Tag Archives: nasa

Jupiter, Up Close and Personal

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Thirty years ago today — July 9, 1979 — Voyager-2 made its closest approach to Jupiter. Voyager-1 had already visited the planet on March 5, and was on its way to Saturn. After Voyager-2’s flyby of the gas giant, it also headed toward the ringed planet.


(Voyager spacecraft and trajectories. Click to enlarge. Images from NASA.)

In August 2007, 30 years after its launch on a Titan-Centaur rocket, Voyager-2 entered the heliosheath, that “region at the edge of our solar system where the solar wind runs up against the thin gas between the stars.” Because it entered the region far away from where Voyager-1 did, it proved that the region is not spherical but is “pushed in closer to the sun by the local interstellar magnetic field.”

The Voyager spacecraft represent a marvelous engineering achievement. Built to last five years, they are still probing the mysteries of the local interstellar neighborhood.

You can read more about the Voyager missions on this NASA page.

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First Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Images: Near the SEA OF CLOUDS

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How cool is this? From NASA’s LRO web site:

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has transmitted its first images since reaching the moon on June 23. The spacecraft’s two cameras, collectively known as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC, were activated June 30. The cameras are working well and have returned images of a region in the lunar highlands south of Mare Nubium (Sea of Clouds).


(L: An LRO image of the highlands south of Mare Nubium [the Sea of Clouds]. R: A Clementine image of the moon, showing the location of Mare Nubium. NASA images. Click to enlarge.)

Since I’m currently trying to interest publishers and agents in WALKING ON THE SEA OF CLOUDS — a novel of survival and sacrifice at the first commercial lunar colony, located on the southwestern edge of Mare Nubium — the fact that the LRO’s first images are of that area is exceedingly cool to me. That made my day!

So … if you know of anyone interested in publishing such a novel … or even if you’re interested in reading such a novel … let me know. That would make my day, too.

___

P.S. Here’s the NASA LRO page with the images on it, and here’s the LRO main page.

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LCROSS, and the Hazards of Writing Near-Future Science Fiction

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Today the LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite) is supposed to launch on an Atlas-V rocket, along with the LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter). LCROSS is specifically designed to check for water in shadowed craters at the lunar south pole.

(Artist’s conception of LCROSS approach to the moon, from http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/. Click to enlarge.)

The mission profile involves crashing the Centaur upper stage into an as-yet-undetermined crater, with the LCROSS vehicle and its sensors following close behind. Not only will LCROSS itself examine the ejecta for signs of water, but the debris from the impact is expected to rise high enough above the moon’s surface to be visible to earth-based instruments as well. Analysis should show whether hydrogen detected by previous missions (e.g., Clementine) is in the form of water.

Why does this demonstrate the hazards of writing near-future SF? Because I know of a novel — written by me, for which I’m trying to find a publisher and an agent — in which a major part of the plot is a difficult journey to the lunar south pole to retrieve ice to keep the fledgling colony alive.

The LCROSS mission could either lend credence to my treatment of lunar conditions, or it could make the novel much more fiction than science. So here’s what I would like:

  • First, I’d like the mission to detect appreciable amounts of water ice, no matter what crater they choose.
  • Second, I’d like NASA to select a different crater than I did, so no matter what LCROSS finds my story could still be plausible. I picked Faustini Crater for my ice expedition, so anywhere else, okay?

Such is the hazard of writing realistic, near-future SF — your assumptions may be subject to verification before your story ever sees print! (Here I repeat my hope that my story will indeed see print. Time will tell. But if you know of a publisher looking for such a story, point them my way!)

If you want more info, here’s the NASA page about the mission.

[BREAK, BREAK]

And, how about a little space history: Five years ago today — June 18, 2004 — marked the first time a U.S. astronaut was in space when his child was born on Earth. Edward Michael “Mike” Fincke was aboard the International Space Station when his wife gave birth to their second child.

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First X-15 Glide Flight, a Half Century Ago

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Fifty years ago today — June 8, 1959 — Scott Crossfield flew the X-15 on its first glide flight above NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Facility at Edwards Air Force Base, California.


(NASA Photo E-4942, from the X-15 Photo Collection.)

From Crossfield’s bio:

Crossfield left the [National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics] in 1955 to work for North American Aviation on the X-15 rocket-powered research airplane project. There, he served as both pilot and design consultant for the revolutionary new aircraft that was carried aloft and launched from beneath the wing of a B-52 for high-speed, high-altitude research missions.

As a result of his extensive rocket plane experience, he was responsible for many of the operational and safety features incorporated into the X-15 and was intimately involved in the design of the vehicle. Crossfield piloted its first free flight in 1959 and subsequently qualified the first two X-15s for flight before North American turned them over to NASA and the U.S. Air Force. Altogether, he completed 16 captive carry (mated to the B-52 launch aircraft), one glide and 13 powered flights in the X-15, reaching a maximum speed of Mach 2.97 (1,960 miles per hour) and a maximum altitude of 88,116 feet.

I feel an affinity for the X-15 and similar programs because of my work at Edwards. Even though I worked across the lakebed at the Rocket Lab, I got to interact with some of the Dryden folks, and have a photo of NASA’s B-52 mothership (carrying a Pegasus rocket) on the wall in my office.

Read more about the X-15 program at this NASA history site.

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Space History: a Polar Explorer

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(Explorer-52, or “Hawkeye-1”. Public domain image from Wikimedia.)

Thirty-five years ago today — June 3, 1974 — Explorer-52 launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, aboard a Scout rocket. Built by the University of Iowa, the satellite was also known as Hawkeye-1.

According to NASA’s National Space Science Data Center Master Catalog,

The primary mission objective was to conduct particles and fields investigations of the polar magnetosphere of the earth out to 21 earth radii. Secondary objectives were to make magnetic field and plasma distribution measurements in the solar wind, and to study Type-3 radio emissions caused by solar electron streams in the interplanetary medium.

And now you know.

Since the satellite was launched into a polar orbit, I have to believe the Thule Tracking Station — callsign POGO, which I commanded for one year of my Air Force career — downlinked at least some of the data from it. That was many years later than this launch, of course, so it’s not much of a connection … but I’ll take what I can get.

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First Shuttle to Dock with ISS — A Decade Ago

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Ten years ago today — May 27, 1999 — Space Shuttle Discovery launched from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-96, a logistics and resupply mission for the International Space Station. It was the first shuttle flight to dock with the ISS.


(STS-96 launch. Image KSC-99PP-0591 from the STS-96 KSC Electronic Photo File.)

U.S. astronauts Kent V. Rominger, Rick D. Husband, Ellen Ochoa, Tamara E. Jernigan, and Daniel T. Barry, Canadian astronaut Julie Payette, and Russian cosmonaut Valery I. Tokarev spent the next nine days in space. They delivered cargo from the SPACEHAB module and the Integrated Cargo Carrier, including the Russian STRELA cargo crane, the SPACEHAB Oceaneering Space System box, and a U.S.-built crane called the ORU (Orbital Replacement Unit) Transfer Device.

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This Day in Space History: Apollo-X Launch

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Forty years ago today — May 18, 1969 — astronauts Thomas P. Stafford, John W. Young, Jr., and Eugene A. Cernan lifted off on the Apollo 10 mission. Their Saturn V launch vehicle (number SA-505) launched at 12:49 a.m. EDT from the Kennedy Space Center, on “the mission before THE mission.”

(Apollo-X launch. Click to enlarge.)

Travelling in Command Module “Charlie Brown” and Lunar Module “Snoopy,” the astronauts tested all aspects of the lunar mission except the actual lunar landing, and accomplished several “firsts” including:

  • First transmitted color photographs of the full Earth from a crew in space
  • First demonstration rendezvous in lunar orbit
  • First burning of LM descent stage engine in lunar landing configuration
  • First LM steerable antenna at lunar distances
  • First LM within 15,240 meters [8 nautical miles] of the lunar surface
  • First crew-assisted navigational, visual, and photographic evaluations of the moon
  • First and only Apollo launch from Launch Complex 39B



(Views of Earth from Apollo-X. Click to enlarge.)

___

Images from the Johnson Space Center Digital Image Collection.



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First Geosynchronous Weather Satellite

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Thirty-five years ago today — May 17, 1974 — a Delta rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral carrying SMS-1, the Synchronous Meteorological Satellite-1. It was a weather satellite prototype, the first in geosynchronous orbit.

Thought you ought to know.

If you want to know more, here’s the NASA catalog description of SMS-1, and here’s a page about the history of satellite meteorology.

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A Lifting Body and a 'Misty' Launch

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Two space history anniversaries today:

Forty years ago today — May 9, 1969 — John A. Manke flew the HL-10 lifting body in its first supersonic flight at the Dryden Flight Research Facility at Edwards Air Force Base.

(HL-10 on the Edwards AFB lakebed, with B-52 flyover. NASA photo ECN-2203. Click to enlarge.)

And fifteen years ago — May 9, 1994 — a Scout rocket launched from Vandenberg AFB carrying the second Miniature Sensor Technology Integration spacecraft: MSTI-2, pronounced “Misty-two.” I was stationed at Vandy at the time, though I confess I don’t remember that particular launch.

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Space History: Magellan, Mission to Venus

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Twenty years ago today — May 4, 1989 — the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-30. Astronauts David M. Walker, Ronald J. Grabe, Norman E. Thagard, Mary L. Cleave, and Mark C. Lee deployed the Magellan spacecraft on its voyage to map the planet Venus.

(STS-30 mission patch. Click to enlarge.)

The Magellan mission used synthetic aperture radar to map 98% of the planet’s surface before contact with the spacecraft was lost in October 1994. More information about the mission is available on this NASA page.

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