Tag Archives: nasa

An Astronomer's Astronomer, and a New Space Telescope

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One hundred twenty years ago today in space history — November 20, 1889 — astronomer Edwin P. Hubble was born in Marshfield, Missouri.


(Edwin Hubble, next to the Hooker Telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory. NASA image.)

Hubble earned his B.S. in mathematics and astronomy at the University of Chicago in 1910, and studied law at Oxford University as one of the first Rhodes Scholars. He served briefly in World War I, and returned to earn his doctorate at the University of Chicago. He spent his entire professional career at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Los Angeles. Among his discoveries, Hubble:

  • Found that Andromeda is a separate galaxy from our Milky Way
  • Went on to discover dozens of new galaxies outside our own
  • Classified galaxy types, as shown here
  • Calculated the rate of expansion of the universe

NASA, of course, honored Hubble by naming their most famous space telescope after him.


(Hubble Space Telescope. NASA image.)

And speaking of space telescopes, 5 years ago today, in 2004, NASA launched the Swift Telescope — also known as the Gamma Ray Burst Explorer, or Explorer-84 — on a Delta-II rocket from Cape Canaveral. The spacecraft, named after the bird, carried three instruments to detect and locate gamma ray bursts.

(Swift mission patch. Click to enlarge. NASA image.)

I think Edwin Hubble would be thrilled to see the new discoveries that have been made, by the telescope that bears his name as well as other, specialized instruments.

And I wonder what’s next….

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Searching the Cosmos for Background Radiation

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Twenty Years Ago — November 18, 1989 — the Cosmic Background Explorer, or COBE, was launched atop a Delta rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base. Here’s the 20th anniversary press release.


(Artist’s depiction of the COBE spacecraft. NASA image.)

And here’s a link to another nice artist’s conception of the spacecraft.

COBE was designed to measure the microwave background radiation left from the early universe. COBE carried three instruments:

  • Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment (DIRBE), to search for infrared background radiation
  • Differential Microwave Radiometer (DMR), to map the cosmic radiation
  • Far Infrared Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS), to compare the background radiation to a known standard

The astrophysics behind it are beyond me, but I like the pretty pictures.

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World Speed Record: 7,000 MPH

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Five years ago today — November 16, 2004 — the X-43A hypersonic test vehicle broke the world speed record.


(X-43A initial velocity was provided by a Pegasus rocket. NASA image.)

Its scramjet engine accelerated it to mach 9.6, nearly 7,000 miles per hour. The record it broke was its own, of mach 6.8 (nearly 5,000 mph), set on a March 2004 flight.

Of personal interest to me, a Pegasus rocket dropped from NASA’s B-52 provided the initial thrust to get the X-43A up to the flight regime where the scramjet engine would work.


(X-43A, Pegasus, and B-52 mothership. The X-43A is the small dark vehicle covering the words “U.S. Air Force.” NASA image.)

That gives me a personal, though indirect, connection to the flight: I was on the Flight Readiness Review Committee for the very first Pegasus launch when I was stationed at Edwards AFB.

Yes, I had a most fascinating Air Force career. (Fascinating to me, anyway.)

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Space Truckin', For Real

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Twenty-five years ago today — November 8, 1984 — Space Shuttle Discovery launched from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-51A. Astronauts Frederick H. (Rick) Hauck, David M. Walker, Joseph P. Allen, Anna L. Fisher, and Dale A. Gardner deployed two satellites, Telesat-H (Anik) and Syncom-IV-I (also known as LEASAT-1), and retrieved two disabled communications satellites, Palapa-B2 and Westar-VI.


(Astronauts Gardner and Allen on the Remote Manipulator System after capturing Westar VI. Note the “For Sale” sign. NASA image.)

It was the first time two satellites were captured for return to earth, and demonstrated a capability that only the space shuttle had (and still has, for as long as we continue to operate shuttles*). Their week-long mission ended on the 16th when Discovery landed back at KSC.

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*Makes me wonder if a space-retrieval capability could be a money-maker for some savvy space entrepreneurs….

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Budgeting Radiation on Space Shuttle CHALLENGER

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Twenty-five years ago today — October 5, 1984 — space shuttle mission STS-41G launched from the Kennedy Space Center.

(STS-41G mission patch. NASA image. Click to enlarge.)

Space Shuttle Challenger carried U.S. astronauts Robert L. Crippen, Jon A. McBride, Kathryn D. Sullivan, Sally K. Ride, David C. Leestma, and Paul D. Scully-Power, and Canadian astronaut Marc Garneau. This was the first space flight to include two women, and Kathryn Sullivan became the first female U.S. astronaut to perform a spacewalk. Garneau was the first Canadian payload specialist to fly in space, and Scully-Power was the first oceanographer in space.

The crew deployed the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite early in the flight; the ERBS was part of a larger Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) comparing the energy absorbed by the earth with what the planet emits into space.


(ERBE longwave radiation data. NASA image.)

The crew spent the rest of their eight days in orbit performing various experiments. In one, they demonstrated the possibility of refueling satellites in orbit.

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Space Radar Mission, 1994

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Fifteen years ago today — September 30, 1994 — astronauts Michael A. Baker, Terrence W. Wilcutt, Thomas D. Jones, Steven L. Smith, Daniel W. Bursch, and Peter J. K. Wisoff launched from the Kennedy Space Center aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour on mission STS-68.


(STS-68 mission patch. NASA image.)

The mission carried the Space Radar Laboratory on its second flight, and imaged some of the same areas the SRL had imaged before.

Flying SRL during different seasons allowed comparison of changes between first and second flights. SRL-2 was activated on flight day one, and around-the-clock observations conducted by astronauts split into two teams. Besides repeating data takes over same locations as on first flight, unusual events also imaged, including erupting volcano in Russia and islands of Japan after earthquake there. Also tested was ability of SRL-2 imaging radars, Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C (SIR-C) and X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (X-SAR), to discern difference between such human-induced phenomena as an oil spill in the ocean and naturally occurring film.

[BREAK, BREAK … BONUS SPACE HISTORY ITEM]

Normally I’d wait until next year to include this item, since I usually deal only in 5-year-multiple anniversaries, but this one is work-related.

I’ve been putting together aerospace history pages that focus on North Carolinians or people with connections to the state. It just so happens that four years ago today — September 30, 2005 — North Carolina astronaut William “Bill” McArthur launched on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, en route to taking command of International Space Station Expedition 12.

If you know any North Carolina teachers, direct them to the NC Aerospace Initiative’s Aerospace Education section, where we will link information on NC aerospace history that they can use in their classes.

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Water on the Moon, Slush on the Desk

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I was very excited to see the news about the latest results from lunar survey missions about the presence of water on the moon.

(Moon Mineralogy Mapper composite image. Click to enlarge. Left: Sunlight reflected off the near side of the moon. Right: Infrared image showing water and hydroxl molecule signatures near the poles. “The blue arrow indicates Goldschmidt crater, a large feldspar-rich region with a higher water and hydroxyl signature.” NASA image.)

The full story is here, but here are the highlights:

The observations were made by NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper, or M3 (“M-cubed”), aboard the Indian Space Research Organization’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft and NASA’s Epoxi spacecraft have confirmed the find….

“When we say ‘water on the Moon,’ we are not talking about lakes, oceans or even puddles,” explained Carle Pieters, M3’s principal investigator from Brown University, Providence, R.I. “Water on the Moon means molecules of water and hydroxyl that interact with molecules of rock and dust specifically in the top millimeters of the Moon’s surface.

I have a personal reason for being excited about this finding, and since so few people look at this blog I assume all of you already know what that reason is. So let’s move on to the slush on my desk.

Literary slush — unsolicited manuscripts, proposals, and queries — moves on and off my desk in waves. Reading it can be mind-numbing, but it can also be interesting and sometimes even entertaining. It’s not often a source of inspiration, but my writing friend Jim Hines wrote an ode to the slush pile entitled “Slush Reading, Seuss Style” that is absolutely fantastic. Check it out!

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A Difficult Space Anniversary: Mars Mission Failure

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A Difficult Space Anniversary: Mars Mission Failure

Ten years ago today — September 23, 1999 — the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft fired its main engine to go into orbit around Mars. The maneuver was unsuccessful, however, due to a navigation error. The spacecraft was lost.

The “navigation error” — i.e., the root cause of the failure — was contention between English units and metric units in the ground-based navigation software. It was a glitch in the program, and could be considered a systems engineering failure or a configuration management failure in that the error crept in because two different teams — the Colorado-based spacecraft team and the California-based mission navigation team — used two different measurement systems.

The spacecraft had been launched on a Delta-II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on December 11, 1998.

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While I’m at it, and for no better reason than that I’m pleased with the work I did on it, here’s a link to the newly-updated North Carolina Aerospace Initiative web site.

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Studying the Planet Mercury, Then and Now

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Thirty-five years ago today — September 21, 1974 — Mariner-10 made its second flyby of the planet Mercury.


(Mosaic of Mariner-10’s images of Mercury. NASA image from http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap980906.html.)

Mariner-10 was the first spacecraft to examine Mercury up close. Today the MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) spacecraft is studying Mercury, and its next flyby is scheduled for next week. Read more about MESSENGER here and here.

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Apollo Test Launch, 45 Years Ago, and Lunar Mapping Today

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Forty-five years ago today — September 18, 1964 — NASA launched a Saturn-1 booster from Cape Canaveral in mission SA-7, also known as Apollo “Boiler Plate 15.” The launch demonstrated the Launch Escape System (LES) for the first time.

Anything Apollo-related of course reminds me of the moon, but I’ll skip the shameless plug in favor of some exciting news about the current LRO mission:

After two months of checkout and calibration, NASA’s $504 million Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was maneuvered into a circular 31-mile-high mapping orbit Tuesday and scientists said Thursday the spacecraft’s instruments are delivering intriguing clues about the possible presence of water ice.

The exciting news and “intriguing clues” are indications that hydrogen deposits may exist not only in permanently-shadowed craters near the south pole, but elsewhere on the moon as well — perhaps buried under lunar soil. Whether they’re water, or ammonia, or methane, or something else is unclear, but there appears to be something there, and probably something useful. Read the whole Spaceflight Now report here.

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