A Brief Photo Gallery: International Space Station's P3/P4 Truss

Five years ago today — September 9, 2006 — the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from the Kennedy Space Center on a mission to the International Space Station.


(Joseph R. Tanner waves at Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper during their spacewalk. NASA image.)

Mission STS-115 was the latest ISS construction mission. U.S. astronauts Brent W. Jett, Jr., Christopher J. Ferguson, Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper, Joseph R. (Joe) Tanner, and Daniel C. Burbank, along with Canadian astronaut Steven G. MacLean, installed the P3/P4 truss, a major structural element that included additional solar panel arrays.

Here’s the station before the P3/P4 truss was installed:


(ISS, taken by STS-115 prior to docking. NASA image.)

And here’s the station after:


(ISS, taken by STS-115 after undocking, showing the new P3/P4 truss and solar arrays. NASA image.)

And here’s a nice shot of one of the new solar panels being extended:


(Detail image of new ISS solar array. NASA image.)

For more photos, check out the STS-115 Shuttle Mission Imagery page.

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Happy STAR TREK Day!

How’s this for a “space history” item: 45 years ago today — September 8, 1966 — the first episode of Star Trek (“The Man Trap”) aired on NBC.

Ten years later, members of the cast gathered in Palmdale, California, for the rollout of the prototype Space Shuttle — named Enterprise in honor of their starship:


(Members of the STAR TREK original series cast with the Space Shuttle pathfinder vehicle Enterprise on September 17, 1976. L-R, Dr. James D. Fletcher, NASA Administrator, DeForest Kelley (Dr. “Bones” McCoy), George Takei (Mr. Sulu), James Doohan (Mr. Scott), Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura), Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock), Gene Rodenberry (series creator, “The Great Bird of the Galaxy”), unknown NASA guy, and Walter Koenig (Ensign Chekov). NASA image.)

Like so many others, I grew up watching Star Trek in syndication, though I took it a bit further as I studied the blueprints of the Enterprise, the Star Fleet Technical Manual, etc. All of which I still have, of course, and all of which explains at least in part why I am a geek.

For more on Star Trek, see Memory Alpha or the official web page.

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Honorable Mention No. 7

On the first day of Dragon*Con (which deserves a full report but won’t get one today), I received notification of my latest “Honorable Mention” in the Writers of the Future contest.

If I’ve counted correctly, that was my 13th entry, one of which finished as a semi-finalist and now seven of which were honorable mentions. Not too bad, though I keep hoping to do better.

Speaking of which, what did I do this morning? I submitted my 14th entry.

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Viking-2 Lands on Mars, in a Genre-Significant Place

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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From the Land of the Rising Sun, a Satellite to Study the Sun

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.

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My Dragon*Con Schedule

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:

  • Friday, 09/02, 5:30 p.m. in the Hyatt: due to a cancellation, I will either sing a song (“Monster Hunter Ballad,” maybe?) or read part of a story during “Princess Alethea’s Traveling Sideshow,” hosted by the inimitable Alethea Kontis
  • Saturday, 09/03, 2:30 p.m. in the Hyatt: I’ll do whatever my boss needs me to do at the Baen Books Traveling Road Show
  • Monday, 09/05, 1:00 p.m. in the Hilton: I’ve offered to fill in on a panel discussing “The Science of Zombies” … the final line-up is still TBD

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!

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Suborbital Apollo-Saturn Test Flight, and Bill Dana Goes Supersonic

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.

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Ranger-1

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.”

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A FAST Launch, and the Hugo Awards

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.

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Happy Birthday, Orville Wright — and, Follow the Hugo Awards

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.

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