Six-in-One for the Space Test Program

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Five years ago today — March 9, 2007 — an Atlas V rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, carrying a half-dozen small satellites for the military’s Space Test Program.


(Space Test Program Atlas V launch. United Launch Alliance image, linked from http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2007/q1/070309a_pr.html.)

The six satellites launched were

  • FalconSat 3, a 54 kg picosatellite built by USAF Academy cadets to “monitor ambient plasma” and test a “micropropulsion attitude control system”
  • STPSat 1, a 158 kg microsatellite to “collect atmospheric data and demonstrate spacecraft technology advances”
  • OE-NEXTSAT, a 226 kg minisatellite built “to test capabilities for autonomous rendezvous, refueling and component replacement”
  • OE-ASTRO, a 952 kg satellite built, like OE-NEXTSAT, to “test capabilities for autonomous rendezvous, refueling, and component replacement”
  • MidSTAR 1, a 118 kg microsatellite to test electrochemical membranes for NASA and a microdosimeter for the National Space Biomedical Research Institute
  • CFESat, a 156 kg microsatellite built by Los Alamos National Laboratory to test advanced technology including an on-board supercomputer

The Space Test Program is part of the Air Force’s Space Development and Test Directorate.

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Time to Nominate for the Hugo Awards

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The deadline to nominate is this Sunday.

My novelette, “Therapeutic Mathematics and the Physics of Curve Balls,” is eligible, and I will happily send a copy to anyone who wants to consider it — it was in the September 2011 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact. A lot of fine novelettes were published last year, so I don’t know how much attention my little story is likely to get.

Note that the official Hugo Awards site says, “We recommend not waiting until the last minute to cast your ballot.” So if you’re a WorldCon member and haven’t sent in your nominations, be sure to do so!

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A Half Century of Solar Science

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Fifty years ago today — March 7, 1962 — the first Orbiting Solar Observatory launched from Cape Canaveral on a Thor Delta rocket.


(Orbiting Solar Observatory 1. NASA image.)

OSO-1

was the first satellite to have pointed instruments and onboard tape recorders for data storage. The OSO 1 platform consisted of a sail section, which pointed two experiments continuously toward the sun, supplying power to the experiments from the solar batteries and rechargeable chemical batteries; and a wheel section, which spun about an axis perpendicular to the pointing direction of the sail and carried seven experiments.

More information on OSO-1 is available from NASA’s High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC).

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Valentina Tereshkova

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Seventy-five years ago today — March 6, 1937 — the first woman to venture into space was born in the Soviet Union.


(Valentina Tereshkova. Image from http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/whos_who_level2/tereshkova.html.)

Valentina Nikolayevna Tereshkova was born in Maslennikovo in the Yaroslavl Region of Russia. In her 20s, she was working in a textile factory and became an amateur parachutist; her experience in parachute jumping was a key factor in her selection for the program to put a woman in space.

On June 16, 1963, Cosmonaut Tereshkova rode into space atop a Vostok-6 rocket out of Baikonur Cosmodrome. She spent nearly 3 days in space, and orbited the Earth 48 times in her 70.8 hour flight.

Upon completion of her mission, Tereshkova was honored with the title Hero of the Soviet Union. She went on to earn a doctorate in engineering and became very active in Soviet politics.

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New Songs at StellarCon

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What a difference a year makes!

At the time of StellarCon last year, I had written a grand total of one filk song, which I sang (a year ago today, in fact) at the DeepSouthCon 50 party: “The Monster Hunter Ballad.”

Fast forward to this past weekend at StellarCon 36, and my filk repertoire had grown to the point that I debuted two songs on Friday night: the Firefly tribute song “Finding Serenity,” and “Don’t Cry When You Get Rejected” (to the tune of “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina”).

But that wasn’t enough. Saturday afternoon I finished a Hobbit song I’d been working on, so that night I debuted “Thorin Oakenshield” (to the tune of “Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer”). And even that wasn’t enough: I had started writing another new song at the con on Friday, and by Saturday night I had a couple of verses and a chorus for “Steampunk Pirates.” So the filk circle on Saturday also heard me sing my work-in-progress.

What is this craziness?

Whatever it is, it’s fun.

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Pioneer-10, First Spacecraft to Jupiter

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Forty years ago today — March 2, 1972 — Pioneer-10 launched from Cape Canaveral atop an Atlas Centaur rocket, on its historic journey to the Solar System’s largest planet.


(The Pioneer Plaque designed by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake. NASA image.)

Pioneer-10 was the first mission to fly beyond the orbit of Mars and the Asteroid Belt, and the first to explore Jupiter. Pioneer-10 passed within 81,000 miles (200,000 km) of Jupiter on December 3, 1973.

Fifteen experiments were carried to study the interplanetary and planetary magnetic fields; solar wind parameters; cosmic rays; transition region of the heliosphere; neutral hydrogen abundance; distribution, size, mass, flux, and velocity of dust particles; Jovian aurorae; Jovian radio waves; atmosphere of Jupiter and some of its satellites, particularly Io; and to photograph Jupiter and its satellites. Instruments carried for these experiments were magnetometer, plasma analyzer, charged particle detector, ionizing detector, non-imaging telescopes with overlapping fields of view to detect sunlight reflected from passing meteoroids, sealed pressurized cells of argon and nitrogen gas for measuring the penetration of meteoroids, UV photometer, IR radiometer, and an imaging photopolarimeter, which produced photographs and measured polarization.

In 1983, Pioneer-10 left our Solar System traveling in the general direction of Aldebaran, 68 light years away. It will take Pioneer-10 over two million years to reach Aldebaran. Should an alien civilization find Pioneer-10 during its voyage, they will also find a pictorial greeting in the form of a plaque on the side of the spacecraft.

On the plaque a man and woman stand before an outline of the spacecraft. The man’s hand is raised in a gesture of good will. The physical makeup of the man and woman were determined from results of a computerized analysis of the average person in our civilization.

The key to translating the plaque lies in understanding the breakdown of the most common element in the universe – hydrogen. This element is illustrated in the left-hand corner of the plaque in schematic form showing the hyperfine transition of neutral atomic hydrogen. Anyone from a scientifically educated civilization having enough knowledge of hydrogen would be able to translate the message. The plaque was designed by Dr. Carl Sagan and Dr. Frank Drake and drawn by Linda Salzman Sagan.

More information about Pioneer:

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Space History Today: Fourth Hubble Servicing Mission

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Ten years ago today — March 1, 2002 — the Space Shuttle Columbia launched from the Kennedy Space Center on the fourth servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.


(The Hubble Space Telescope in the shuttle cargo bay for repairs and upgrades, with a background of sunrise “airglow” on Earth’s horizon. NASA image.)

Astronauts Scott D. Altman, Duane G. Carey, John M. Grunsfeld, Nancy J. Currie, James H. Newman, Richard M. Linnehan, and Michael J. Massimino made up the crew of STS-109, and accomplished five spacewalks on this important mission.

The crew

  • removed and replaced the telescope’s two solar arrays with new, higher-efficiency arrays
  • installed a new Reaction Wheel Assembly
  • replaced the Power Control Unit
  • replaced Hubble’s Faint Object Camera with the Advanced Camera for Surveys
  • installed the Electronic Support Module and a cryocooler and Cooling System Radiator for an experimental cooling system for the Near-Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer

All of us who have enjoyed Hubble’s images and discoveries through the years can appreciate the effort to maintain and improve it over its operational life. Well done!

___

For a little bonus space history, on the same day that Columbia launched, the European Space Agency launched ENVISAT-1 on an Ariane-5 rocket out of Kourou. At 8.1 tonnes (nearly 18,000 lb), ENVISAT-1 was “reported to be the most massive and expensive of the European satellites.” It carried ten instruments for remote sensing of terrestrial environmental conditions such as global warming and desertification.

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My Story in Asimov’s and My StellarCon Schedule

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My near future military science fiction short story “Sensitive, Compartmented” is in the April/May double issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine. Subscribers have been sent their copies (at least, I got my subscription copy), so it should show up on newsstands and the web site soon.


(Look for this cover to get my latest short story.)

Also, this weekend I’ll be a guest at StellarCon in High Point, NC. StellarCon is sponsored by the Science Fiction Fantasy Federation of UNC-Greensboro, and this year’s Guest of Honor is bestselling author Patrick Rothfuss.

Here’s what I’ll be doing at the Con:

Friday

  • 5 p.m. – “Hard Science Fiction” panel
  • 8 p.m. – Panel on “Short Stories and Publication”
  • 9 p.m. – Filk

Saturday

  • Noon – “Character Building” panel
  • 4 p.m. – Baen Books Traveling Road Show
  • 8:30 p.m. – Reading
  • 9 p.m. – More Filk (though I likely will have run out of songs)

I’m not sure yet what I’m going to read at my reading. Nor am I sure what I’m going to sing at my reading. I should probably figure that out.

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MystiCon Report

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Last weekend I returned to MystiCon in Roanoke, Virginia, and had a splendid — and at one point scary — time.

The splendid part was spending concentrated time with several of my writing friends. I had a couple of long conversations with Genre Princess Alethea Kontis, in which we commiserated about not being able to set aside sufficient time to do our own writing. (Everyone should make note of the fact that Lee’s book, Enchanted, is coming out in just a couple of months!)

I also had pleasant conversations with many other fine folks, including Gail Z. Martin, whose outlook on the current state of publishing was quite refreshing; Allen Wold, who graciously allowed me to serve again as a panelist in his writing workshop; David Halperin, whose insights during the “UFO Investigations” panel meant that I didn’t have to say much; and Danny Birt, who was kind enough to include me in a supper outing.

The scary part was finding out on Sunday morning that I’d slept through the hotel fire alarm the previous night. Not good! Had it been an actual fire, I might not be typing this blog post … and what a loss that would be. Ha!

All in all, a good time — and now, on to StellarCon!

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My MystiCon Schedule

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This weekend I’ll be in Roanoke, Virginia, for MystiCon.

I’m not an official guest, but I’ll still take part in a couple of panels:

  • This Is The End ‐ How and When to End A Series (Friday, 3 p.m.)
  • UFO Investigations (Saturday, 1 p.m.)

I’ll see if I can worm my way into anything else interesting. Safe travels!

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