Tag Archives: launch

Second Shuttle Shakedown

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Thirty years ago today — November 12, 1981 — astronauts Joe H. Engle and Richard H. Truly launched aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia.


(STS-2 launch. NASA image.)

Mission STS-2 began at 10:10 a.m. EST at Kennedy Space Center, and ended a little over 48 hours later — having been cut short by three days — when Engle and Truly landed at Edwards Air Force Base. Mission controllers ended the flight early because one of the shuttle’s fuel cells failed, reducing the amount of electricity and fresh water available; nevertheless, the crew achieved most of the mission objectives.

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Last Gemini Launch

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Forty-five years ago today — November 11, 1966 — Gemini XII launched from Cape Canaveral atop a Titan-II rocket.


(Gemini-12 astronaut “Buzz” Aldrin outside the capsule during an EVA. NASA image.)

Gemini-12 astronauts James A. Lovell, Jr. and Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr., spent 4 busy days in space, completing three extra-vehicular activities (EVA) — including one full-up “spacewalk” — as well as docking with a target vehicle, an Agena that was launched less than 2 hours earlier.

During one of the spacecraft’s orbits on November 12th, the crew were able to take pictures of a total eclipse that was visible in the Southern Hemisphere.

With the completion of the Gemini program, the U.S. space program turned its full attention to Apollo and the Moon.

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Surveying Mars

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Fifteen years ago today — November 7, 1996 — the Mars Global Surveyor launched from Cape Canaveral atop a Delta-II rocket.


(Mars Global Surveyor. NASA image.)

The first U.S. mission to arrive successfully at Mars in 20 years — since the Viking missions — Mars Global Surveyor entered Martian orbit in September 1997. Its planned aerobraking routine had to be radically altered when one of its solar panels did not lock into position; as a result, it did not enter its final “mapping orbit” until February 1999.

Even though its primary mission was only intended to last one Martian year — 687 Earth days — MGS actually examined the red planet for seven years. Its array of instruments “collected data on the surface morphology, topography, composition, gravity, atmospheric dynamics, and magnetic field” in order to “investigate the surface processes, geology, distribution of material, internal properties, evolution of the magnetic field, and the weather and climate of Mars.” NASA lost contact with the spacecraft in November 2006, just five days shy of its ten-year launch anniversary.

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Story Sale, and Some Space History

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First things first: my story “Sensitive, Compartmented” is tentatively slated for the April/May 2012 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction. I’m very happy about that, so it gets top billing on the blog.

For today’s space history tidbit: 40 years ago today — October 28, 1971 — Great Britain became the sixth nation to launch a satellite on its own rocket when a Black Arrow launch vehicle lifted the Prospero satellite out of the Woomera Test Range in Australia.

And speaking of Australia: the Australia party last night at World Fantasy Con seemed to go very well — a good crowd, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

And so it goes!

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First Saturn Suborbital Test Flight

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Fifty years ago today — October 27, 1961 — Saturn-I launched from Cape Canaveral. This launch was, as the title stated, the first test flight of the Saturn family of rockets that were intended to propel the Apollo astronauts to the Moon.


(Saturn SA-1 launch. NASA image.)

Also known as SA-1, the upper stages of the Saturn-I were filled with water ballast. The vehicle reached 84.8 miles altitude and flew 214.7 miles downrange into the Atlantic Ocean, achieving its mission objective of “verifying the aerodynamical and structural design of the Saturn 1 booster.”

Oh, to have been a part of that program! But at least I have a small collection of Saturn-related relics I salvaged during my time at the Rocket Lab.

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STEREO-A and STEREO-B

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I haven’t had a lot of space history posts recently. I try to limit myself to anniversaries in multiples of 5 years, to keep from repeating things, and to keep the pace from getting overwhelming. I also try not to include “routine” events like the launch of the Nth in a series of satellites … not that anything about space operations has become truly routine, of course. But here’s one for the record:

Five years ago today — October 26, 2006 — a Delta 2 rocket out of Cape Canaveral placed two solar observatories in orbit.


(STEREO spacecraft. NASA image.)

The Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory consisted of two identical spacecraft, STEREO-A and STEREO-B. Once in space, the two satellites were allowed to drift into different heliocentric orbits: STEREO-B ahead of the Earth (leading), and STEREO-A behind the Earth (lagging). From those vantage points, their observations could be combined to image the Sun “stereographically” and predict whether a coronal mass ejection was heading toward the Earth.

On February 6th of this year, STEREO A and B reached 180 degrees of separation, which “enabled, for the first time, the simultaneous observation of the entire Sun.”

In other news, I’m heading to the World Fantasy Convention today. Folks have been urging me to go to WFC for years; it’s a small convention, primarily of SF&F professionals. It seems a little odd to think of myself as an SF&F professional in my own right, but my 3rd and 4th professional sales are forthcoming: more on those later, when the contracts are signed (or when the editors give me the okay).

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Redstone — 70 Years of History, Much of it in Space

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Seventy years ago today — October 6, 1941 — the U.S. Army activated the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama.


(Redstone Arsenal building 7101, with Redstone missile in front. U.S. Army image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Redstone Arsenal was originally built to produce chemical ammunition for use in World War II, which it did very well. Then, in the postwar years, that experience with handling dangerous chemicals made Redstone a natural place to experiment with rockets and rocket propellants and eventually to be the home for the Army’s Aviation and Missile Research, Development, and Engineering Center; Army Space and Missile Defense Command; and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

Of course, I can’t mention Redstone Arsenal without mentioning the online magazine Redstone Science Fiction, the third issue of which included my story “Memorial at Copernicus.”

Also on this date, 30 years ago in 1981, the Solar Mesosphere Explorer launched from Vandenberg AFB, California, on a Delta rocket. SME was built to “investigate the processes that create and destroy ozone in the Earth’s mesosphere and upper stratosphere,” and operated until December 1988. The small experimental UoSAT (Oscar 9) satellite, built by the University of Surrey, launched as a dual payload on the same Delta rocket.

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First Orbital Launch From Kodiak

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Ten years ago yesterday — sorry, I haven’t been feeling well — on September 30, 2001, an Athena-1 launch vehicle lifted off from the Kodiak Launch Complex in Alaska.


(Starshine-3 undergoing inspection at the US Naval Research Laboratory. NASA image.)

The rocket carried the Starshine-3 microsatellite (pictured above) along with three other small satellites.

Starshine-3 was an updated version of the “Student Tracked Atmospheric Research Satellite Heuristic International Networking Experiment,” which I first covered in this space history blog entry.

The other payloads on this launch were:

  • Picosat-9, a British-built US DoD space test satellite
  • PCSat, the “Prototype Communications SATellite,” an amateur radio relay spacecraft built by US Naval Academy midshipmen
  • Sapphire, the “Stanford Audiophonic Photographic Infrared Experiment,” a US DoD microsatellite built by Stanford University students and faculty
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Happy Birthday, H.G. Wells … and Some Space History

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One hundred forty-five years ago today — September 21, 1866 — Herbert George Wells was born in Bromley, Kent, England.


(H.G. Wells, sometime around 1890. Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

H.G. Wells, of course, was one of the pioneers of science fiction. Almost everyone is familiar with something Wells wrote — War of the Worlds or The Time Machine or The Invisible Man or The Island of Doctor Moreau — or at least the movie versions of what he wrote.

As for the space history, 10 years ago tomorrow the Deep Space 1 probe flew by Comet Borrelly. Its closest approach was within 1400 miles (2200 kilometers) of the comet.


(Comet Borrelly, taken by Deep Space 1. NASA image.)

And 5 years ago tomorrow — September 22, 2006 — Japan launched the Hinode (“sunrise”) spacecraft to study the Sun’s magnetic field. Hinode, originally known as Solar-B, was a follow-on to their 1991 Solar-A, or “Yohkoh” mission.

___

Edited to correct date references.

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Space History Today: An Iranian-Born American's Flight to the Int'l Space Station

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Five years ago today — September 18, 2006 — Soyuz TMA-9 launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome toward its rendezvous with the International Space Station.


(Spaceflight participant Anousheh Ansari in the Zvezda module of the ISS, holding a plant that was grown there. NASA image.)

Soyuz TMA-9 was piloted by Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, and carried U.S. astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria to his new post as the ISS mission commander. It also carried Anousheh Ansari, who had come to the U.S. from Iran as a teenager, earned engineering degrees from George Mason and George Washington universities, and with her husband made a fortune in the telecommunications industry.

Ms. Ansari paid her way on the Soyuz flight, becoming the world’s first female “space tourist” — though she preferred the term “spaceflight participant.” Two years before, she had contributed a sizable portion of her family fortune to sponsor the spaceflight X-Prize, which was re-named the Ansari X-Prize. The $10 million prize was won in October 2004 by Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites with their second suborbital SpaceShipOne flight.

Ms. Ansari spent a little more than a week aboard the ISS, and landed safely in Kazakhstan on September 29, 2006.

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