Category Archives: Space

Nukes in Space! (Well, One Little Nuclear Reactor…)

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Forty-five years ago today — April 3, 1965 — an Atlas Agena-D rocket launched from Vandenberg AFB carrying SNAP-10A, the first nuclear reactor to be launched into space.*


(SNAP-10A reactor undergoing testing. US Department of Energy photo.)

Part of the System for Nuclear Auxiliary Power (SNAP) program, the reactor tested nuclear power generation in the space environment.

The SNAP reactor was designed to be remotely started and operated in space. In this manner, any hazardous radiation associated with the nuclear fission reaction is not produced until after the reactor safely reaches orbit. The hazards to ground personnel are minimized and since radioactive fission products are not present before the reactor is operated, less of a hazard exists during launch if an accidental reentry should occur….

Twelve hours after launch, the nuclear reactor was automatically brought up to operating temperature and initially produced more than 600 watts of electrical power. Following 43 days of successful operation, the reactor was shut down as the result of a high voltage failure in the electrical system of the Agena spacecraft. All flight test objectives were met with the exception of the expected length of operation. The reactor remains in polar orbit today.

Also on this date, 15 years ago, a Pegasus rocket launched from its L-1011 carrier aircraft out of Vandenberg, carrying three small satellites. It launched the lightning mapping satellite MICROLAB-1, along with two ORBCOMM transponders. (To anyone else, that launch is probably not significant, but every Pegasus launch resonates with me because I played a very small role in that program when I was stationed at Edwards AFB.)

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*Several sources agree that this launch did indeed carry the SNAP-10A reactor; in contrast, the National Space Science Data Center page for this launch states that it carried a SNAP-9A radioisotope thermal generator (the same type to power the Transit series of navigational satellites). Normally the NSSDC pages are quite authoritative, but in this case I believe it has a typo. (As of today, anyway.)

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First Weather Satellite (No Foolin')

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Fifty years ago today — April 1, 1960 — TIROS-1 (Television and InfraRed Observation Satellite 1) was launched on a Thor rocket from Cape Canaveral.


(First television image sent back by TIROS-1. NASA image.)

TIROS-1 was the first weather satellite, and transmitted the first television images of the Earth from space. It only operated until the middle of June 1960, but during that time it sent back thousands of images and proved the feasibility of global weather observation from space.

In related non-news, TIROS-1 was mentioned by President Kennedy in his “we choose to go to the moon” speech at Rice University in September 1962. And many years later, yours truly wrote TIROS-1 into a much less important speech for one of his bosses in the Pentagon.

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Farewell to the First U.S. Satellite

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Forty years ago today — March 31, 1970 — Explorer-1 burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere. The first successful U.S. satellite, it had been launched on January 31, 1958.

Explorer-1’s primary scientific instrument, a cosmic ray detector, returned lower than expected results, which led Dr. James Van Allen to postulate that

the instrument may have been saturated by very strong radiation from a belt of charged particles trapped in space by Earth’s magnetic field. The existence of these radiation belts was confirmed by another U.S. satellite launched two months later, and they became known as the Van Allen Belts in honor of their discoverer.

During its lifetime, Explorer-1 orbited the Earth over 58,000 times and traveled 1.66 billion miles (2.67 billion kilometers).

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Studying the Magnetosphere, Pushing the Envelope

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Ten years ago today — March 25, 2000 — the “Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration” spacecraft, also known as IMAGE, was launched from Vandenberg AFB, California, atop a Delta-II rocket.


(IMAGE launch. NASA image.)

IMAGE was designed to study the Earth’s magnetosphere for two years, but it exceeded all expectations and actually sent back observations for over five years.

IMAGE was the first satellite mission dedicated to imaging the Earth’s magnetosphere, the region of space controlled by the Earth’s magnetic field and containing extremely tenuous plasmas of both solar and terrestrial origin.

In other historical news, on March 25, 1960 — 50 years ago today — NASA test pilot Joseph A. Walker made his first X-15 flight at Edwards AFB, CA. Walker eventually

flew the research aircraft 24 times and achieved its fastest speed and highest altitude. He attained a speed of 4,104 mph (Mach 5.92) during a flight on June 27, 1962, and reached an altitude of 354,300 feet on August 22, 1963 (his last X-15 flight).

From a strictly personal point of view, I like these particular history items because I was stationed at both of those air bases during my career.

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Gemini, and Corned Beef

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Forty-five years ago today — March 23, 1965 — astronauts Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom and John W. Young launched from Cape Canaveral on Gemini Titan 3. It was the first manned Gemini flight and U.S.’s first two-man spaceflight.


(Gemini Titan 3 launch. NASA image.)

Grissom and Young orbited the earth three times, and performed manual maneuvers in orbit for the first time; their flight lasted just under 5 hours. To add to the tally of space “firsts,” Gus Grissom became the first person to eat a corned beef sandwich in space. From this NASA history page,

Grissom constantly complained about the dehydrated delicacies concocted by NASA nutritionists. He was willing to eat the reconstituted food only because there was nothing else available. Or so he thought. Gus had no idea that John Young had more than just souvenirs stowed in his space suit pockets.

“I was concentrating on our spacecraft’s performance, when suddenly John asked me, ‘You care for a corned beef sandwich, skipper?’ If I could have fallen out of my couch, I would have. Sure enough, he was holding an honest-to-john corned beef sandwich.” John had managed to sneak the deli sandwich, which was one of Grissom’s favorites, into his pocket. As Gus sampled the treat, tiny bits of rye bread began floating around the pristine cabin and the crew was just about knocked over by the pungent aroma of corned beef wafting through the small confines of the spacecraft. “After the flight our superiors at NASA let us know in no uncertain terms that non-man-rated corned beef sandwiches were out for future space missions. But John’s deadpan offer of this strictly non-regulation goodie remains one of the highlights of our flight for me.”

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X-Series Flight Testing Continues at Eddie's Airplane Patch

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Forty years ago today — March 19, 1970 — USAF test pilot Major Jerauld R. Gentry made the first powered flight in the X-24A lifting body.

(X-24A with rocket engine ignited after being dropped from the B-52 carrier aircraft. NASA image.)

The same B-52 used in the X-15 program (and later in the Pegasus program*) carried the X-24A to about 40,000 ft (13,860 m) altitude, where it was dropped and its rocket engine took the rest of the way through its flight profile. It then glided to a landing on the dry lakebed at Edwards AFB.

Over the life of the program, the X-24A made 28 powered flights, reaching a maximum speed of 1,036 mph (1,667 km/hr) and a maximum altitude of 71,407 ft (21,765 m). According to the project description on this page, NASA later used the X-24A’s shape as the basic profile for the X-38 Crew Return Vehicle demonstrator.

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*Full disclosure: When I was stationed at Edwards (1986-90), I was on the Flight Readiness Review committee for the first Pegasus launch from that same B-52.

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Voshkod-2, Aleksei Leonov, and the First Spacewalk

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Forty-five years ago today — March 18, 1965 — the Voskhod-2 mission launched from Baikonur in what was then the USSR (but is now Kazakhstan). Its crew consisted of cosmonauts Pavel I. Belyayev and Aleksei A. Leonov.

Leonov performed the first-ever spacewalk on that flight, and later had a spaceship named after him in the book and movie named after this year.

In the January 2005 issue of Air & Space Smithsonian Leonov recounted how difficult the Voshkod-2 mission was.

I realized how deformed my stiff spacesuit had become, owing to the lack of atmospheric pressure. My feet had pulled away from my boots and my fingers from the gloves attached to my sleeves, making it impossible to reenter the airlock feet first….

The only solution was to reduce the pressure in my suit by opening the pressure valve and letting out a little oxygen at a time as I tried to inch inside the airlock. At first I thought of reporting what I planned to do to mission control. But I decided against it. I did not want to create nervousness on the ground….

I could feel my temperature rising dangerously high, with a rush of heat from my feet traveling up my legs and arms, due to the immense physical exertion all the maneuvering involved. It was taking far longer than it was supposed to. Even when I at last managed to pull myself entirely into the airlock, I had to perform another almost impossible maneuver. I had to curl my body around in order to close the airlock….

But,

[The] difficulties I experienced reentering the spacecraft were just the start of a series of dire emergencies that almost cost us our lives.

You can read the whole fascinating article here.

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Mariner-10's Farewell to Mercury

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On March 16, 1975 — 35 years ago today — the Mariner-10 spacecraft made its last flyby of Mercury.


(Mariner-10. NASA image.)

This was also its closest flyby, passing within 327 km (203 mi) of the planet. On this flyby, Mariner-10 discovered that Mercury has an intrinsic magnetic field.

Mariner-10 was the first spacecraft to visit two planets, and the first to use a gravity-assist maneuver in a “slingshot” around Venus to reach Mercury. The mission succeeded despite some difficulties, however. One problem the mission encountered was of special interest to spacecraft designers in the future:

A trajectory correction maneuver was made 10 days after launch. Immediately following this manuever the star-tracker locked onto a bright flake of paint which had come off the spacecraft and lost lock on the guide star Canopus. An automated safety protocol recovered Canopus, but the problem of flaking paint recurred throughout the mission.

Another first for the mission occurred when an attitude control problem used up excessive propellant. Mission planners devised a never-before-used procedure to “use … solar wind on the solar panels to orient the spacecraft.”

Since 1975, when the last of its attitude control propellant was used up, Mariner-10 has remained in orbit around the sun.

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First U.S. Astronaut Launched Out of Baikonur

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Fifteen years ago today — March 14, 1995 — U.S. astronaut Norman Thagard launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on mission Soyuz TM-21, along with Russian cosmonauts Gennady Strekalov and Vladimir Dezhurov.


(Soyuz TM-21 mission patch. The annotation at the top refers not to the Soyuz launch, but to Mir space station expedition EO-18. Creative Commons image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Thagard was the first NASA astronaut to launch on a Russian rocket, and then the first American to stay aboard the Mir space station.

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Another Space Pioneer, a Half Century Past

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Fifty years ago today — March 11, 1960 — the Pioneer-5 space probe launched from Cape Canaveral atop a Thor-Able rocket.


(Pioneer-5 with its solar power panels extended. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Pioneer-5 was one of the first deep space missions, and achieved a heliocentric (sun-centered) orbit between Earth and Venus. Scientists maintained contact with the vehicle for 106 days and received signals from a distance of 36.2 million kilometers (22.5 million miles), the farthest distance achieved at that time in the space race. Telemetry received from Pioneer-5 confirmed the existence of the interplanetary magnetic field, which until then had been just theoretical.

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