Category Archives: Space

Another Eye in the Sky

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Five years ago today — September 18, 2007 — DigitalGlobe launched WorldView 1, a commercial remote sensing satellite, from Vandenberg AFB on a Delta II rocket.


(WorldView 1 image of President Obama’s inauguration. Image from DigitalGlobe site, for editorial use; available for purchase in their online store.)

WorldView 1 was built by Ball Aerospace for DigitalGlobe, and featured a “panchromatic” camera — sensitive to all colors in the visible spectrum — with half-meter resolution. Even though it’s a commercial imager, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency was among its primary customers.

Here’s a complete data sheet about the satellite.

DigitalGlobe launched the WorldView 2 companion spacecraft in December 2009.

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Note: I tried to find DigitalGlobe’s “Images for the Media” page (http://www.digitalglobe.com/press/images_media.shtml), to pull an image they had already tagged for editorial use, but that section of their web site appeared no longer to exist.

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Japanese Lunar Mission

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Five years ago today — September 14, 2007 — the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) launched the Kaguya lunar orbiter aboard an H-2A rocket from Tanegashima Island.


(The Moon, as seen by Kaguya’s high-gain antenna monitor camera. JAXA image from the National Space Science Data Center.)

Kaguya was originally named SELENE, for SELenological and ENgineering Explorer, but was renamed Kaguya after Kaguya-hime — i.e., Princess Kaguya — who came to Earth from the Moon in the 10th century Japanese folk tale “Taketori Monogatari” (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter).

Upon reaching lunar orbit on October 3, 2007, Kaguya deployed two smaller satellites, “Okina” and “Ouna,” named for the old couple in the folk tale who find and adopt Kaguya-hine.

The Kaguya mission completed a global survey of the Moon, looking at its composition, topography, gravity, and other conditions. The mission ended on June 10, 2009, with a pre-planned impact on the lunar surface that was timed to allow observers on Earth to see the flash of impact.

Very cool!

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Onward in the 'Greatest Adventure on which Man has ever Embarked'

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Twenty years ago today — September 12, 1992 — the Space Shuttle Endeavour lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center on a joint U.S.-Japanese scientific mission that featured several space firsts.


(STS-47 in-flight crew portrait, aboard Spacelab-J. NASA image.)

The STS-47 crew consisted of U.S. astronauts Robert L. “Hoot” Gibson, Curtis L. Brown, Jr., Mark C. Lee, Jerome “Jay” Apt, N. Jan Davis, and Mae C. Jemison, plus Japanese astronaut Mamoru Mohri. The “firsts” on this mission included:

  • Jemison was the first Black woman in space.
  • Mohri was the first Japanese astronaut to fly on a Space Shuttle.
  • Lee and Davis were the first married couple to fly a space mission together.

The crew conducted 44 different science experiments aboard the Spacelab-J laboratory, of which 35 were sponsored by the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA). Seven were NASA experiments, and the last two were NASA-NASDA collaborations.

Materials science investigations covered such fields as biotechnology, electronic materials, fluid dynamics and transport phenomena, glasses and ceramics, metals and alloys, and acceleration measurements. Life sciences included experiments on human health, cell separation and biology, developmental biology, animal and human physiology and behavior, space radiation, and biological rhythms. Test subjects included the crew, Japanese koi fish (carp), cultured animal and plant cells, chicken embryos, fruit flies, fungi and plant seeds, and frogs and frog eggs.

Now, just because it’s cool, a look at the “Southern Lights” that the crew took from orbit:


(Aurora Australis, as seen from orbit aboard STS-47. NASA image.)

It’s also cool that this launch happened on the 30th anniversary of President Kennedy’s famous speech at Rice University — 50 years ago now, on September 12, 1962 — in which he said,

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

President Kennedy closed his speech by saying,

Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, “Because it is there.”

Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.

I hope we never stop pressing on in that “greatest adventure.”

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Surveyor 5: Pathfinder for Apollo 11

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Forty-five years ago today — September 8, 1967 — an Atlas Centaur launch vehicle carried the Surveyor 5 lander out of Cape Canaveral on its way to the moon.


(Surveyor and Apollo landing sites. Note the close proximity of Surveyor 5 (S5) and Apollo 11. NOAA image.)

Surveyor 5 landed on the moon on September 11, 1967, but not until mission controllers overcame a hardware problem. After the midcourse correction

the spacecraft began losing helium pressure. It was concluded that the helium pressure valve had not reseated tightly and the helium was leaking into the propellant tanks, causing an overpressure which opened the relief valves, discharging the helium. A new emergency landing plan was adopted. Early vernier engine firings were made while there was still helium to slow the spacecraft, reduce its mass, and leave more free volume in the propellant tanks for the helium. The burn of the main retrorocket was delayed [to] an altitude of 1300 meters at a velocity of 30 m/s rather than the planned 10,700 meters at 120 to 150 m/s.

Surveyor 5 landed in the southwest area of Mare Tranquillitatis — the Sea of Tranquility. Two years later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would land Apollo 11 about 30 km away from Surveyor 5’s landing site.

The Surveyor 5 spacecraft operated on the lunar surface for 4 lunar days — shutting down during each 2-week-long lunar night — and sent its final transmission on December 17, 1967.

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A Cosmic Voyager, and a Space Pioneer

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Today’s space history segment combines the recent past and the long past.

In the recent past, 35 years ago today — September 5, 1977 — the Voyager 1 space probe launched from Cape Canaveral aboard a Titan IIIE-Centaur rocket.


(Conceptual drawing of the region of space around our solar system, with the two Voyager spacecraft. NASA image.)

Like its sister ship, Voyager 2 (launched about 2 weeks prior), Voyager 1 was designed to study Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 1’s trajectory was such that it reached both planets before Voyager 2. After its Saturn encounter in 1980, Voyager 1 began making its way toward the edge of the solar system.

Voyager 1 is speeding away from the Sun at a velocity of about 3.50 AU/year toward a point in the sky of RA= 262 degrees, Dec=+12 degrees (35.55 degrees ecliptic latitude, 260.78 degrees ecliptic longitude). Late on 17 February 1998, Voyager 1 became the most distant man-made object from the Sun, surpassing the distance of Pioneer 10.

According to this June 14, 2012, NASA news release,

Data from NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft indicate that the venerable deep-space explorer has encountered a region in space where the intensity of charged particles from beyond our solar system has markedly increased. Voyager scientists looking at this rapid rise draw closer to an inevitable but historic conclusion – that humanity’s first emissary to interstellar space is on the edge of our solar system.

“The laws of physics say that someday Voyager will become the first human-made object to enter interstellar space, but we still do not know exactly when that someday will be,” said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “The latest data indicate that we are clearly in a new region where things are changing more quickly. It is very exciting. We are approaching the solar system’s frontier.”

Very cool.

In the long past, on September 5, 1857 — Old Style, that is; it would actually be September 17 on the New Style calendar — Konstantin E. Tsiolkovskiy was born in Russia. The greatest early theorist of space travel, in 1903 he published an article in Nauchnoye Obozreniye (Science Review) that he originally submitted in 1898. Entitled “Investigating Space With Rocket Devices,” the paper “presented years of calculations and laid out many of the principles of modern spaceflight.”

In the 1920s and 1930s, Tsiolkovskiy proved especially productive, publishing ten major works clarifying the nature of bodies in orbit, developing scientific principles behind reaction vehicles, designing orbital space stations, and promoting interplanetary travel. He also expanded the scope of studies on many principles commonly used in rockets today: specific impulse to gauge engine performance, multistage boosters, fuel mixtures such as liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, the problems and possibilities inherent in microgravity, the promise of solar power, and spacesuits for extravehicular activity. Significantly, he never had the resources—perhaps not even the inclination—to experiment with rockets himself.

Even though the coincidence of dates is pure artifice — the product of changes to the world’s calendars — it seems a fitting coincidence. After all, the Voyager mission itself was presaged by Tsiolkovskiy’s original work.

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An Interplanetary Mariner Sets Sail

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Fifty years ago today — August 27, 1962 — an Atlas Agena launched from Cape Canaveral, carrying the Mariner 2 spacecraft toward a rendezvous with the planet Venus.


(Mariner 2. NASA image.)

Mariner 2 passed Venus on December 14, 1962, becoming the first spacecraft to successfully perform a planetary flyby.

Mariner 2 was a backup for the Mariner 1 mission which failed shortly after launch to Venus. The objective of the Mariner 2 mission was to fly by Venus and return data on the planet’s atmosphere, magnetic field, charged particle environment, and mass. It also made measurements of the interplanetary medium during its cruise to Venus and after the flyby.

In other space history, on this date 35 years ago, the Italian communications and scientific satellite Sirio A was launched from Cape Canaveral by Delta rocket.

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Farewell, Neil Armstrong

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Neil Armstrong, first human to walk on the moon, has taken his final small step, his final giant leap into the great unknown.

Other people with deeper insight will pen better tributes than I. All I can contribute is a measure of how much of an inspiration Armstrong and his astronaut colleagues have been to me: in my decision to join the Air Force and to work specifically in space and missiles, and in my desire to explore space in my imagination and my stories.

Thank you, Neil Armstrong, and Godspeed.

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Previous Armstrong-related space history posts:
Apollo 11’s 40th Anniversary
Happy Birthday, Neil Armstrong

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An ACE in the Halo — the Advanced Composition Explorer

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Fifteen years ago today — August 25, 1997 — the Advanced Composition Explorer was launched from Cape Canaveral by a Delta II rocket.


(ACE. NASA image.)

The ACE spacecraft carried “six high resolution spectrometers, each designed to provide the optimum charge, mass, or charge-state resolution in its particular energy range,” in order to collect data on energetic particles from the Sun and other sources.

ACE is in a halo orbit around the L1 Lagrange point, between Earth and the Sun. According to the CalTech ACE mission site, the spacecraft “has a prime view of the solar wind, interplanetary magnetic field and higher energy particles accelerated by the Sun, as well as particles accelerated in the heliosphere and the galactic regions beyond,” and has enough fuel to maintain that orbit until 2024.

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First Successful Launch from SLC-6

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Fifteen years ago today — August 22, 1997 (local time) — the Lewis spacecraft launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base aboard a Lockheed Martin Launch Vehicle.


(An LMLV on the pad at Vandenberg. NASA image.)

Lewis was a small satellite built under NASA’s Small Spacecraft Technology Initiative and part of the “Mission to Planet Earth.” a long-term research program designed to study the Earth’s land, oceans, air, and life as a total system.

This launch (on August 23, by GMT) was the first success for the LMLV, also known as an Athena rocket, and also the first successful launch from SLC-6 — Space Launch Complex Six — at Vandenberg.

Unfortunately, Lewis encountered attitude control problems: “telemetry received early August 26 indicated that the spacecraft was spinning at approximately two revolutions per minute. The spinning resulted in the spacecraft shutting down after its solar panels could not capture enough sunlight to properly recharge onboard batteries.” The satellite burned up in the atmosphere on September 28.

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Voyager 2's Epic Journey Begins

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Thirty-five years ago today — August 20, 1977 — the Voyager 2 space probe launched from Cape Canaveral aboard a Titan-IIIE-Centaur rocket.


(Voyager 2. NASA image.)

Voyager 2 was actually the first of the Voyager spacecraft to be launched. Voyager 1 would be launched a little over two weeks later.

The Voyager mission had at first been named “Mariner Jupiter/Saturn,” and was itself a less ambitious mission than originally planned:

Originally planned as a Grand Tour of the outer planets, including dual launches to Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto in 1976-77 and dual launches to Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune in 1979, budgetary constraints caused a dramatic rescoping of the project to two spacecraft, each of which would go to only Jupiter and Saturn.

The mission succeeded beyond all expectations, however:

Voyager 2’s launch date had preserved one part of the original Grand Tour design, i.e. the possibility of an extended mission to Uranus and Neptune. Despite the difficulties encountered, scientists and engineers had been able to make Voyager enormously successful. As a result, approval was granted to extend the mission, first to Uranus, then to Neptune and later to continue observations well past Neptune.

The extended mission required controllers to upload new software to take into account the communication lag times and the lower light levels in the outer solar system, but Voyager 2’s systems continued to work superbly. Our space history series has already noted Voyager 2’s successful visits to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

Now known as the Voyager Interstellar Mission, Voyager 2 is currently over 99.35 astronomical units from the sun … and still going.

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