Solar Observer Rides a Pegasus

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Ten Five years ago today — January 25, 2003 — a Pegasus XL rocket carried the SOlar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) satellite to orbit.


(SORCE during pre-launch integration. Orbital Sciences Corporation image from the University of Colorado SORCE page.)

The SORCE Sun-Earth Connection observation system was developed to measure incoming energy from the Sun for the purpose of studying its effects on climate change. Its instruments measured total solar radiation, including visible light, ultraviolet, infrared, and x-rays.*

The Pegasus rocket that carried the spacecraft to orbit was dropped from its L-1011 “mothership” after flying out of Cape Canaveral.

You can find more information about SORCE on its University of Colorado page.

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*Bonus points to anyone who can tell me, without Googling, why I listed them as “ultraviolet, infrared, and x-rays.”

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Space History Triple Play: Apollo, Endeavour, Pioneer

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First up: 45 years ago today — January 22, 1968 — a Saturn 1B launched the unmanned Apollo 5 mission from Cape Canaveral.


(Apollo 5 launch. NASA image.)

Apollo 5 was the first test flight of the Lunar Module (LM) ascent and descent stages. Once the LM was released into Earth orbit, its engines were fired in sequences that simulated a lunar approach and landing, including an abort scenario. Despite one premature shutdown of the descent propulsion system, the overall mission was considered a success.

Thirty years later — 15 years ago today — the Space Shuttle Endeavour launched from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-89. US astronauts Terrence W. Wilcutt, Joe F. Edwards, Jr., James F. Reilly, Michael P. Anderson, Bonnie J. Dunbar, and Andrew S.W. Thomas, along with Russian cosmonaut Salizhan S.Sharipov, docked with the Mir space station where Thomas replaced astronaut David Wolf.

Finally, on this date 10 years ago, we received the last signal from the Pioneer 10 spacecraft. On its 30-year mission (far exceeding its 21-month design life), Pioneer 10 visited Jupiter and explored the outer solar system. At the time of its last contact, the spacecraft “was 7.6 billion miles from Earth, or 82 times the nominal distance between the Sun and the Earth,” cruising in the general direction of Aldebaran.

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New Story Announcement, and Awards Season Post

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The contract is in the mail, so I can announce that my novelette “What is a Warrior Without His Wounds?” is slated to appear in the July 2013 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.

This will be my third story to appear in Asimov’s. I should receive the galleys in a few weeks.

In other news, “award season” is upon us again. Members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America are in the process of nominating works for the Nebula Awards, while members of the World Science Fiction Convention (last year’s or this year’s, see below for more info) are in the process of nominating for the Hugo Awards. In comparison to more widely-known awards, the Nebulas are like unto the Academy Awards, while the Hugos are closer in character to the People’s Choice Awards.*

By virtue of 2012 being my most successful publishing year ever, I have four eligible stories: two short stories (“Sensitive, Compartmented,” Asimov’s, April/May 2012, which was listed [with 1 of a possible 3 stars] on Tangent Online’s Recommended Reading List for 2012, and “The Song of Uullioll,” Analog, July/August 2012) and two novelettes (“The Second Engineer,” Asimov’s, October/November 2012, and “SEAGULLs, Jack-o-Lanterns, and Interstitial Spaces,” Analog, November 2012). If you’re eligible to nominate and you didn’t catch one of these stories in the magazine, write me a note — by comment, or by e-mail or Facebook or Twitter — and I’ll send you the story to consider.

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*Regarding the People’s Choice-type award, if you want to nominate and vote for the Hugo Awards, you can purchase a “supporting membership” to the convention for $60. The price gets you electronic copies of the nominated works, plus portfolios of artwork from the nominated artists, all of which adds up to more than the price of the membership. To nominate, though, you must join the convention before the end of January.

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Shuttle Columbia's Last Liftoff

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Ten years ago today — January 16, 2003 — the Space Shuttle Columbia launched from Kennedy Space Center on a mission that would end sixteen minutes too soon.


(STS-107 crew in-flight photo. NASA image.)

At the time the shuttle launched, we (by which I mean the public) thought the mission profile was nominal. The STS-107 crew — Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, Michael P. Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David M. Brown, Laurel B. S. Clark, and Israel’s first astronaut, Ilan Ramon — busied themselves with scientific investigations around the clock during their 15 days in space.

KSC landing was planned for Feb. 1 after a 16-day mission, but Columbia and crew were lost during reentry over East Texas at about 9 a.m. EST, 16 minutes prior to the scheduled touchdown at KSC. A seven-month investigation followed, including a four month search across Texas to recover debris. The search was headquartered at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, La. Nearly 85,000 pieces of orbiter debris were shipped to KSC and housed in the Columbia Debris Hangar near the Shuttle Landing Facility. The KSC debris reconstruction team identified pieces as to location on the orbiter, and determined damaged areas. About 38 percent of the orbiter Columbia was eventually recovered.

In perhaps a fitting tribute to the STS-107 crew, some of the science experiments were found during the debris recovery effort. While much of the data the astronauts gathered had been transmitted during flight to colleagues on the ground, the recovered experiments produced additional valuable information.

Visit the STS-107 memorial page for more information.

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Return to Flight for Sea Launch

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Now there’s a space history headline that’s hard to parse out of context!

Five years ago today — January 15, 2008 — Sea Launch successfully placed a payload in orbit from its floating launch platform, after a year-long hiatus due to a previous launch failure.


(Thuraya 3 launch. Image linked from Sea Launch web site.)

The payload was Thuraya 3, a communications satellite for the United Arab Emirates. The Zenit 3SL rocket lifted off from the Odyssey launch platform while the vessel held position along the equator, almost due south of Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean.

I have a soft spot in my heart for Sea Launch, having spent a lot of time at their Long Beach headquarters and gone to sea with them in 2002 for the Galaxy IIIC launch, so it was great to see them have another launch success.

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A Space History First, AND a New NASA Communication Relay Satellite

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Twenty years ago today — January 13, 1993 — the Space Shuttle Endeavour launched from the Kennedy Space Center carrying a new Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS).


(EVA-1 Crewmember Greg Harbaugh working in the Shuttle’s payload bay. NASA image.)

The STS-54 crew — John H. Casper, Donald R. McMonagle, Gregory J. Harbaugh, Mario Runco, and Susan J. Helms — spent almost six days in space. They deployed the fifth TDRS spacecraft during their first day in orbit; the TDRS’s Inertial Upper Stage maneuvered it into its higher operational orbit.

The crew spent their remaining time in space conducting a variety of experiments: they took spectrographic readings of X-ray sources with the Diffuse X-ray Spectrometer (DXS); studied biological systems under microcravity using the Commercial General Bioprocessing Apparatus (CGPA), the Chromosome and Plant Cell Division in Space Experiment (CHROMEX), and the Physiological and Anatomical Rodent Experiment (PARE); measured flame propagation in microgravity with the Solid Surface Combustion Experiment (SSCE); et cetera.

As for the space history “first” — on this mission, then-Major Helms became the first U.S. military woman to fly in space. Still on active duty in the USAF, she is now a Lieutenant General and the Commander of 14th Air Force at Vandenberg AFB.

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Fire and Ice — Delta II Polar Orbit Double Shot

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Ten years ago today — January 12, 2003 — a Delta II rocket launched from Vandenberg AFB carrying two very different spacecraft.


(A representation of ICESAT’s orbit and its measurement of ice sheet thickness. NASA image.)

On the “fire” side, CHIPS — the Cosmic Hot Interstellar Spectrometer — was an astrophysics spacecraft sent up to study the plasma in the “local interstellar bubble.” It primarily looked at “hot and diffuse nebulae at about a million degrees temperature.”

CHIPS rode into space with ICESAT, the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite. ICESAT carried the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System to measure the thickness of ice sheets.

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Three Days, Three Lunar Launches … A Few Years Apart

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It seemed interesting that the anniversaries of three lunar launches fell on three consecutive days, so I’ve grouped them all in one blog post.


(Lunar Prospector. NASA image.)

The first of the three launches happened 45 years ago today — January 7, 1968 — when Surveyor 7 launched from Cape Canaveral on an Atlas Centaur rocket. The spacecraft landed on the Moon on January 9, making it the fifth of the Apollo pathfinder series to achieve a soft landing.

And 40 years ago tomorrow — January 8, 1973 — the Soviet Union launched Luna 21 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on a Proton K rocket. Luna 21 carried and deployed Lunokhod 2, the USSR’s second lunar rover. The rover covered about 37 km during its four months of operations.

Finally, 15 years ago yesterday — January 6, 1998* — Lunar Prospector launched on an Athena 2 rocket out of Cape Canaveral. Lunar Prospector entered a low lunar polar orbit in order primarily to map the Moon’s surface for possible polar ice deposits, though it also carried instruments to study the Moon’s magnetic and gravity fields.

The mission ended on 31 July 1999 at 9:52:02 UT (5:52:02 EDT) when Lunar Prospector was deliberately targeted to impact in a permanently shadowed area of a crater near the lunar south pole. It was hoped that the impact would liberate water vapor from the suspected ice deposits in the crater and that the plume would be detectable from Earth, however, no plume was observed.

The spacecraft was sent into Shoemaker crater, and carried a portion of the remains of astronomer Eugene Shoemaker, which became a topic of discussion among the lunar colonists in my unpublished novel, Walking on the Sea of Clouds.

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*It was already January 7 under Greenwich Mean Time (Universal Time).

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Another New (and More Serious) Song: ‘Winter Simplifies the World’

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A few weeks ago I had the chance to debut a couple of new songs at “Winter Tales,” an Orange County Library event organized by James Maxey. I previously posted the video of the second song, “Tauntauns to Glory,” and here’s the video of the first — and much more serious — song, “Winter Simplifies the World.”

The clip includes James introducing me and a little about the inspiration for the song: my year at Thule Air Base in Greenland. After I sing the song, I lament the fact that it turned out to be pretty emotionally heavy, and that becomes my way of introducing the much lighter, Star Wars-inspired “Tauntauns to Glory”.

Finally, here are links to videos of the other “Winter Tales” presented that night —

It was a lot of fun, and I’m very glad James let me be a part of it!

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Happy New Year, and My illogiCon Schedule

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Happy 2013 to one and all! I hope your New Year has started well, and that it gets better as it goes along!


(Professor Schroedington, the illogiCon mascot, from their CafePress store.)

A new year means a new round of science fiction and fantasy conventions, and the first one on my calendar is illogiCon, to be held right here in the Research Triangle 11-13 January. Here’s my schedule for the event:

Friday the 11th

  • Filk Workshop, 8 PM

Saturday the 12th

  • Panel, “Finance for Beginning Writers,” 10 AM
  • Filk Concert, 2 PM
  • Baen Books Traveling Road Show, 3:30 PM

Sunday the 13th

  • Reading, 1 PM
  • Panel, “Sitting in the Hot Seat,” 3 PM

Tim Powers is the Writer Guest of Honor, Mark Van Name is the Toastmaster, and a whole lot of other cool people are guests at this year’s con. I know I’ll have a great time! Hope to see you there.

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