Author Archives: Gray Rinehart

Space History: Third Space Shuttle Qualification Flight

By | |
Comments Off on Space History: Third Space Shuttle Qualification Flight

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.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Gravity and Environment

By | |
Comments Off on Gravity and Environment

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!

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Kosmos-1

By | |
Comments Off on Kosmos-1

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.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Is Your Business Prepared for a Disaster?

By | | ,
Comments Off on Is Your Business Prepared for a Disaster?

(Cross-posted with light editing from the Industrial Extension Service blog.)

If a natural disaster or major accident impacted your company, how quickly would you be able to recover? Do you have backups of important files stored off-site? Do you have ready and portable access to contact information for your employees, customers, and suppliers? Do you have an emergency plan, and have you tested it?


(FEMA / Patsy Lynch)

Many years ago I was the Chief of the Disaster Response Force at the Air Force Astronautics Laboratory at Edwards Air Force Base, during which time I led the responses to two rocket propellant fires, so I’ve learned a thing or two about what it takes to handle emergencies. But last Tuesday I learned a few new things about disaster preparedness from a business perspective, and soon I’ll be able to apply my prior experience and what I just learned to teach the “Ready Business” course.

Ready Business is a half-day course designed to give businesses some practical tools to get prepared and stay prepared. The program operates under the guidance of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and is being brought to North Carolina in a team effort by the Cooperative Extension Service, the Industrial Extension Service, and the Small Business Technology Development Center.

Several of us will be available to teach the Ready Business course, and we hope to offer it many times throughout the state. If you’re interested, let us know!

Finally, while we’re on the subject of disasters, I love this bit from Karl Smith and the “Modeled Behavior” economics blog:

If we actually want to help the world, we focus on details and that usually means the short term. Things we can see closely and understand the nuances of. In short, we Stop Disaster.

One day we will lose and the world will come to an end. The apocalypse only has to win once. Our job is to make sure that that day, isn’t today.

Maybe we can’t truly stop disaster, but we can be ready for it — and that’s what disaster preparedness is all about.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Early European Space Observatory

By | |
Comments Off on Early European Space Observatory

Forty years ago today — March 11, 1972 — the European TD-1A satellite launched from Vandenberg AFB atop a Thor-Delta rocket. The satellite’s “TD” designation was actually taken from the Thor-Delta launch system.


(TD-1A satellite. NASA image.)

TD-1A was Europe’s first three-axis-stabilized spacecraft, designed “to make a systematic sky survey in the ultraviolet and high-energy regions of the spectrum.” Two instruments pointed at the sun and measured its x-ray and gamma ray output; five other instruments scanned the sky to measure “ultraviolet, x and gamma rays, and heavy nuclei.”

More information on TD-1A is available on its page in the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Uranian Rings

By | |
1 Comment

Thirty-five years ago today — March 10, 1977 — astronomers James L. Elliot, Edward W. Dunham, and Douglas J. Mink confirmed that the planet Uranus has rings around it.


(Voyager 2 image of Uranus’ rings taken on January 22, 1986, from a distance of 2.52 million kilometers. NASA image.)

The Wikipedia entry on Uranus’ rings explains that, according to notes published by the Royal Society in 1797, William Herschel suspected a ring around the planet as early as February 1789. Herschel’s observation and the 1977 observation were both made when Uranus passed in front of a star and occulted the light from it.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Six-in-One for the Space Test Program

By | |
Comments Off on Six-in-One for the Space Test Program

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.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Time to Nominate for the Hugo Awards

By | |
Comments Off on Time to Nominate for the Hugo Awards

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!

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

A Half Century of Solar Science

By | |
Comments Off on A Half Century of Solar Science

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).

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Valentina Tereshkova

By | |
Comments Off on Valentina Tereshkova

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.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather