Tag Archives: launch

Double Dose of Space History: Lunar Photos Station Shuttle

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Forty-five years ago today — August 10, 1966 — Lunar Orbiter 1 was launched atop an Atlas Agena rocket out of Cape Canaveral.


(Lunar Orbiter spacecraft. NASA image.)

Lunar Orbiter 1 was the first of five spacecraft that took photographs of predominantly smooth areas of the Moon so landing sites for Surveyor and Apollo missions could be selected. Mission controllers got the opportunity to deal with some real-time problems during the spacecraft’s flight to the Moon:

The spacecraft experienced a temporary failure of the Canopus star tracker (probably due to stray sunlight) and overheating during its cruise to the Moon. The star tracker problem was resolved by navigating using the Moon as a reference and the overheating was abated by orienting the spacecraft 36 degrees off-Sun to lower the temperature.

Although some of the first orbiter’s photographs were smeared, the mission was an overall success, including taking the first two images of the Earth from the vicinity of the moon.

And on this date 10 years ago, the Space Shuttle Discovery launched from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-105. Astronauts Scott J. Horowitz, Frederick “Rick” W. Sturckow, Daniel T. Barry, and Patrick G. Forrester transported 7,000 pounds of supplies and equipment to the International Space Station. They also ferried the ISS Expedition 3 crew — Frank L. Culbertson, Jr. (see below), Vladimir N. Dezhurov, and Mikhail Tyurin — to the station and returned the Expedition 2 crew — Yury V. Usachev, James S. Voss, and Susan J. Helms — to Earth.

Eight years after his return to earth, I sat next to Captain (USN, Retired) Culbertson at the NASA Industry-Education Forum in Washington, DC. He was a very nice fellow, despite having graduated from a rival high school down in Charleston.

Many years ago I gave up my dream of being an astronaut (I’d already worked Shuttle landings at Edwards AFB, but failed to be accepted as a Flight Test Engineer candidate), but it’s cool to have met and worked for some. Thankfully, I can still take imaginary voyages through my own and others’ fiction.

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Last Mission of the Luna Program

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Thirty-five years ago today — August 9, 1976 — Luna-24 launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on a Proton-K rocket.


(Graphic of the lunar sample return portion of the Luna-24 mission. Image from the National Space Science Data Center.)

Luna-24 was the third Soviet mission to retrieve and return lunar ground samples, and the last mission for their Luna spacecraft series.

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Genesis Launched

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Ten years ago today — August 8, 2001– a Delta-II rocket launched from Cape Canaveral carrying the Genesis probe.*


(Genesis spacecraft. NASA image.)

Genesis operated for the next three years, collecting samples of the solar wind to discover clues about the origin and development of the solar system. It orbited the semi-stable L-1 point between Earth and the Sun.

In 2004 Genesis returned to earth with its samples, but its parachute did not deploy during re-entry. It crashed instead of soft-landing, though useful samples were still recovered from it.

You can learn more about the Genesis mission on this page.

___
*Not the one from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

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Dual-Satellite Mission: Dynamics Explorer

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Thirty years ago today — August 3, 1981 — a Delta rocket out of Vandenberg AFB placed two satellites in orbit for a unique interactive mission.


(DE-1 image of an aurora over North America, taken with the University of Iowa’s Spin-Scan Auroral Imager. NASA image.)

Dynamics Explorer 1 and Dynamics Explorer 2 were high- and low-altitude spacecraft, respectively, intended to

investigate the strong interactive processes coupling the hot, tenuous, convecting plasmas of the magnetosphere and the cooler, denser plasmas and gases corotating in the earth’s ionosphere, upper atmosphere, and plasmasphere.

The spacecrafts’ orbits were such that one made high-altitude observations while the other made low-altitude observations, which could be compared to better understand atmospheric dynamics and the interaction of our atmosphere with charged particles from the Sun. Mission operations ended in 1991.

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Summertime Shuttle

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Twenty years ago today — August 2, 1991 — the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center carrying five astronauts and a new Tracking and Data Relay Satellite.


(Nice shot of an unnamed storm, taken from STS-43. NASA image.)

The mission STS-43 crew, John E. Blaha, Michael A. Baker, Shannon W. Lucid, G. David Low, and James C. Adamson, released TDRS-E the same day, but remained in orbit another week conducting a variety of experiments.

— BREAK, BREAK —

In other (non-space-history) news, yesterday my speechwriting teacher Joan Detz kindly blogged about my story in Analog. Thanks, Joan!

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From Liberty Bell to Atlantis

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In other blog posts, I’ve catalogued the Space Shuttle landings I worked as part of the AF Flight Test Center team at Edwards AFB — I worked four landings, and saw quite a few more — and with that experience in mind I watched with proud sorrow the shuttle Atlantis glide in for its landing this morning at the Kennedy Space Center.

When the shuttle era began, we had high hopes for it, and though it was exciting to be even a small part of it the program never lived up to our expectations. But as we close the books on this phase of the U.S. space program, and especially as we look forward with hopeful anticipation to some new phase, let’s not forget to look back as well to the pioneers who braved the hazards of the earliest days of space exploration.

Because 50 years ago today — July 21, 1961 — Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom became the second U.S. man in space. His Liberty Bell 7 capsule launched into a suborbital trajectory atop a Redstone rocket, in a mission appropriately labeled Mercury-Redstone-4.


(View of earth from Mercury-Redstone-4. NASA image.)

The MR-4 capsule differed from Alan Shepard’s “Freedom-7” capsule in that it had an enlarged window and a new type of hatch:

The explosively actuated side hatch was used for the first time on the MR-4 flight. The mechanically operated side hatch on the MR-3 spacecraft was in the same location and of the same size but was considerably heavier (69 pounds rather than 23 pounds). The explosively actuated hatch utilizes an explosive charge to fracture the attaching bolts and thus separate the hatch from the spacecraft. Seventy 1/4-inch titanium bolts secure the hatch to the doorsill. A 0.06-inch diameter hole is drilled in each bolt to provide a weak point. A mild detonating fuse (MDF) is installed in a channel between an inner and outer seal around the periphery of the hatch. When the MDF is ignited, the resulting gas pressure between the inner and outer seal causes the bolts to fail in tension. The MDF is ignited by a manually operated igniter that requires an actuation force of around 5 pounds, after the removal of a safety pin. The igniter can be operated externally by an attached lanyard, in which case a force of at least 40 pounds is required in order to shear the safety pin.

However, “After splash-down, the explosive hatch activated prematurely while Grissom awaited helicopter pickup.” The capsule sank, but was ultimately recovered from its 15,000-foot-deep resting place.

Liberty Bell 7 was finally raised from its resting place on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, some 4.8 km below the surface and 830 km northwest of Grand Grand Turk Island, in 1999 after a number of expeditions. Two expeditions to the area, in 1992 and 1993, were unsuccessful in locating the capsule. The next expedition succeeded in locating the capsule on May 2, 1999, but the cable which linked the surface ship to the submersible (which would have towed the capsule to the surface) broke, resulting in the loss of the submersible and temporarily dashing the hopes of those who intended to retrieve a piece of history. A final expedition, to recover both the submersible and the capsule, succeeded on July 20, 1999, in raising the capsule to the surface. Still attached to the capsule was the recovery line from the helicopter which tried to save it from going under in 1961. Also among the artifacts found inside were some of Grissom’s gear and some Mercury dimes which had been taken into space as souvenirs.

Grissom, about whom you can read more in this expanded NASA biography, traveled into space once more, as commander of the first Gemini mission, and died in the Apollo-1 launch pad fire.

It seems somehow poignant for the last Space Shuttle to return to earth on the 50th anniversary of the first spaceflight of one of our country’s space pioneers.

May the time come soon when the U.S. once again launches our brave pioneers into orbit … and beyond.

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Gemini Ten

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Forty-five years ago today — July 18, 1966 — John W. Young and Michael Collins launched from Cape Canaveral on the Gemini-10 mission.


(Agena target vehicle as photographed from the Gemini-10 capsule. NASA image.)

Gemini-10 featured the first dual space rendezvous: Young and Collins rendezvoused with two target vehicles, Agena-10 and then Agena-8. In fact, Gemini-10 first docked with Agena-10, and then the astronauts moved the entire dual-spacecraft assembly into the orbital rendezvous with Agena-8.

One of the flight objectives was to retrieve experiment packages from the two Agena vehicles. The spacewalk was “limited to 25 minutes of outside activity due to lack of fuel,” and did not go exactly as planned:

Despite difficulties due to lack of handholds on the target vehicle Collins removed the fairing and retrieved the micrometeoroid detection equipment. During the EVA he lost his camera. He also retrieved the micrometeorite experiment mounted on the Gemini 10 spacecraft, but this apparently floated out of the hatch and was lost when Collins reentered the capsule.

Overall, though, the Gemini-10 mission was successful: Young and Collins splashed down on July 21st, having completed another step in the pathfinder checklist on the way to the Moon.

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Space History, Today: Final Shuttle Flight Begins

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The Space Shuttle Atlantis launched today on its final mission, and the final flight of the Space Transportation System program, STS-135.

My involvement in the Shuttle program was tangential — four shuttle landings at Edwards AFB — but still the end of the program is pretty bitter. It would at least be bittersweet if we had another system waiting in the wings.

Here’s where it all began, a little over 30 years ago, in a previous space history blog post and a picture:


(First shuttle launch: STS-1, April 12, 1981. NASA image.)

Meanwhile, in other space history: 35 years ago today — July 8, 1976 — Indonesia got its first telecommunications satellite with the launch of Palapa-1.

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Independence Day Shuttle Mission

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Five years ago today — July 4, 2006 — the Space Shuttle Discovery launched from the Kennedy Space Center on a mission to the International Space Station.


(STS-121 launch. NASA image.)

Mission STS-121 was the first ever to launch on Independence Day, though it did so after launch attempts on the 1st and 2nd were scrubbed.

U.S. astronauts Steven W. Lindsey, Mark E. Kelly, Stephanie D. Wilson, Michael E. Fossum, Piers J. Sellers, and Lisa M. Nowak brought German astronaut Thomas Reiter to the space station, where he joined ISS Expedition 13, and delivered 7400 pounds of supplies to the station. They also accomplished three spacewalks to work on the ISS structure and systems.

STS-121 was also the second shuttle return-to-flight mission after the loss of the Shuttle Columbia in February 2003. The mission flew an improved external tank and “the crew used the orbiter boom sensor system with a laser dynamic range imager, laser camera system and intensified television camera on the end, to examine the shuttle’s nose cap, port wing, leading edge of the starboard wing, and outside of the crew cabin.”

Of course, provided all systems remain “go,” the Shuttle era will come to a close at the end of this week. That will be a sad day.

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Monitoring Ozone from Orbit

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Fifteen years ago today — July 2, 1996 — a Pegasus-XL rocket lofted a small meteorological satellite into orbit.


(Ozone map based on TOMS data. NASA image.)

The Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer-Earth Probe, or TOMS-EP (or sometimes EP/TOMS), spacecraft operated until late 2005, and measured the distribution of ozone throughout the Earth’s atmosphere. The data set is quite extensive; if you’re curious, from this page you can find an historical record of ozone measurements for a location near you.

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