Author Archives: Gray Rinehart

Mark of the Shuttle Era: Satellite Capture Repair

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Twenty years ago today — May 7, 1992 — Space Shuttle Endeavour launched from the Kennedy Space Center on a mission to rendezvous with the Intelsat VI satellite.


(Three mission specialists work on the Intelsat VI satellite. STS-49 marked the first three-astronaut EVA. NASA image.)

STS-49 was the maiden flight of Endeavour, and included astronauts Daniel C. Brandenstein, Kevin P. Chilton, Richard J. Hieb, Bruce E. Melnick, Pierre J. Thuot, Kathryn C. Thornton, and Thomas D. Akers. Their mission was to retrieve the Intelsat VI satellite, which had been stranded in orbit since March 1990, and install a perigee kick motor to boost it to geosynchronous orbit.

The capture required three EVAs: a planned one by astronaut Pierre J. Thuot and Richard J. Hieb who were unable to attach a capture bar to the satellite from a position on the [Remote Manipulator System]; a second unscheduled but identical attempt the following day; and finally an unscheduled but successful hand capture by Pierre J. Thuot and fellow crewmen Richard J. Hieb and Thomas D. Akers as Commander Daniel C. Brandenstein delicately maneuvered the orbiter to within a few feet of the 4.5 ton communications satellite. An [Assembly of Station by EVA Methods] structure was erected in the cargo bay by the crew to serve as a platform to aid in the hand capture and subsequent attachment of the capture bar.

In addition to being Endeavour‘s first flight, STS-49 included the first extravehicular activity with three astronauts outside the shuttle at the same time, was the first shuttle mission to feature four EVAs and the first time a live rocket motor was attached to an orbiting satellite, and featured the first use of a drag chute during a shuttle landing.

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Star Wars Day Space History …

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… from our little part of this galaxy, not that long ago.

Forty-five years ago today — May 4, 1967 — an Atlas Agena rocket launched from Cape Canaveral carrying the Lunar Orbiter 4 on its mission to the Moon.

Because the previous three Lunar Orbiters had “completed the required needs for Apollo mapping and site selection,” NASA tasked this fourth orbiter to “perform a broad systematic photographic survey of lunar surface features in order to increase the scientific knowledge of their nature, origin, and processes, and to serve as a basis for selecting sites for more detailed scientific study by subsequent orbital and landing missions.”

Lunar Orbiter 4 developed problems with the camera door, however: it did not open and close correctly when commanded, and mission controllers feared that it might stick closed so they commanded it to remain open.

This required extra attitude control manuevers on each orbit to prevent light leakage into the camera which would ruin the film. On 13 May it was discovered that light leakage was damaging some of the film, and the door was tested and partially closed. Some fogging of the lens was then suspected due to condensation resulting from the lower temperatures. Changes in the attitude raised the temperature of the camera and generally eliminated the fogging. Continuing problems with the readout drive mechanism starting and stopping beginning on 20 May resulted in a decision to terminate the photographic portion of the mission on 26 May.

Even with those problems, the spacecraft was able to read and transmit “419 high resolution and 127 medium resolution frames were acquired covering 99% of the Moon’s near side at resolutions from 58 meters to 134 meters.”

And in more recent space history …

Just a decade ago, on this date in 2002, the remote sensing spacecraft Aqua was launched from Vandenberg AFB by a Delta-II rocket.


(A depiction of the “A-Train” formation of satellites in similar orbits. Aqua was the first vehicle in the A-Train. NASA image.)

Originally known as Earth Observation System Afternoon One (EOS-PM1) for the time of day it would cross the equator, the mission was renamed Aqua

for the large amount of information that the mission is collecting about the Earth’s water cycle, including evaporation from the oceans, water vapor in the atmosphere, clouds, precipitation, soil moisture, sea ice, land ice, and snow cover on the land and ice. Additional variables also being measured by Aqua include radiative energy fluxes, aerosols, vegetation cover on the land, phytoplankton and dissolved organic matter in the oceans, and air, land, and water temperatures.

If I recall, one of the folks I worked with at the Defense Technology Security Administration came to us from the Aqua program. Pretty cool.

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New Stories Accepted by Asimov's and Analog

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May Day was very good to me! For the first time in my writing career, I received two short story contracts on the same day.

The contracts are signed and will shortly be in the mail, so I feel as if it’s safe to broadcast the details.

After a minor rewrite a couple of weeks ago, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine accepted my novelette “The Second Engineer.” I posted news of the story acceptance on Facebook, but didn’t identify the magazine because I didn’t want to get ahead of the paperwork. So yesterday the contract showed up in my e-mail …

… along with a contract from Analog Science Fiction & Fact for my novelette “SEAGULLs, Jack-o-Lanterns, and Interstitial Spaces.”

So on the same day I got contracts for my second story for Asimov’s and my third story for Analog. My head is still spinning.

On a Related Subject: My short story “The Song of Uullioll” is in the July/August issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact, which has been mailed to subscribers and should be on newsstands soon. (I’ll post the cover when I get the image file for my web site.)

Color me overwhelmed!

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P.S. I understand “The Second Engineer” is scheduled to appear in the October/November issue of Asimov’s. GWR

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Ariel-1, Britain's First Satellite … plus, the First Launch from Kenya

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A half-century ago today — April 26, 1962 — a Thor-Delta rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, carrying the Ariel-1 spacecraft into orbit.


(Ariel-1 display model. Smithsonian National Air & Space Musuem Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center image.)

In addition to being the United Kingdom’s first satellite, Ariel-1 was also the first international satellite: a joint project in which NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center built the satellite body and Britain supplied the scientific instruments. It carried “a tape recorder and instrumentation for one cosmic-ray, two solar emissions, and three ionospheric experiments.”

Interestingly, the model on display at the National Air & Space Musuem “was rebuilt from original parts by technicians at GSFC.” That’s pretty cool.

Five years later, on April 26, 1967, the Italian satellite San Marco-2 became the first spacecraft launched from the San Marco Launch Platform, which was built atop an old oil platform off the coast of Kenya. (San Marco-1 had been launched from Wallops Island, Virginia.)

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Space History: Saturn, Soyuz, Space Tourism, Pegasus, and Clouds

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Today’s space history starts a half-century ago — on April 25, 1962 — with a Saturn-1 suborbital test launch out of Cape Canaveral.


(SA-2 launch. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Mission SA-2, or “Project High Water,” flew water-filled upper stages atop a Saturn-1, which was the Saturn-V first stage. The upper stages were blown up near the apogee of the suborbital flight, creating an “artificial cloud.” According to this NASA history page, “This was used to study the effects on radio transmission and changes in local weather conditions. At an altitude of 150km, explosive devices ruptured the S-IV and S-V tanks and in just five seconds, ground observers saw the formation of a huge ice cloud estimated to be several kilometers in diameter.”

Having nothing to do with clouds, on April 25, 2002, Soyuz TM-34 launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on a ferry flight to the International Space Station (ISS). In addition to its working crew of Russian cosmonaut Yuri P. Gidzenko and Italian astronaut Roberto Vittori, it carried South African Mark R. Shuttleworth as the second commercial space tourist.

Finally, on this date 5 years ago, a Pegasus XL rocket launched from its L-1011 carrier aircraft flying out of Vandenberg AFB, carrying the AIM (Aeronomy of Ice in Mesosphere) satellite. The small spacecraft’s mission brings us back to the topic of clouds, as it was built to study “Polar Mesospheric Clouds (PMCs) that form about 50 miles above the Earth’s surface in summer and mostly in the polar regions.”

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Salyut-7

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Thirty years ago today — April 19, 1982 — the Salyut-7 space station launched from Baikonur on a Proton-K rocket.


(Salyut-7. At bottom, a Soyuz vehicle is docked with the station. USSR image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Similar to Salyut-6, Salyut-7 was the latest in a series of space stations orbited by the Soviet Union. Its overall structure — two docking ports, carried three solar panels — were quite like Salyut-6, though the telescope used in Salyut-6 was replaced on Salyut-7 with an X-ray detector.

Salyut-7 hosted six resident crews and four transient crews over its operating life. The station fell back to Earth on February 7, 1991.

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Filk Award Brainstorming is Open

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If you like filk — generally, folk music with science fiction or fantasy themes — you may be interested to know that the Brainstorming Poll for the 2012 Pegasus Awards is now available on-line.


(The Pegasus Award Emblem.)

As the site says, the Brainstorming Poll is not an awards ballot. It’s “a poll to help generate ideas for the 2012 Pegasus Awards.”

The filk-related Pegasus Awards* are presented by the Ohio Valley Filk Fest, which is “the world’s largest fan-run filk convention.” (The Blibbering Humdingers, who also live in my current hometown of Cary, NC, are the Interfilk guests this year.)

You don’t need to be a member of the OVFF convention to nominate and vote, but you do need to be part of the filk community, which is broadly defined as “anyone with an interest in filk.” Do you enjoy songs with science fiction or fantasy references? Then you probably qualify.

The OVFF folks will compile the results of the Brainstorming Poll and attach them to the Nominating Ballot, which they will release sometime next month. The nominating period runs for a few weeks, and then the Final Ballot will be released during the summer.

The Brainstorming Poll will close on May 5th.

// Shameless Plug Follows //

This post has been brought to you by “The Monster Hunter Ballad.”

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*There is also a set of “Pegasus Awards” for non-broadcast media (video) production. Those awards haven’t even been around for 10 years yet, while the OVFF Pegasus Awards started in 1984.

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Surveyor-3 — To the Moon and (Partly) Back Again

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Forty-five years ago today — April 17, 1967 — an Atlas-Centaur rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, sending Surveyor-3 on its way to the Moon.


(Apollo-12 mission commander Pete Conrad retrieves parts from Surveyor-3. The lunar module “Intrepid” is visible in the distance. NASA image taken by lunar module pilot Alan Bean. A higher-resolution version is available here)

Surveyor-3 landed on the Moon on April 19th, the second of the Surveyor series to make a soft landing. Its other objectives were to transmit television images of the lunar surface, use its sampler to probe the surface materials, and test the surface’s load-bearing strength and other properties in advance of the Apollo missions.

In what I think of as a fulfillment of Surveyor-3’s destiny, two and a half years later — on November 19, 1969 — Apollo-12 landed within about 600 feet (180 meters) of Surveyor-3. As shown in the image above, astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean visited the spacecraft and examined it closely. They retrieved several parts, including the television camera, and returned them to Earth for analysis. Surveyor-3’s camera was put on display in the National Air and Space Museum.

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Apollo-16, and a Pioneer of Flight is Born

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Forty years ago today — April 16, 1972 — astronauts John W. Young, Jr., Thomas K. Mattingly, and Charles M. Duke, Jr., blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center atop a Saturn-V booster, on their way to the Moon.


(Lunar Module “Orion” and the Lunar Roving Vehicle, with astronaut John Young in the background. NASA image.)

Apollo-16 was the fifth mission to land on the Moon, and the second in which astronauts drove the Lunar Rover to explore a wide area around their landing site. Young and Duke spent almost three days on the lunar surface, and made three separate excursions from the Lunar Module out onto the Descartes Highlands.

And for bonus “aerospace” history, on this date 145 years ago Wilbur Wright was born in Millville, Indiana. I find it interesting how quickly we went from Wilbur and Orville’s first powered flight at Kitty Hawk to landing on the Moon — and I wonder when it will become important to us to push outward from there.

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First Indian National Satellite

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Thirty years ago today — April 10, 1982 — Indian National Satellite 1A (INSAT-1A) was launched from Cape Canaveral on a Delta rocket.


(Depiction of INSAT-1A from the ISRO website.)

INSAT-1A combined communications, meteorology, and optical imaging payloads that were intended to provide disaster warnings to remote civilian populations. However, the spacecraft’s attitude control system ran out of propellant less than a year and a half into its 7-year mission. According to the Indian Space Research Organization’s INSAT-1A page, ISRO abandoned the spacecraft in September 1983.

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