Space History Double Shot: a Lost Observer and a Space Station Transfer

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Twenty years ago today — September 25, 1992 — a Titan-III rocket out of Cape Canaveral launched the Mars Observer. The launch was uneventful and the spacecraft’s journey to Mars was nominal until three days before it was scheduled to enter orbit — August 21, 1993 — when controllers lost contact with the spacecraft.


(Mars Observer conceptual painting. NASA image.)

Mars Observer was primarily designed to study the Martian atmosphere, but it never got the chance, and unless we find the spacecraft someday and examine it we only have educated guesses:

It is not known whether the spacecraft was able to follow its automatic programming and go into Mars orbit or if it flew by Mars and is now in a heliocentric orbit. Later investigation concluded the most probable cause of the mishap was a fuel line rupture during fuel tank pressurization which would have caused the spacecraft to spin uncontrollably.

On a much more successful note, on this date 15 years ago — September 25, 1997 — the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center on a mission to the Mir space station.

STS-86 was the seventh Shuttle-Mir docking mission. Its crew consisted of U.S. astronauts James D. Wetherbee, Michael J. Bloomfield, Scott E. Parazynski, Wendy B. Lawrence, and David A. Wolf; French astronaut Jean-Loup J.M. Chrétien; and Russian cosmonaut Vladimir G. Titov. Wolf replaced Michael Foale aboard Mir, and Foale returned to Earth on Atlantis.

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The 'Space Warfare Forum' is in a Coma — Should I Resuscitate It, or Pull the Plug?

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Most people don’t know that the Space Warfare Forum exists. (Actually, most people don’t care, but even most of the ones who might care don’t know.) The fact is, the Space Warfare Forum has been inactive for 2 years — so, should I kill it?


(USAF image.)

My friends and I started the “Space Warfare Forum” about 15 years ago or so, if I recall correctly — we were stationed at Falcon Air Force Base, which is now Schriever AFB, in Colorado, and actually started the forum as a brown-bag lunch discussion group within the 4th Space Operations Squadron. The discussions continued after I transferred to Offutt AFB, Nebraska, in 1998, but we soon transitioned into an e-mail format that continued when I transferred again to Thule Air Base, Greenland, in 2000.

The e-mail discussions grew unwieldy, so I installed a bulletin board system on my web site which we used for a little while. The first version was susceptible to spam commenting, so I transitioned to the current vBulletin setup (direct linked here if you’re at all interested). We published an article — “Toward Space War” — based on some of the discussions, and at one time the forum had about 100 members, but after the spam debacle lots of folks dropped out.

Keeping the forum available is easy enough, but I’m not sure there’s any point. In the past I’ve made the platform available for other groups — my high school had its own section for alumni until the spam blowup happened, and Port Yonder Press used it for a short time for an online writing course — but those are as defunct as the space warfare section. At this point I’m pretty sure no one but me would miss it if it disappeared, and I’m not sure there’s much value in it from an archival standpoint.

I’m interested in everyone’s opinion on the question, but I’d especially like to hear from forum members (if any of them should read this): Should I terminate the Space Warfare Forum? And if not, what should I do with it?

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Another Eye in the Sky

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Five years ago today — September 18, 2007 — DigitalGlobe launched WorldView 1, a commercial remote sensing satellite, from Vandenberg AFB on a Delta II rocket.


(WorldView 1 image of President Obama’s inauguration. Image from DigitalGlobe site, for editorial use; available for purchase in their online store.)

WorldView 1 was built by Ball Aerospace for DigitalGlobe, and featured a “panchromatic” camera — sensitive to all colors in the visible spectrum — with half-meter resolution. Even though it’s a commercial imager, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency was among its primary customers.

Here’s a complete data sheet about the satellite.

DigitalGlobe launched the WorldView 2 companion spacecraft in December 2009.

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Note: I tried to find DigitalGlobe’s “Images for the Media” page (http://www.digitalglobe.com/press/images_media.shtml), to pull an image they had already tagged for editorial use, but that section of their web site appeared no longer to exist.

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Japanese Lunar Mission

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Five years ago today — September 14, 2007 — the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) launched the Kaguya lunar orbiter aboard an H-2A rocket from Tanegashima Island.


(The Moon, as seen by Kaguya’s high-gain antenna monitor camera. JAXA image from the National Space Science Data Center.)

Kaguya was originally named SELENE, for SELenological and ENgineering Explorer, but was renamed Kaguya after Kaguya-hime — i.e., Princess Kaguya — who came to Earth from the Moon in the 10th century Japanese folk tale “Taketori Monogatari” (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter).

Upon reaching lunar orbit on October 3, 2007, Kaguya deployed two smaller satellites, “Okina” and “Ouna,” named for the old couple in the folk tale who find and adopt Kaguya-hine.

The Kaguya mission completed a global survey of the Moon, looking at its composition, topography, gravity, and other conditions. The mission ended on June 10, 2009, with a pre-planned impact on the lunar surface that was timed to allow observers on Earth to see the flash of impact.

Very cool!

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Read the Opening of 'SEAGULLs, Jack-o-Lanterns, Interstitial Spaces'

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I try not to overdo the shameless plugs, but the opening of my story in the November issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact — “SEAGULLs, Jack-o-Lanterns, and Interstitial Spaces” — has been posted on the Analog web site.

The page also includes Vincent DiFate’s illustration:


(Illustration by Vincent DiFate. Analog SF&F image.)

You can read the opening of “SEAGULLs” by clicking through from this link.

You can also see the entire table of contents by clicking here. On that page you’ll also find these kind words of introduction from editor Stanley Schmidt,

We always have a bit of a dilemma about where to put seasonal material: in the issue named for the month in which a holiday or other event occurs, or the one that actually appears closest to that date? Our November issue contains at least one item that could be construed as Halloween related, from its title, “SEAGULLs, Jack-O-Lanterns, and Interstitial Spaces.” And that holiday does in fact play a role in it, though not, as author Gray Rinehart points out, as much as the title suggests. Set in a space station, it’s a quintessential Analog story in which an intriguing technical problem and the lives of the people who must deal with it are inextricably entwined—and I’ll bet you can’t guess what the SEAGULLs and jack-o-lanterns really are!

Of course, I hope you’ll buy a copy of the magazine … along with the October-November issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction, which includes my story “The Second Engineer.”

Thanks!

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Onward in the 'Greatest Adventure on which Man has ever Embarked'

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Twenty years ago today — September 12, 1992 — the Space Shuttle Endeavour lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center on a joint U.S.-Japanese scientific mission that featured several space firsts.


(STS-47 in-flight crew portrait, aboard Spacelab-J. NASA image.)

The STS-47 crew consisted of U.S. astronauts Robert L. “Hoot” Gibson, Curtis L. Brown, Jr., Mark C. Lee, Jerome “Jay” Apt, N. Jan Davis, and Mae C. Jemison, plus Japanese astronaut Mamoru Mohri. The “firsts” on this mission included:

  • Jemison was the first Black woman in space.
  • Mohri was the first Japanese astronaut to fly on a Space Shuttle.
  • Lee and Davis were the first married couple to fly a space mission together.

The crew conducted 44 different science experiments aboard the Spacelab-J laboratory, of which 35 were sponsored by the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA). Seven were NASA experiments, and the last two were NASA-NASDA collaborations.

Materials science investigations covered such fields as biotechnology, electronic materials, fluid dynamics and transport phenomena, glasses and ceramics, metals and alloys, and acceleration measurements. Life sciences included experiments on human health, cell separation and biology, developmental biology, animal and human physiology and behavior, space radiation, and biological rhythms. Test subjects included the crew, Japanese koi fish (carp), cultured animal and plant cells, chicken embryos, fruit flies, fungi and plant seeds, and frogs and frog eggs.

Now, just because it’s cool, a look at the “Southern Lights” that the crew took from orbit:


(Aurora Australis, as seen from orbit aboard STS-47. NASA image.)

It’s also cool that this launch happened on the 30th anniversary of President Kennedy’s famous speech at Rice University — 50 years ago now, on September 12, 1962 — in which he said,

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

President Kennedy closed his speech by saying,

Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, “Because it is there.”

Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.

I hope we never stop pressing on in that “greatest adventure.”

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Where Are the Muslims Who Disavow Violence and Terror?

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Last year, on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attack, I noted that I was supposed to be in the Pentagon that day, but was delayed.


(Heritage Print of the 119th Fighter Wing’s mission over the Pentagon on 9/11. North Dakota National Guard image.)

Today I will finally ask a question that has bothered me ever since we found out the attacks were carried out by Islamists: where are the peace-loving adherents of the “religion of peace” who publicly distance themselves from their own lunatic fringe?

I believe that most Christians have no problem rejecting the off-the-wall pronouncements of our own extremists who clothe their prejudice, hate, and pseudo-righteous indignation in obscure verses or who twist what the Scriptures say. I, for one, state categorically that none of them speak for me, my faith, or the God in whom I believe.*

Where, then, are the Muslims willing to do the same with respect to their faith’s extremists? What Muslims stand up against the Wahhabists or Salafists — two names for the same ultra-conservative faction from Saudi Arabia — and reject the hate-filled fatwas, or tell the sharia-loving imams and priests and mullahs that they’re full of it? I don’t know of any. Why is that?

One reason is probably fear. The Wahhabists and their ilk — who also call themselves Muwahhidun, i.e., “Unitarians” or “unifiers of Islamic practice” — are known to take their own twisted law into their own bloody hands. They scream and scheme for the blood of artists over books and cartoons, of women over failure to clothe themselves in deathlike shrouds, and of anyone who dares to proclaim that Mohammed is not their prophet.

As noted at www.globalsecurity.org, the “reformer” Abd Al-Wahhab’s

instructions in the matter of extending his religious teaching by force were strict. All unbelievers (i.e. Moslems who did not accept his teaching, as well as Christians, &c.) were to be put to death.

So, some Muslims who disagree with the Wahhabist interpretations of the Koran, etc., likely do not speak out because of fear — in much the same way that Catholics who disagreed with the Inquisition did not speak out because of fear. One key difference, of course, is that the Catholic Church at the time was the voice of authority in Western Christendom by virtue of its roots in historic Christianity; Wahhabism, in contrast, is a minority, upstart sect despite being favored by the Saud royal family.

I ask again, Where are the Muslims who repudiate the hard-line interpretations and reject the call to violent jihad?

Lest my own position be unclear, let me try again: I hereby reject and repudiate any bit of Christian writ that enjoins me or anyone else to kill an unbeliever or someone who believes in a different faith than I do. I further reject and repudiate any bit of Christian-derived writ — any commentary, any apocryphal work, any pronouncement from a church or lay official — that enjoins me to or anyone else to kill someone on the basis of their faith or their lack thereof.

My question for truly peace-loving Muslims is this: Do you reject and repudiate every passage in the Koran and the hadith that calls for the deaths of unbelievers and the spread of Islam by the sword? If so, I will count you as my friend. If not, then I must conclude that you count yourself as my enemy.

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*I even wrote a song that talks about it.

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Surveyor 5: Pathfinder for Apollo 11

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Forty-five years ago today — September 8, 1967 — an Atlas Centaur launch vehicle carried the Surveyor 5 lander out of Cape Canaveral on its way to the moon.


(Surveyor and Apollo landing sites. Note the close proximity of Surveyor 5 (S5) and Apollo 11. NOAA image.)

Surveyor 5 landed on the moon on September 11, 1967, but not until mission controllers overcame a hardware problem. After the midcourse correction

the spacecraft began losing helium pressure. It was concluded that the helium pressure valve had not reseated tightly and the helium was leaking into the propellant tanks, causing an overpressure which opened the relief valves, discharging the helium. A new emergency landing plan was adopted. Early vernier engine firings were made while there was still helium to slow the spacecraft, reduce its mass, and leave more free volume in the propellant tanks for the helium. The burn of the main retrorocket was delayed [to] an altitude of 1300 meters at a velocity of 30 m/s rather than the planned 10,700 meters at 120 to 150 m/s.

Surveyor 5 landed in the southwest area of Mare Tranquillitatis — the Sea of Tranquility. Two years later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would land Apollo 11 about 30 km away from Surveyor 5’s landing site.

The Surveyor 5 spacecraft operated on the lunar surface for 4 lunar days — shutting down during each 2-week-long lunar night — and sent its final transmission on December 17, 1967.

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From ‘Unsolved Mysteries,’ the Legend of the Gray Man

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A few weeks ago, award-winning author Jay Lake held an “open dinner” in Greensboro, where I made his acquaintance and that of his cousin, Sheri. After supper, my vanity license plate attracted some attention and led to me explaining who the Gray Man is and how I came to adopt the Grand Strand’s famous ghost as my alter ego.

Sheri, who lives in South Carolina, knew about the Gray Man and sent me a link to this segment from Unsolved Mysteries that delves into the legend of the ghost of Pawleys Island: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aU_UkpszL8.

If you have 10 minutes to watch, you’ll learn why the tag line of my web site (and my business cards) is, “If you heed the Gray Man’s warning, you make it safely through the storm.”

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UPDATE: Unfortunately, that video has been taken down because of a copyright claim. You can still find the segment with a little persistence, if you’re of a mind to.

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A Cosmic Voyager, and a Space Pioneer

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Today’s space history segment combines the recent past and the long past.

In the recent past, 35 years ago today — September 5, 1977 — the Voyager 1 space probe launched from Cape Canaveral aboard a Titan IIIE-Centaur rocket.


(Conceptual drawing of the region of space around our solar system, with the two Voyager spacecraft. NASA image.)

Like its sister ship, Voyager 2 (launched about 2 weeks prior), Voyager 1 was designed to study Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 1’s trajectory was such that it reached both planets before Voyager 2. After its Saturn encounter in 1980, Voyager 1 began making its way toward the edge of the solar system.

Voyager 1 is speeding away from the Sun at a velocity of about 3.50 AU/year toward a point in the sky of RA= 262 degrees, Dec=+12 degrees (35.55 degrees ecliptic latitude, 260.78 degrees ecliptic longitude). Late on 17 February 1998, Voyager 1 became the most distant man-made object from the Sun, surpassing the distance of Pioneer 10.

According to this June 14, 2012, NASA news release,

Data from NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft indicate that the venerable deep-space explorer has encountered a region in space where the intensity of charged particles from beyond our solar system has markedly increased. Voyager scientists looking at this rapid rise draw closer to an inevitable but historic conclusion – that humanity’s first emissary to interstellar space is on the edge of our solar system.

“The laws of physics say that someday Voyager will become the first human-made object to enter interstellar space, but we still do not know exactly when that someday will be,” said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “The latest data indicate that we are clearly in a new region where things are changing more quickly. It is very exciting. We are approaching the solar system’s frontier.”

Very cool.

In the long past, on September 5, 1857 — Old Style, that is; it would actually be September 17 on the New Style calendar — Konstantin E. Tsiolkovskiy was born in Russia. The greatest early theorist of space travel, in 1903 he published an article in Nauchnoye Obozreniye (Science Review) that he originally submitted in 1898. Entitled “Investigating Space With Rocket Devices,” the paper “presented years of calculations and laid out many of the principles of modern spaceflight.”

In the 1920s and 1930s, Tsiolkovskiy proved especially productive, publishing ten major works clarifying the nature of bodies in orbit, developing scientific principles behind reaction vehicles, designing orbital space stations, and promoting interplanetary travel. He also expanded the scope of studies on many principles commonly used in rockets today: specific impulse to gauge engine performance, multistage boosters, fuel mixtures such as liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, the problems and possibilities inherent in microgravity, the promise of solar power, and spacesuits for extravehicular activity. Significantly, he never had the resources—perhaps not even the inclination—to experiment with rockets himself.

Even though the coincidence of dates is pure artifice — the product of changes to the world’s calendars — it seems a fitting coincidence. After all, the Voyager mission itself was presaged by Tsiolkovskiy’s original work.

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