship service and been annoyed by singers or musicians who kept you from enjoying the experience?

I’ve uploaded a brief essay I wrote about worship leaders as “tour guides,” and the need for us to be as unobtrusive as possible so that we call attention to God and not ourselves. You can download the essay as a PDF file here.

Too many of us come together to “praise the LORD” not because the LORD is great and “worthy to be praised” (Samuel 22:4, Psalm 18:3), but because we need to feel good — to get that emotional high in order to make it through the coming week. We do not bring the “sacrifice” of praise, because the very word “sacrifice” reminds us that we have to give up something — and what we have to give up is our pride, our illusions, our very selves. And so, too often, those of us who are trying to lead and guide the worship experience call undue attention to ourselves.

Please ignore us, if you can.

If you like it, if you disagree with it, if you share it with your pastor or worship leader, or even if you wonder why I was so uptight that I needed to write an essay, I’d appreciate any and all comments.

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Orbiting Solar Observatory and Conflicting Internet Sources

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Forty years ago today — August 9, 1969 — an LTTAT-Delta rocket launched from Cape Canaveral carrying the sixth Orbiting Solar Observatory (OSO-6). According to the National Space Science Data Center, “OSO 6 was the sixth in a series of satellites designed to conduct solar physics experiments above the earth’s atmosphere during a complete solar cycle.” The spacecraft operated successfully until the end of 1972.

One curious thing: the first source on which I found the OSO-6 anniversary said it launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base. Just goes to show, you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet.

Oh, and LTTAT-Delta refers to a “long-tank thrust augmented Thor-Delta,” which started launching in 1968 and made many successful launches according to NASA.* In case you were wondering.

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*Yes, some other Internet sources contradict this. So pick the source in which you have the most trust.

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Around the World by Zeppelin — and by Shuttle

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Eighty years ago in aviation history — August 8, 1929 — the German airship Graf Zeppelin began its historic and highly publicized flight around the world.

(Photo of Graf Zeppelin in Los Angeles during the around-the-world flight. Click to enlarge. Image from www.airships.net.)

U.S. newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst paid half the cost of the flight in exchange for exclusive media rights. The first leg of the voyage took the airship from Germany to Lakehurst, New Jersey, where the official around-the-world flight would begin. That flight ended back in Lakehurst on August 29, the first passenger-carrying flight around the world, in 12 days and 11 minutes of actual flying time. For more on the Graf Zeppelin, see this airship site.

How far flight technology progressed in six decades, that 20 years ago on the same day — August 8, 1989 — the Space Shuttle Columbia would launch from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-28.


(STS-28 mission patch. Click to enlarge. NASA image.)

While the Graf Zeppelin had traveled a little over 21,000 miles around the world, Astronauts Brewster H. Shaw, Richard N. Richards, James C. Adamson, David C. Leestma, and Mark N. Brown traveled about 2.1 million miles in orbit around the planet. They accomplished a classified Department of Defense mission and landed at Edwards Air Force Base five days later. (I can’t remember if I saw that landing or not — it was early morning Pacific time — but I know it wasn’t one that I supported as part of the AF Flight Test Center shuttle team. But even if I didn’t see it, I’m sure I heard the double sonic boom.)

Also on this date in 1989, the European Space Agency launched the Hipparcos satellite on an Ariane rocket out of Kourou, French Guiana. Hipparcos was an “astrometry” mission, i.e., to measure the heavens. It “pinpointed the positions of more than one hundred thousand stars with high precision, and more than one million stars with lesser precision,” according to this ESA web page.

All this makes me want to go on an around-the-world journey. But where should I go?

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Space Imaging — From Explorer to Kepler

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Fifty years ago in space history — August 7, 1959 — the Explorer-6 satellite launched from Cape Canaveral on a Thor Able rocket.

(Explorer-6 satellite. Click to enlarge. NASA image.)

Explorer-6 was small and spheroidal, with four solar array “paddles,” and was launched to study space radiation, cosmic rays, and other phenomena. It also carried “a scanning device designed for photographing the earth’s cloud cover,” according to this NASA page, and sent back the first crude television images of earth from space.

And 40 years ago today — on August 7, 1969 — the Soviet Union launched the Zond-7 circumlunar spacecraft from Baikonur on a Proton-K* rocket. Zond-7 performed a lunar flyby on August 11 and returned to earth on August 14, carrying color photographs it had taken of the Earth and the Moon.

We’ve come a long way in terms of imaging technology, with the new Kepler space observatory having “captured the light of a gas giant orbiting a star over a thousand light years away.” From the Spaceflight Now story, “Kepler [was] able to detect the light of the gas giant, determine its phases and know when it had vanished from view behind its sun.” Here’s an animation showing the light curve Kepler detected and its interpretation.

Amazing.

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*It amazes me that the Proton rocket is still operating out of the Baikonur Cosmodrome, and I’m thankful that I got to see those operations.

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Trees or Forests? Metaphors for the Political Left and Right

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Some recent blog posts and the opening of a new (local) political season brought my thoughts back to the speechifying and responding we enjoyed* during the last Presidential campaign. It occurred to me that some of our country’s left-right dichotomy has to do with which side can’t see the forest for the trees, and which one sees the forest but not the trees.

It all depends on perspective … and, to a degree, on what issue is being discussed.

Take the economy, for instance. Those on the left seem unable to see the forest as they focus on single trees in the form of individuals hurt by the recession. Those on the right seem unable to see the individual trees because they are looking at the entire economic forest and the larger forces affecting it (and affected by it). The former would say a forest can’t be healthy if the individual trees are damaged or diseased; the latter would say it makes no sense to focus on individual trees if by doing so you neglect or even hurt the rest of the forest.

We can also see that difference in perspective with respect to healthcare. Those on the left see the trees — individuals and families without health insurance and saddled with staggering bills — and seem willing to sacrifice much of the forest of insured and mostly satisfied healthcare consumers in order to attend to those individual needs. Those on the right see the forest — a vast but untamed landscape of providers, customers, and insurers — and seem willing to let a few trees wither rather than take drastic action that may end up tantamount to clear-cutting.

What about other issues? What about your own perspective? Do you see the forest, or the trees?

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*Or, if you prefer, “endured.”

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This message has been brought to you by the Anti-Campaign. “I’m the Anti-Candidate, and I approved this message.”

Image Credit: Jonathan Gill, from Flickr, under Creative Commons

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