Category Archives: Space

Overhauled Spacecraft Sent to Venus

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Forty-five years ago today — June 14, 1967 — Mariner 5 launched from Cape Canaveral atop an Atlas Agena rocket.


(Mariner 5. NASA image.)

Mariner 5 was originally built as a backup for the Mariner 4 mission to Mars, but was refurbished and sent to Venus instead.

Mariner 5 flew by Venus on October 19, 1967, passing about 4,000 km from the yellow planet. Instruments on the spacecraft “measured both interplanetary and Venusian magnetic fields, charged particles, and plasmas, as well as the radio refractivity and UV emissions of the Venusian atmosphere.”

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Probing the Venusian Atmosphere

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Forty-five years ago today — June 12, 1967 — the Soviet Union launched Venera 4 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.


(Venera 4. Image from the National Space Science Data Center.)

Venera 4 was designed to conduct “direct atmospheric studies” of Venus.

On October 18, 1967, the spacecraft entered the Venusian atmosphere and released two thermometers, a barometer, a radio altimeter, and atmospheric density gauge, 11 gas analyzers, and two radio transmitters operating in the DM waveband. The main bus, which had carried the capsule to Venus, carried a magnetometer, cosmic ray detectors, hydrogen and oxygen indicators, and charged particle traps. Signals were returned by the spacecraft, which braked and then deployed a parachute system after entering the Venusian atmosphere, until it reached an altitude of 24.96 km.

The Venera 4 Wikipedia page includes some fascinating details about the capsule’s design and test regimen, and notes that Venera 4 successfully measured Venus’s atmosphere to be made up of 90-93% carbon dioxide, 0.4-0.8% oxygen, 7% nitrogen and 0.1-1.6% water vapor.

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Extending the Space Station's Reach (Literally)

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Ten years ago today — June 5, 2002 — Space Shuttle Endeavour launched from the Kennedy Space Center on a mission to the International Space Station.


(STS-111 launch. NASA image.)

The STS-111 crew consisted of US astronauts Paul S.Lockhart, Kenneth D. Cockrell, Franklin Chang-Diaz, and Peggy Whitson, French astronaut Philippe Perrin, and cosmonauts Valery G. Korzun and Sergei Y.Treschev. Korzun, Treschev, and Whitson comprised the ISS “Expedition Five” crew, and stayed aboard the ISS when Endeavour departed with the Expedition Four crew.

Endeavour delivered supplies and equipment to the ISS, and returned unneeded hardware and materiel from the station. In a series of EVAs, the crew installed the Mobile Remote Service Base System on the Mobile Transporter, which extended the Canadarm2 robotic arm’s reach by allowing it to traverse the station’s length. They also replaced a wrist roll joint on the station’s robotic arm.

Finally …

This foray into space history wouldn’t be complete without noting how good it was to see SpaceX‘s Dragon space capsule become the first commercial vehicle to dock with the space station. Well done!

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First Energia Launch Attempt — And, Atlantis Flies to Mir

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Twenty-five years ago today — May 15, 1987 — the USSR launched its first Energia rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.


(Energia-Polyus, prior to being raised for launch. Image from the Buran-Energia site.)

The Energia was a heavy-lift booster built by the Soviet Union to launch their “Buran” space shuttle. On its maiden flight with the Polyus upper stage instead of Buran, the Energia performed as intended but the upper stage did not place the payload in orbit. According to the Wikipedia entry:

The Soviets had originally announced that the launch as a successful sub-orbital test of the new Energia booster with a dummy payload, but some time later it was revealed that the flight had, in fact, been intended to orbit the Polyus, a UKSS military payload. The two stages of the Energia launcher functioned as designed, but the Polyus payload failed to reach orbit. Due to a software error in its attitude control system, the burn of the Polyus’ orbital insertion motor failed to insert the payload into orbit. Instead, the payload reentered the atmosphere over the Pacific ocean.

According to the Buran-Energia site,

It would seem that Polyus is the Soviet response to the project “Star Wars” launched by the American president Reagan. It was to be in fact a space combat laser station. Finally, we know very few things about this apparatus and its real use. Officially it was intended to make scientific experiments in upper atmosphere.

Very interesting.

[BREAK, BREAK]

Ten years later — on this date in 1997 — the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-84. The shuttle carried U.S. astronauts Charles J. Precourt, Eileen M. Collins, C. Michael Foale, Carlos I. Noriega, and Edward T. Lu; French astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoy; and Russian cosmonaut Elena V. Kondakova to the Mir space station. Foale stayed on Mir, and the shuttle brought astronaut Jerry Linenger back to Earth after his 123-day space station stay.

Quite a contrast with the cold war days.

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First Inhabitants of Salyut-7

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Thirty years ago today — May 13, 1982 — the USSR launched a Soyuz-T from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, carrying the first crew to their newest space station.


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

Mission Soyuz T-5 launched on (of course) a Soyuz rocket, carrying cosmonauts Anatoli N. Berezovoy and Valentin V. Lebedev. As noted on the Wikipedia page, it was the first mission to the Salyut 7 space station, which had only been launched a few weeks earlier.

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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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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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