Category Archives: Space

Last Launch from San Marco, Kenya

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Twenty-five years ago today — March 25, 1988 — a joint U.S.-Italy mission lifted off from the San Marco Range, Kenya, on a Scout launch vehicle.


(Scout X-4 rocket with the earlier US-Italian satellite San Marco 1. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.)

The last satellite orbited from the San Marco facility on the Kenyan coast, San Marco D/L carried a specialized suite of sensors to study the interaction between the solar wind and the Earth’s thermosphere and ionosphere. One instrument, the Wind and Temperature Spectrometer, failed after 20 days, but the rest of the spacecraft operated nominally. Though the satellite was intended to last a full year, it re-entered the atmosphere on December 6, 1988.

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Space History: the Nascent Strategic Defense Initiative

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Thirty years ago today — March 23, 1983 — President Ronald Reagan announced a research program that would eventually become the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).

President Reagan called for a major research-and-development effort on space-based defenses against ballistic missile attacks. Some of the work I did in the Air Force was related to SDI, which became known (usually pejoratively) as “Star Wars.”

Those of us who were geeks of one stripe or another didn’t really mind the nickname.

According to this excerpt from Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War by Frances Fitzgerald,

The announcement, made in an insert into a routine defense speech, came as a surprise to everyone in Washington except for a handful of White House aides. The insert had not been cleared with the Pentagon, and although Reagan was proposing to overturn the doctrine which had ruled U.S. nuclear strategy for more than three decades, the secretary of defense and the secretary of state were informed only a day or so before the speech was broadcast.

I find that fascinating: visionary, and quite bold. I appreciate that.

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Space History, 1958: Vanguard 1

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Fifty-five years ago today — March 17, 1958 — a Vanguard rocket carried the Vanguard 1 satellite to orbit out of Cape Canaveral.


(Vanguard 1. Note the very small solar panels on the side of the satellite. NASA image.)

Vanguard 1 was placed in an elliptical orbit with a perigee of 654 km (406 mi) and an apogee of 3969 km (2466 mi), inclined 34.25 degrees from the equator.

Original estimates had the orbit lasting for 2000 years, but it was discovered that solar radiation pressure and atmospheric drag during high levels of solar activity produced significant perturbations in the perigee height of the satellite, which caused a significant decrease in its expected lifetime to only about 240 years.

Vanguard 1’s batteries ran down in June 1958, stopping its battery-powered 10-mW transmitter, but its solar-powered 5-mW transmitter continued operating until May 1964. Vanguard 1 may still be optically tracked from Earth, and is the longest-orbiting man-made satellite.

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X-38 ‘Crew Return Vehicle’ Test Flight

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Fifteen years ago yesterday — March 12, 1998 — NASA conducted the first “drop test” of the X-38 at the Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards AFB.


(The X-38 drops away from NASA’s B-52. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.)

The X-38 program developed a series of prototype “lifeboats” for the International Space Station. The Crew Return Vehicle (CRV) would have been

an emergency vehicle to return up to seven International Space Station (ISS) crewmembers to Earth. It [would] be carried to the space station in the cargo bay of a space shuttle and attached to a docking port. If an emergency arose that forced the ISS crew to leave the space station, the CRV would be undocked and – after a deorbit engine burn – the vehicle would return to Earth much like a space shuttle.

The X-38 program was cancelled in 2002.

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Making the ISS More International

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Five years ago today — March 11, 2008 — the Space Shuttle Endeavour launched from the Kennedy Space Center on a mission to the International Space Station.


(Astronaut Richard Linnehan on the first spacewalk of STS-123. NASA image.)

The STS-123 crew included U.S. astronauts Dominic L. Gorie, Gregory H. Johnson, Robert L. Behnken, Michael J.Foreman, and Richard M. Linnehan, and Japanese astronaut Takao Doi. The mission transported astronaut Garrett E. Reisman to the ISS and brought French astronaut Leopold Eyharts back to Earth.

The mission also delivered the first piece of Japan’s Kibo research laboratory, and a new Canadian robotic arm known as “Dextre,” both of which were successfully attached to the ISS. In all, STS-123 spent a little over 2 weeks in space before landing back at KSC on March 26th.

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‘Jules Verne’ Reaches Space

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Five years ago today — March 9, 2008 — the European Space Agency launched an Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou carrying the Jules Verne cargo vehicle to the International Space Station.


(ISS crewmembers pose for a portrait inside the Jules Verne ATV with an original Jules Verne manuscript and a 19th century Jules Verne book. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Jules Verne, also known as Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) 1,

remained a “free-flyer” until the undocking of STS 123 on 27 March. It successfully demonstrated the ability to reach ISS within 3.5 km with the help of GPS transmissions, and, in another attempt, to reach within 11 m with the help of laser ranging. These demonstrations earned the approval by the ISS managers to make an actual docking with the Zvezda module of the ISS on 03 April 2008.

The cargo vessel remained docked to the ISS for six months; then, filled with garbage from the station, it undocked and deorbited. It burned up in the atmosphere on September 29, 2008.

Of particular note to me (and presumably to my geeky and writerly friends), the ATV carried an original Jules Verne manuscript into space. That speaks highly of ESA’s confidence in the craft and the Ariane launch vehicle.

For more information, here’s a NASA fact sheet and the Wikipedia entry on the ATV program. And this ESA page has a video of the launch.

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The Evolution of Launch Capability: 3 Decades, 3 Launches

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Today’s space history entry provides a glimpse of how space launch operations improved in the first 20 years of the space age.

First, 55 years ago today — March 5, 1958 — we attempted to launch the Explorer 2 satellite from Cape Canaveral on a Jupiter C rocket. The vehicle lifted off without incident (which some in the industry might consider a launch success), but its upper stage failed and the satellite did not reach orbit.


(Explorer 2 launch. US Army image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Ten years later, on March 5, 1968, the small scientific satellite SOLRAD 9 launched aboard a Scout vehicle from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. SOLRAD 9 was also known as Explorer 37, and it operated successfully until 1974.

And then 10 years later still — on this date in 1978 — Landsat 3 launched atop a Delta rocket out of Vandenberg AFB, with the Oscar 8 amateur radio satellite along for the ride.

So, on this date in space history we had three launch attempts, each a decade removed from another, from three different launch bases, resulting chronologically in a failed mission, a successful mission, and a successful multi-satellite mission. That seems like progress.

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First International Space Flight, and a Precursor

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Thirty-five years ago today — March 2, 1978 — the Soyuz 28 mission launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on a flight to the Salyut-6 space station. Soyuz 28 rates as the first space mission with an international crew by virtue of the fact that Soviet cosmonaut Alexei A. Gubarev was joined by Czech (i.e., of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic) cosmonaut Vladimir Remek.

Ten years earlier — on March 2, 1968 — the USSR had launched the unmanned Zond 4 mission from Baikonur atop a Proton K. Previous Zond spacecraft had been planetary probes, but Zond 4 was designed as a manned capsule, though this test flight did not include occupants.


(Zond spacecraft atop Proton upper stage, in Baikonur assembly building. Image from Wikimedia Commons.)

The mission included a couple of interesting elements:

The trajectory away from the Moon was probably unintentional (although some claims were made that it was aimed away from the Moon to avoid complications of lunar gravity). The spacecraft supposedly could not be sent towards the Moon because of a malfunction in the attitude control system. On Earth, cosmonauts Popovich and Sevastyanov communicated from an isolated bunker with Yevpatoriya Flight Control Center in the Ukraine via a relay on board the spacecraft to simulate communications between cosmonauts in space and the ground controllers on Earth.

The Zond series of launches continued, but did not include any manned missions.

Sometimes it’s remarkable how short a time it took for manned spaceflight to become almost routine. But who knows how long it will be before it’s routine enough for the rest of us to enjoy?

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Pegasus Carries Student Satellite to Orbit

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Fifteen years ago today — February 25, 1998 — a Pegasus XL rocket launched a student-built satellite to track variations in nitric oxide pollutants in the atmosphere.


(Student Nitric Oxide Explorer integrated on the Pegasus launch vehicle. University of Colorado LASP image.)

The Student Nitric Oxide Explorer (SNOE) was built by University of Colorado students, under a program managed by the Universities Space Research Association.

Flying out of Vandenberg AFB, the Pegasus XL was dropped from its L-1011 carrier aircraft and propelled SNOE and the Broadband Advanced Technology Satellite (also known as BATSAT and later as Teledesic 1) into orbit.

The SNOE mission lasted nearly 6 years; the satellite de-orbited in December 2003. You can learn more about SNOE at this University of Colorado Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics page .

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Japanese X-Ray Telescope, and a Satellite’s Destruction

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Twenty years ago today — February 20, 1993 — Japan launched the Asuka x-ray observatory from Uchinoura Space Center atop an M-3SII rocket.


(Representation of Asuka satellite. JAXA image.)

Asuka, also known as ASTRO-D before launch and ASCA afterward, was a joint mission in which NASA and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology both provided spacecraft components in exchange for observation time with the orbiting telescope. The spacecraft operated normally for over seven years; however,

A solar flare on 14 July 2000 caused heating and expansion of the upper atmosphere, which increased the drag and external torque on ASCA. The attitude was perturbed, so the solar panels lost lock on the Sun, resulting in discharge of the batteries. ASCA reentered the atmosphere on March 2, 2001.

This date in space history is also marked by another satellite’s destruction, but this time it was deliberate: 5 years ago today, the guided-missile-cruiser USS Lake Erie launched a missile to intercept a disabled reconnaissance satellite. You can read contemporary news reports at Spy Satellite’s Downing Shows a New U.S. Weapon Capability and Navy says missile smashed wayward satellite.

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