Thirty-five years ago today — September 3, 1976 — Viking-2 landed on Mars.
(Viking-2’s first color image of Utopia Planitia. NASA image.)
Viking-2 landed “about 200 km west of the crater Mie in Utopia Planitia,” which, for those familiar with the Star Trek universe, is where the Federation shipyards are — the birthplace of the U.S.S. Enterprise.
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Twenty years ago today — August 30, 1991 — the Yohkoh solar astronomy satellite launched from Kagoshima Space Center, Japan.
(Artist’s conception of the Yohkoh spacecraft. NASA image.)
Yohkoh was originally named “Solar-A,” and was a joint venture between Japan, Great Britain, and the US. “Yohkoh” means “sunlight” in English.
The Yohkoh mission lasted a decade, until an anomaly ended the satellite’s life. According to this Marshall Space Flight Center page,
Yohkoh suffered a spacecraft failure in December 2001 that has put an end to this mission. During the solar eclipse of December 14th the spacecraft lost pointing and the batteries discharged. The spacecraft operators were unable to command the satellite to point toward the sun.
If you have a child interested in such things — or if you yourself have a childlike interest in such things — you can build your own model Yohkoh satellite, using actual satellite blueprints.
And in other space history, on this date 50 years ago the U.S. launched Discoverer-29 on a Thor rocket out of Vandenberg AFB. According to this Wikipedia page, Discoverer-29 was the first of the KH-3 series of reconnaissance satellites launched by the NRO in the Corona program.
by I’m not an official guest of Dragon*Con 2011 — maybe someday I will be — but it turns out I will be participating in a few events:
In between, I will go to a few readings and panels featuring my writing friends, and probably attend some of the filk track; I enjoyed playing in the filk circle at ConCarolinas, and if I’m toting my guitar around on Friday afternoon I may as well show up to see what’s what. Whether I work the door or tend bar at the Baen party remains to be seen. And, of course, I have every intention of working on a short story while I’m there.
Looking forward to it!
by Forty-five years ago today — August 25, 1966 — NASA launched another suborbital Apollo-Saturn vehicle to test Command & Service Module systems in advance of manned Apollo launches.
(AS-202 launch. NASA image.)
AS-202‘s flight objectives were to verify the Saturn 1B launch vehicle’s integrity, loads, and performance, and to evaluate the separation system, emergency detection, and heatshield of the Apollo spacecraft.
Mission controllers fired the CSM’s engines multiple times to test their rapid restart capabilities, accelerating the capsule for reentry to test the heatshield. It performed very well: “Maximum temperature of the spacecraft exterior was calculated at about 1500 deg. C, temperature inside the cabin was 21 deg. C (70 F).”
Jump ahead five years in time …
On this date in 1971, NASA pilot William “Bill” Dana made the first supersonic flight in the M2-F3 lifting body.
(NASA lifting body pilots with M2-F3 in the background. NASA image.)
Last November, I blogged about Dana making the first flight in the M2-F3. I likely will continue posting occasional references to Dana’s flights, because he’s one of the most interesting people I ever met (during my first USAF assignment, we were both on the Flight Readiness Review Committee for the very first launch of the Pegasus system). If you want to know more about him, check out his Wikipedia page.
by Fifty years ago today — August 23, 1961 — Ranger-1 launched from Cape Canaveral on an Atlas-Agena rocket.
(Ranger-1 spacecraft. NASA image.)
Ranger-1 was designed as a pathfinder mission to test components for future lunar and planetary missions. It also carried scientific instruments such as telescopes, particle detectors, a magnetometer, etc., to “study the nature of particles and fields in interplanetary space.”
The Atlas rocket put Ranger-1 in a “parking orbit,” but the Agena upper stage did not restart. Ranger-1 separated from the Agena and ended up tumbling in a low Earth orbit, re-entering the atmosphere a week after it was launched. Thus the mission was counted a partial success: “much of the primary objective of flight testing the equipment was accomplished but little scientific data was returned.”
by Fifteen years ago today — August 21, 1996 — a Pegasus-XL rocket launched the “Fast Auroral SnapshoT explorer” to study how particles funneled through the Earth’s magnetosphere produce auroras.
(FAST satellite, after installation of its body-mounted solar panels. NASA image.)
FAST was placed in a polar orbit, the better to observe auroras, in an interesting configuration: the craft is spin-stabilized but its spin axis is perpendicular to its orbital track, so it would appear to roll or “cartwheel” through space. Its Pegasus launch vehicle originated out of Vandenberg AFB, and was carried to the Pacific drop zone by its L-1011 mothership.
In more recent news — tangentially space-related, since the Hugo Award features a stylized rocket ship — last night my friend Mary Robinette Kowal won the Hugo for Best Short Story: “For Want of a Nail”, which appeared in the September 2010 issue of Asimov’s. The complete list of Hugo winners is available here.
Several other writing friends — Rachel Swirsky, Aliette de Bodard, and Eric James Stone — were also nominated for Hugos, and two — Larry Correia and Saladin Ahmed — were nominated for the Campbell Award … which is pretty awesome even though they didn’t win.
But, as I posted to Larry on Facebook, even though he didn’t win I’m pretty sure he’s the only nominee with a song written about his book.
by Not sure this falls under the category of “space history” exactly, but it’s close: 140 years ago today — August 19, 1871 — Orville Wright was born in Dayton, Ohio.
(Montage of Orville Wright images, from NASA’s biography page.)
We don’t really need to go into detail here about who Orville Wright was, do we? The NASA bio linked above covers his life and achievements quite well.
In other, more recent news, tomorrow night’s Hugo Award ceremonies will be video-streamed and live-blogged for all to enjoy. North Carolina author and podcaster extraordinaire Mur Lafferty will be one of the live-bloggers on the @Renovationsf and @TheHugoAwards Twitter feeds: look for the hashtags #hugos, #hugoaward, and #hugoawards. The awards start at 8 p.m. Pacific time on Saturday night.
by Fifteen years ago today — August 17, 1996 — the Japanese launched the first of a series of environmental remote sensing satellites, and the Russians launched a mission to Mir that included the first female French astronaut.
(Artist’s conception of ADEOS spacecraft. JAXA image.)
ADEOS, which was later renamed “Midori,” was the ADvanced Earth Observation Satellite and was launched from Tanegashima Space Center on an H-2 rocket. The spacecraft operated until mid-1997, measuring winds, ocean surfaces temperature, atmospheric aerosols, ozone, and greenhouse gases. You can read more about the first ADEOS/Midori spacecraft on this JAXA page.
And Soyuz TM-24 launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome atop a Soyuz-U launch vehicle, bound for the Mir space station. Russian cosmonauts Valery G. Korzun and Alexander Y. Kaleri flew on this mission with Claudie Andre-Deshays, the first French woman in space.
by Others have penned more eloquent tributes than I, but I was saddened yesterday to learn that my writing friend Colin Harvey had died after suffering a stroke.
(Colin Harvey. Image from the Codex Writers web site.)
Colin consented to be interviewed by me this past March, and I found him to be a delightful fellow. I wish I’d been able to meet him in person.
Rest in peace, good sir.
by Hey, I was as shocked as anybody when I saw the headline, but according to Screen Rant, Brad Pitt has signed on to play The Gray Man.
It turns out, contrary to what you may have heard, thought, dreamed, or laughed at, The Gray Man is not about yours truly or even my Pawley’s Island-based alter ego, but is the title character of the 2009 bestselling thriller The Gray Man by Mark Greaney. I think if I’d ever seen that book I would’ve bought it just for the title — it’s a shame I haven’t heard about it before now.*
However, lest anyone think that I’m just trying to jump on the “Gray Man” bandwagon at the last minute,** here’s yours truly speaking at his 2006 USAF retirement ceremony:
(The Gray Man Speaks. The hard hat lettering was done by then-TSgt Steve Clay while we were stationed at Offutt AFB, 1998-2000. USAF photo.)
Even if it’s not about me,*** I wish them the best of luck.
But I think they should fill the cast and crew with people named “Gray,” and people who are related to me.
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*Especially since I’ve been trying to figure out a Gray Man-themed series of my own since Dragon*Con 2007.
**On the contrary, I’m on my own bandwagon which will happily follow along with theirs for a while.
***As I keep reminding myself, per the first line of Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life.
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