Author Archives: Gray Rinehart

Space Station Spinal Surgery

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Ten years ago today — April 8, 2002 — the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center on its way to the International Space Station.


(Astronauts Steven L. Smith [R] and Rex J. Walheim during the third of STS-110’s four EVAs. NASA image.)

STS-110, also known as ISS Assembly Flight 8A, featured astronauts Michael J. Bloomfield, Stephen N. Frick, Jerry L. Ross, Steven L. Smith, Ellen Ochoa, Lee M.E. Morin, and Rex J. Walheim. The team completed four spacewalks during their 10 days in space, and delivered and installed the “Starboard-Zero” Center Integrated Truss Assembly.

The new truss was a key part of the ISS’s skeleton — its “center backbone,” according to this STS-100 information page — with attachment points for additional station modules and solar panels. In addition to mechanical attachments, the truss included power and thermal control systems, a Mobile Transporter to extend the reach of the station’s robotic arm, as well as other equipment needed to keep the station operational.

In addition,

The launch marked a milestone as Mission Specialist Jerry Ross became the first human to fly in space seven times, breaking his own and other astronauts’ records of six space flights.

You know, some of us would be satisfied with getting to fly in space just once.

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A Two-Time Space Tourist's First Flight

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Five years ago today — April 7, 2007 — Hungarian-American software executive Charles Simonyi blasted off on the first of his two tourist trips to the International Space Station.


(Soyuz 14 [TMA-10] approaches the International Space Station. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Soyuz TMA-10 lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome carrying Simonyi and cosmonauts Oleg V. Kotov and Fyodor N. Yurchikhin. Simonyi, who made his fortune as one of the primary developers of the Microsoft Office products Word and Excel, spent about 2 weeks in space before returning to earth aboard TMA-9.

That would not be Simonyi’s only trip to space, however: In March 2009 he returned to the ISS aboard TMA-14.

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Microgravity Fire

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Sounds as if it should be a band name instead of a blog post title.

Anyway, 15 years ago today in space history — April 4, 1997 — the Space Shuttle Columbia lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on the first mission for the Microgravity Science Laboratory, which included experiments in, yes, microgravity fire.


(STS-83 on Pad 39-A with Comet Hale-Bopp in the background. NASA image.)

During mission STS-83, astronauts James D. Halsell, Susan L. Still, Janice E. Voss, Donald A. Thomas, Michael L. Gernhardt, Roger K. Crouch, and Gregory T. Linteris carried out a number of experiments, including the “fire-related experiments” alluded to earlier. The fire studies were carried out in specially-built combustion chambers in the Spacelab module. Unfortunately, a fault in one of the shuttle’s fuel cells caused mission managers to cut the mission short and bring the shuttle home after only 3 days.

In other space history, 40 years ago today the USSR launched a Molniya rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, carrying the Molniya 1/20 communications satellite into a highly-elliptical, high-inclination orbit known as a “Molniya” orbit. The French experimental satellite SRET-1 launched on the same rocket; it tested solar cell materials and studied the effects of radiation from the Van Allen belts.

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Kvant: From Salyut to Mir

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Twenty-five years ago today — March 31, 1987 — the Soviet Union launched the Kvant-1 space station module from the Baikonur Cosmodrome atop a Proton K booster.


(Kvant-1 diagram. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Kvant-1 was “a specialized module left over from the Salyut-7 program.” Once installed on the Mir space station, the module not only expanded the station’s experimental apparatus but its six “gyrodynes” — i.e., control moment gyroscopes, as opposed to the rotorcraft of the same name — also improved Mir’s attitude control.

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Another Pathfinder for Chinese Manned Spaceflight

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A decade ago today — March 25, 2002 — China launched Shenzhou-3 (“Divine Vessel 3”) from Jiquan Space Launch Center.


(Shenzhou-3 on the launch pad. Image linked from http://www.spacedaily.com/images/china-shenzhuo-rollout-2002-bg.jpg.)

The unmanned Shenzhou-3 was launched by a Long March 2F rocket, and carried everything necessary for a manned spaceflight. Following its mission, the capsule landed successfully on April 1st in the desert in Inner Mongolia.

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ATLAS Launch — No, Not the Rocket

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Well, a rocket, and ATLAS, but not an Atlas rocket. Confused yet?

Thirty years ago today — March 24, 1992– the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center on a mission to study atmospheric science and how space phenomena affect Earth’s environment.


(ATLAS-1 pallets in the shuttle’s payload bay. NASA image.)

The STS-45 crew included U.S. astronauts Charles F. Bolden — the future NASA administrator — Brian Duffy, Kathryn D. Sullivan, David C. Leestma, C. Michael Foale, and Byron K. Lichtenberg, as well as Belgian astronaut Dirk D. Frimout. Their 8-day mission was the first launch of the Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science (ATLAS-1).

ATLAS-1 consisted of a dozen instruments from seven different countries — the U.S., France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Japan — to study “atmospheric chemistry, solar radiation, space plasma physics and ultraviolet astronomy.” ATLAS-1 was not a free-flying platform, so it stayed on the SpaceLab platform in the shuttle’s cargo bay while it performed its observations.

The ATLAS platform flew on subsequent shuttle missions to continue the atmospheric research.

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Happy Birthday, Wernher von Braun

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One hundred years ago today — March 23, 1912 — Dr. Wernher von Braun was born in Wirsitz, Germany.


(Wernher von Braun in front of Apollo-11’s Saturn-V launch vehicle. NASA image.)

Dr. von Braun was responsible for some of the best and some of the worst of space history.

As a youth he became enamored with the possibilities of space exploration by reading the science fiction of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, and from the science fact writings of Hermann Oberth, whose 1923 classic study, Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (By Rocket to Space), prompted young von Braun to master calculus and trigonometry so he could understand the physics of rocketry.

His V-2 ballistic missiles pounded Britain and other countries during World War II, and were notorious as much for the slave labor that went into them as for the damage they inflicted. After being brought to the U.S. as part of Operation Paperclip, he developed U.S. ballistic missiles.

Before the Allied capture of the V–2 rocket complex, von Braun engineered the surrender of 500 of his top rocket scientists, along with plans and test vehicles, to the Americans. [von Braun] and his rocket team were scooped up from defeated Germany and … installed at Fort Bliss, Texas. There they worked on rockets for the U.S. Army, launching them at White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico. In 1950 von Braun’s team moved to the Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, Ala, where they built the Army’s Jupiter ballistic missile.

When NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center was established at Huntsville, von Braun was named its first director. In this capacity he was able to build new rockets — including the mighty Saturn-V — that allowed for peaceful exploration of the heavens and took the first explorers to the Moon.


(Wernher von Braun in front of a Saturn vehicle and its F-1 rocket engines. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.)

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Space History: Third Space Shuttle Qualification Flight

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Thirty years ago today — March 22, 1982 — the Space Shuttle Columbia launched from Kennedy Space Center on the third “shakedown” flight of the shuttle program.


(STS-3 landing at White Sands, New Mexico. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Astronauts Jack R. Lousma and C. Gordon Fullerton crewed Columbia during the STS-3 mission. They checked out the shuttle’s systems and documented problems ranging from lost communication links to toilet malfunctions, from space sickness to sleep cycles interrupted by unexplained static.

The shuttle was scheduled to land at Edwards AFB, but the dry lake bed was actually too wet to accomodate a landing. High winds at the back-up landing site at White Sands, New Mexico, forced a one-day mission extension. Columbia landed there on March 30th — the only time a shuttle ever landed at White Sands.

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Gravity and Environment

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Ten years ago today — March 17, 2002 — two Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment spacecraft were launched from Plesetsk on a Rockot booster.


(GRACE-1 and GRACE-2. NASA image.)

GRACE-1, nicknamed “Tom,” and GRACE-2, nicknamed “Jerry,” were identical satellites, part of a joint U.S.-German mission “to obtain accurate global and high-resolution values of both the static and time-variable components of the Earth’s gravitational field.” Part of the mission involved mapping the tiny variations in gravity caused by environmental changes such as ice formation and melting, glacier movements, and changes in sea level.

// Break, Break //

Ten years earlier, on Saint Patrick’s Day 1992, Russia’s Soyuz TM-14 launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome carrying cosmonauts Aleksandr S. Viktorenko and Aleksandr Y. Kaleri and German astronaut Klaus-Dietrich Flade to the Mir space station.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

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Kosmos-1

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Fifty years ago today — March 16, 1962 — the Soviet Union launched the first of its “Kosmos” series spacecraft from Kapustin Yar.


(Model of a later Dnepropetrovsk Sputnik spacecraft. Image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Kosmos-1, so named because of the Kosmos launch vehicle, was a technology demonstrator intended to study the ionosphere. It was actually the third spacecraft of the Dnepropetrovsk Sputnik series, but was called Kosmos-1 because it was the first to successfully reach space.

Also known as “Cosmos-1,” this half-century-old satellite should not be confused with the Cosmos-1 solar sail attempt made in June 2005.

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