Category Archives: Space

Challenger Launches with Spacelab, and a Titan-IV Farewell

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Twenty-five years ago yesterday* — April 29, 1985 — the Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-51B.


(STS-51B launch. NASA image.)

Astronauts Robert F. Overmyer, Frederick D. Gregory, Don L. Lind, Norman E. Thagard, William E. Thornton, Lodewijk van den Berg and Taylor G. Wang launched the student-built Northern Utah Satellite (NUSAT-1) and spent a week in space with the European Space Agency’s Spacelab-3.

And on April 29, 2005 — 5 years ago yesterday — the last Titan-IV to be launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station blasted off with a classified National Reconnaissance Office satellite aboard. Titan rockets had been launching military and civil payloads for nearly five decades, and this launch left one final Titan-IV in the inventory, which launched from Vandenberg AFB in October 2005.

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*Apologies for the tardy space history entry. As Poppa says, I’m “a day late and a dollar short.”

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Two Space Anniversaries: a First for China, and Hubble Reaches Orbit

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Forty years ago today — April 24, 1970 — China joined the “space club” by launching its first satellite, appropriately named China-1. China was the fifth nation to launch its own satellite.

And 20 years ago — on this date in 1990 — the Space Shuttle Discovery launched from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-31 to deploy the Hubble Space Telescope.


(STS-31 mission patch. NASA image. Click to enlarge.)

The STS-31 crew consisted of astronauts Loren J. Shriver, Charles F. Bolden (the current NASA Administrator), Steven A. Hawley, Bruce McCandless and Kathryn D. Sullivan. The HST had more than its share of problems, given its blurred optics and the need to mount a repair mission, but its launch was still a momentous occasion for space science. It has brought us remarkable images year after year, more than I can count.


(Hubble Space Telescope deployment from STS-31. NASA image.)

It was momentous for yours truly, also: when it landed on April 29th at Edwards AFB, I was once again on duty as part of the AF Flight Test Center shuttle recovery team. It really doesn’t seem like so long ago, yet it seems like another lifetime ….

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First Molniya Satellite — Highly Elliptical Orbit for High Latitude Communications

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Forty-five years ago today — April 23, 1965 — the Soviet Union launched Molniya-1 on a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur.

The satellite was placed in a very particular orbit: highly elliptical, with perigee (the lowest altitude) very close to the Earth’s southern hemisphere and apogee (the highest altitude) far above the northern hemisphere. By carefully selecting the angle of inclination (how “tilted” the orbital plane is from the equatorial plane), they produced a situation in which the satellite’s apparent motion over the northern hemisphere was very small, providing extended communications coverage in the polar regions where geosynchronous satellites could not.

The orbit soon became known as a Molniya orbit, after the Molniya satellites that were first inserted there. “Molniya,” itself, means “lightning.”

Here’s a wonderful YouTube video showing how the Molniya orbit works:

— BREAK, BREAK —

And, congratulations to the Air Force’s X-37B team for their successful launch last night. (Head to the Space Warfare Forum if you want to discuss it.) Well done!

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A Space DART That Hit Its Mark Too Hard

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Five years ago today — April 15, 2005 — the “Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology” (DART) spacecraft was launched by a Pegasus-XL rocket from Orbital Sciences Corporation’s L-1011 carrier aircraft flying out of Vandenberg AFB.


(Technicians prepare the DART spacecraft for flight. Orbital Sciences Corporation image from http://www.msfc.nasa.gov/news/dart/. Click to enlarge.)

The DART spacecraft was meant to rendezvous with and maneuver around the Multiple Paths, Beyond-Line-of-Sight Communications (MUBLCOM) satellite; however, the mission was not successful.

From the mishap investigation report,

DART performed as planned during the first eight hours through the launch, early orbit, and rendezvous phases of the mission, accomplishing all objectives up to that time, even though ground operations personnel noticed anomalies with the navigation system. During proximity operations, however, the spacecraft began using much more propellant than expected. Approximately 11 hours into what was supposed to be a 24-hour mission, DART detected that its propellant supply was depleted, and it began a series of maneuvers for departure and retirement. Although it was not known at the time, DART had actually collided with MUBLCOM 3 minutes and 49 seconds before initiating retirement.

I don’t know if they characterized it as a “successful failure,” in that they learned something useful from it, but it’s important to try these things, even if some of them fail. As I heard Howard Hendricks say many years ago, “If you’re not falling down, you’re not learning to ski.”

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Satellite Navigation, a Half Century Ago

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Fifty years ago today — April 13, 1960 — the first navigational satellite was launched from Cape Canaveral on a Thor Able-Star booster.


(Transit satellite. Smithsonian Institute image from http://www.nasm.si.edu/exhibitions/gps/before.html.)

Called Transit-1B (the 1A spacecraft had been lost in September 1959 when the launch vehicle’s third stage failed), the small spin-stabilized Navy satellite and its later companions proved the feasibility of using satellite signals for geolocation. Transit paved the way for the Global Positioning System we know today.

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Not Space Politics: a Politician in Space

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Twenty-five years ago today — April 12, 1985 — Space Shuttle Discovery, which is in space right now, lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-51D.


(STS-51D launch. NASA image.)

The Discovery crew consisted of astronauts Karol J. Bobko, Don E. Williams, Margaret Rhea Seddon, S. David Griggs, Jeffrey A. Hoffman, and Charles D. Walker, plus astronaut/Senator E. “Jake” Garn. Senator Garn was the first active member of Congress to fly into space, but he was uniquely qualified to do so, having been a Naval aviator and then a pilot in the Air Force Reserve.

They deployed two satellites, Telesat-1 (also known as Anik-C1) and Syncom-IV (also known as LEASAT-3), though the latter did not spin up properly and its boost motor failed to ignite. It was recovered and repaired on a later shuttle mission.

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Triskaidekalunia — The Launch of Apollo-13

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Forty years ago today — April 11, 1970 — the Apollo-13 mission launched from Cape Canaveral. Astronauts James A. Lovell, Jr., John L. “Jack” Swigert, Jr., and Fred W. Haise, Jr., were on their way to the Fra Mauro region of the moon.


(Apollo-13 launch. NASA image.)

Everything went well for the first two days, but on April 13th the Apollo-13 Service Module suffered a crippling explosion. The number two oxygen tank ruptured, causing a cascade of failures throughout the spacecraft’s systems — including the loss of all the oxygen from the number one tank as well.


(View of the damaged Service Module, taken by the Apollo-13 crew. NASA image.)

NASA aborted the Moon landing and turned their full attention to getting the astronauts home alive. The crew splashed down successfully on April 17th.

This page has a good explanation of the cause of the accident.

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Satellite Communications Go Commercial

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Forty-five years ago today — April 6, 1965 — the “Early Bird” satellite (also known as Intelsat-1) was launched by a Thor-Delta rocket out of Cape Canaveral.


(Thor-Delta rocket on the launch pad, with Echo-1 satellite, 1960. NASA image. Click to enlarge.)

Placed in geosynchronous orbit over the Atlantic Ocean, Early Bird was the first commercial communications satellite. It operated for three and a half years, and was the precursor to the dozens of spacecraft providing global communications today.

For more information, see this short history of communication satellites.

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First Pegasus Launch, Twenty Years Ago

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On April 5, 1990, the first live launch of a Pegasus rocket carried the PEGSAT experimental satellite into orbit.


(July 1991 picture of a Pegasus rocket being carried by NASA’s B-52. NASA image.)

PEGSAT was an interesting combination of an instrumentation package to monitor this first Pegasus launch; a small Navy communications relay satellite; and a science experiment involving the release of barium to observe “interactions of photoionized barium with magnetic and electric fields in the Earth’s magnetosphere and ionosphere.”

The Pegasus rocket was carried aloft from Edwards AFB and released by the same NASA B-52 that had conducted drop tests and launches of various experimental aircraft, including the X-15. Later, Orbital Sciences Corporation commissioned its own L-1011 carrier aircraft, which they kept at Vandenberg AFB.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I was on the Flight Readiness Review Committee for this launch, so this space anniversary is special to me. And somewhere I have a picture of me in front of Orbital Sciences’ L-1011/Pegasus combination….

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Last Mission to Mir

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Ten years ago today — April 4, 2000 — cosmonauts Sergei Zalyotin and Alexandr Kaleri launched aboard a Soyuz-U rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on mission Soyuz TM-30. It was the last Soyuz mission to the Russians’ Mir space station.


(View of Mir from Shuttle Atlantis during mission STS-86. NASA image. Click to enlarge.)

In hopes that the newly-formed MirCorp space venture would be able to run the station, Zalyotin and Kaleri were sent to repair it. The effort involved not only their Soyuz mission but also two Progress resupply missions with fuel and consumables. They were successful with some of their repair actions, as discussed on this page, and returned to earth on June 16th, but the Mir station was never inhabited again.

Mir re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere on March 23, 2001.

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