Author Archives: Gray Rinehart

The STARSHINE Demonstrator — Today's Space History Note

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Ten years ago today — June 5, 1999 — the STARSHINE passive reflector was released from Space Shuttle Discovery during mission STS-96 by Canadian astronaut Julie Payette. STARSHINE — a.k.a. Student Tracked Atmospheric Research Satellite Heuristic International Networking Experiment* — was sponsored by the Naval Research Laboratory and consisted of a hollow, 48-cm (19-inch) diameter sphere, covered with 878 mirrors.


(Starshine-1 at the Naval Research Laboratory. NRL photo by Michael A. Savell, from the Starshine project web site.)

Students from 660 schools in 18 countries, including some nations we don’t associate with spacefaring such as Zimbabwe and Pakistan, had polished the mirrors. An estimated 25,000 high school students around the world tracked the reflector during the demonstration and reported their observations via the Internet.

Pretty nifty, I think.

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*According to this NASA page.

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Space History: a Polar Explorer

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(Explorer-52, or “Hawkeye-1”. Public domain image from Wikimedia.)

Thirty-five years ago today — June 3, 1974 — Explorer-52 launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, aboard a Scout rocket. Built by the University of Iowa, the satellite was also known as Hawkeye-1.

According to NASA’s National Space Science Data Center Master Catalog,

The primary mission objective was to conduct particles and fields investigations of the polar magnetosphere of the earth out to 21 earth radii. Secondary objectives were to make magnetic field and plasma distribution measurements in the solar wind, and to study Type-3 radio emissions caused by solar electron streams in the interplanetary medium.

And now you know.

Since the satellite was launched into a polar orbit, I have to believe the Thule Tracking Station — callsign POGO, which I commanded for one year of my Air Force career — downlinked at least some of the data from it. That was many years later than this launch, of course, so it’s not much of a connection … but I’ll take what I can get.

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Late Update

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The fifth week of the agent hunt is history, and even though the tally looks worse —

  • 34 queries submitted (no change)
  • 12 rejections (3 more)

— we can actually report a little bit of progress. One of those rejections was from an agent to whom we had sent a partial manuscript and synopsis — in other words, someone who had expressed some interest 🙁 — but this week we had another agent ask for a partial :D. Now, to get it printed and mailed ….

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Today in Space History: Soviet Lunar Orbiter

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Thirty-five years ago today — May 29, 1974 — the Russians (i.e., at that time the Soviets) launched the Luna-22 orbiter on a Proton-K rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.


(Luna-22 Spacecraft. Image from NASA Space Science Data Center Master Catalog.)

What makes that so much more interesting to me is that the Russians still launch Protons from Baikonur. In 2002 I spent three weeks at the cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, monitoring Nimiq-2 payload processing and its mating with the Proton rocket.

I spent Thanksgiving of 2002 flying with the spacecraft aboard an AN-124 transport, and monitored the checkouts and prep work until my boss relieved me a little before Christmas. So I missed the actual launch … but I got to spend Christmas at home, which was better.

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Monkeys on Saturn? No, Monkeys on Jupiter

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Two space history items for today, May 28th:

Fifty years ago — on this date in 1959 — a Jupiter rocket lifted off from the Eastern Space and Missile Center at Cape Canaveral, carrying two female monkeys, “Able” and “Baker.” Able was a seven-pound rhesus monkey and Baker was a squirrel monkey that weighed less than a pound. The monkeys traveled 1700 miles downrange, reached an altitude of 360 miles, and survived “in good condition.”

In our second item, a Saturn rocket — designated SA-6 — launched from Cape Canaveral on this date in 1964. The unmanned launch tested the rocket and spacecraft components for the Apollo mission to the moon. It did not, however, carry any monkeys.

You can read more about Able and Baker on this Smithsonian page or in this NPR article.

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First Shuttle to Dock with ISS — A Decade Ago

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Ten years ago today — May 27, 1999 — Space Shuttle Discovery launched from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-96, a logistics and resupply mission for the International Space Station. It was the first shuttle flight to dock with the ISS.


(STS-96 launch. Image KSC-99PP-0591 from the STS-96 KSC Electronic Photo File.)

U.S. astronauts Kent V. Rominger, Rick D. Husband, Ellen Ochoa, Tamara E. Jernigan, and Daniel T. Barry, Canadian astronaut Julie Payette, and Russian cosmonaut Valery I. Tokarev spent the next nine days in space. They delivered cargo from the SPACEHAB module and the Integrated Cargo Carrier, including the Russian STRELA cargo crane, the SPACEHAB Oceaneering Space System box, and a U.S.-built crane called the ORU (Orbital Replacement Unit) Transfer Device.

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Does the President Believe His Own Rhetoric?

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On Memorial Day, we expect the President and other politicians to commemorate those who gave their lives, and in doing so to recognize the military for its role in defending our freedoms. President Obama did not disappoint: he carried out the kind of Presidential ceremonies we expect. I was surprised, however, at what he said during one address.

For someone who has asserted (and ostensibly believes in) the power of words, and who comes across as believing that his words and the force of his personality will carry the day against intractable adversaries, one line I heard seemed careless. He referred to those who choose military service as “the best of America.” As much as that might appeal to my vanity, I had to wonder whether he really believes what he said. Did he think about the fact that he was excluding millions of people from “the best of America” by focusing on military service? Did he think about the fact that he was excluding himself? Or were they just words to him, rhetorical tools to soothe and placate families who lost loved ones in war — including at least one war he believes should not have been fought?

Excuse me, my cynicism is showing.

I haven’t gone back to the ceremonial rhetoric of previous administrations to see what kinds of platitudes they might have used, and whether those could be taken as more ironic than authentic. (I’m unlikely to do so, but if anyone else wants to I’ll be happy to read their analysis.)

How much do words matter, and how much stock does the President really put in his rhetoric? I don’t know. My central concern is this: if the President says things he may or may not mean, is it any wonder that the North Koreans and Iranians are ignoring him?

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A Few More Queries, And With Them, Rejection

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I forgot to post this yesterday, but the fourth week of the agent hunt consisted of sending out several more queries and receiving one very nice rejection. Here’s the tally of the really important statistics:

  • 34 queries submitted
  • 9 rejections

And so it goes.

On the advice of a couple people in the business — whose names I will not use, but whose identities might be guessed by people familiar with my experience in the very small SF&F world — I also submitted a partial (3 chapters and synopsis) to one of the major SF publishers. We’ll see if anything comes of that.

Hopefully someone out there will be interested in publishing a near-future science fiction story about colonizing the moon — the risks people will take, the hardships they’ll endure, and the sacrifices they’ll make to achieve a difficult goal. Here’s hoping!

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In Recent News: Operationally Responsive Space

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I was surprised to see two news items about ORS this week: the ORS demonstrator TacSat-3 launched Tuesday on a Minotaur rocket, and then ORS-1 — which would be the first operational spacecraft, and an infrared imager, no less — showed up as the third-highest item on the Air Force’s unfunded priorities list.

I posted blurbs about both items in a dedicated thread in the “Space Tactics, Techniques, & Procedures” section of the Space Warfare Forum. I’d love to be convinced that my original misgivings about ORS — which I developed while still in the service, based on the briefings and articles I saw — have been overcome.

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This Day in Space History: Apollo-X Launch

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Forty years ago today — May 18, 1969 — astronauts Thomas P. Stafford, John W. Young, Jr., and Eugene A. Cernan lifted off on the Apollo 10 mission. Their Saturn V launch vehicle (number SA-505) launched at 12:49 a.m. EDT from the Kennedy Space Center, on “the mission before THE mission.”

(Apollo-X launch. Click to enlarge.)

Travelling in Command Module “Charlie Brown” and Lunar Module “Snoopy,” the astronauts tested all aspects of the lunar mission except the actual lunar landing, and accomplished several “firsts” including:

  • First transmitted color photographs of the full Earth from a crew in space
  • First demonstration rendezvous in lunar orbit
  • First burning of LM descent stage engine in lunar landing configuration
  • First LM steerable antenna at lunar distances
  • First LM within 15,240 meters [8 nautical miles] of the lunar surface
  • First crew-assisted navigational, visual, and photographic evaluations of the moon
  • First and only Apollo launch from Launch Complex 39B



(Views of Earth from Apollo-X. Click to enlarge.)

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Images from the Johnson Space Center Digital Image Collection.



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