Tag Archives: space history

Polar: Studying the Magnetosphere

By | |
Comments Off on Polar: Studying the Magnetosphere

Fifteen years ago today — February 24, 1996 — a Delta-II rocket out of Vandenberg AFB lifted a spacecraft simply named “Polar” into a polar orbit.


(Diagram of the Polar spacecraft. See text below for acronyms. NASA image.)

Polar was one of several spacecraft in the International Solar Terrestrial Physics Project. (Here is a better project overview site.) Together with “Wind” and “Geotail,” Polar’s mission was to “obtain coordinated, simultaneous investigations of the Sun-Earth space environment over an extended period of time.”

Polar operations ended in April 2008.

In the image above, the labels point out different instruments on the spacecraft:

  • CAMMICE = Charge and Mass Magnetospheric Ion Composition Experiment
  • CEPPAD = Comprehensive Energetic-Particle Pitch-Angle Distribution
  • EFI = Electric Fields Investigation
  • HYDRA = Hot Plasma Analyzer
  • MFG (should be MFE?) = Magnetic Fields Experiment
  • PIXIE = Polar Ionospheric X-ray Imaging Experiment
  • PWI = Plasma Waves Investigation
  • SEPS = Source/Loss Cone Energetic Particle Spectrometer
  • TIDE = Thermal Ion Dynamics Experiment
  • TIMAS = Toroidal Imaging Mass-Angle Spectrograph
  • VIS = Visible Imaging System
  • UVI = Ultraviolet Imager
Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

U.S. Rocket Mail

By | |
Comments Off on U.S. Rocket Mail

Three weeks ago I posted about the first official “rocket mail” flight, 80 years ago in Austria. Technically that was “rocket history” instead of “space history,” but I don’t care. I find it interesting.

Along those same lines, today in “rocket history” marks the 75th anniversary of the first official U.S. rocket mail flight, on February 23, 1936, in Greenwood Lake, NJ. This past Sunday the town held a commemorative event at the Greenwood Lake Public Library to mark the occasion.

I should note that The Rocket Mail Page mentions an earlier rocket mail flight in Ohio in June 1931, but this excerpt from Aerospace America magazine* makes it clear that the earlier flight could not be considered official.

___
*The magazine of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Of Tethers and UFOs

By | |
Comments Off on Of Tethers and UFOs

Fifteen years ago today — February 22, 1996 — the Space Shuttle Columbia launched from Kennedy Space Center on another attempt to study the behavior of tethers in space.


(Tethered Satellite System being extended from its cradle aboard STS-75. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.)

STS-75 carried the Tethered Satellite System Reflight (TSS-1R) — “reflight” because the tether jammed on its first flight (STS-46 in June 1992), demonstrating that even the simplest of ideas turn out to be not so simple in space. U.S. astronauts Andrew M. Allen, Scott J. Horowitz, Franklin R. Chang-Diaz, and Jeffrey A. Hoffman, along with Claude Nicollier of Switzerland, and Maurizio Cheli and Umberto Guidoni of Italy, deployed the TSS-1R’s conducting tether and monitored its performance … right up until the tether broke “just short of full deployment of about 12.8 miles (20.6 kilometers).”

The crew also conducted materials science and condensed matter physics experiments using the United States Microgravity Payload (USMP-3), but that’s not where the UFOs come in.

The UFO controversy surrounding STS-75 concerns images that appear in video of the TSS experiments. UFO enthusiasts content that the bright disk shapes may be alien spacecraft, but NASA maintains that they are simply out-of-focus dust particles and similar phenomena. If you’re interested, you can read about the issue on this page and in this discussion thread, or you can watch one of several online videos.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Making Human Spaceflight (Almost) Routine

By | |
Comments Off on Making Human Spaceflight (Almost) Routine

Fifty years ago today — February 21, 1961 — the Mercury Atlas-2 (MA-2) pathfinder vehicle launched from Cape Canaveral.


(Mercury Atlas-2 launch. NASA image.)

Launched, of course, on an Atlas rocket, Mercury Atlas-2 flew a suborbital test profile “designed to provide the most severe reentry heating conditions which could be encountered during an emergency abort during an orbital flight attempt.” This was a precursor, of course, to the first U.S. human spaceflight, which would take place about two months later.

Thirty-five years later, human spaceflight had become nearly routine. For example, on this date in 1996, the Russians launched Soyuz TM-23 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on the 25th expedition to the Mir space station. Cosmonauts Yuri Onufrienko and Yuri Usachev docked with the station on the 23rd.

And, for a little bonus space history: 30 years ago today — February 21, 1981 — the Japanese launched the Hinotori to study solar flares. It rode atop an M-3S launch vehicle from the Uchinoura Space Center.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

The Era of Mir Begins

By | |
Comments Off on The Era of Mir Begins

Twenty-five years ago today — February 19, 1986 — the core module of the Mir space station was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.


(Mir space station. NASA image.)

The first piece of Mir was launched atop a Proton rocket — an earlier model of the same type of rocket I saw being processed at Baikonur in 2002 — and over the years was joined to other modules to form the complete station.

As of the date of this post, the National Space Science Data Center page on Mir references a 1993 European Space Agency information page, but still presents some good information about the station. In contrast, this Wikipedia page has the full story on the space station, from this first launch until its re-entry in 2001.

“Mir” is usually translated as “peace.”

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

NEAR-Shoemaker Launched

By | |
Comments Off on NEAR-Shoemaker Launched

Fifteen years ago today — February 17, 1996 — the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft launched on a Delta-II rocket out of Cape Canaveral.


(NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft. NASA image.)

The spacecraft was renamed NEAR-Shoemaker in honor of astronomer Gene Shoemaker, and was sent on its way to the asteroid Eros.

NEAR-Shoemaker flew by the asteroid 253 Mathilde on June 27, 1997, made a gravity-assist maneuver around Earth on January 23, 1998, flew by Eros on 23 December 1998, and finally entered into a tight orbit around Eros on (appropriately enough) Valentine’s Day 2000. As we noted a few days ago, after a year of observations NEAR-Shoemaker landed on Eros on February 12, 2001.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Explorer-9

By | |
Comments Off on Explorer-9

Hat tip to J Michael Antoniewicz II, for calling this one to my attention:

Fifty years ago today — February 16, 1961 — the Explorer-9 inflatable sphere was launched into orbit on a Scout rocket from Wallops Island, Virginia.

Explorer-9 was the first spacecraft orbited from the Virginia launch facility, and the first placed in orbit by an all-solid-fuel launch vehicle.

Thanks for flagging this for me!

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Venus and Eros in Space History

By | |
Comments Off on Venus and Eros in Space History

Fifty years ago today — February 12, 1961 — the Soviet Union launched the Venera-1 probe from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.


(Venera-1. Image from NASA’s National Space Science Data Center.)

Venera-1, or the “Venus-1 Automatic Interplanetary Station,” was the first spacecraft to fly by Venus. Even though telemetry contact with the spacecraft was lost on March 4th, making the mid-course corrections impossible, around May 19th Venera-1 flew within 100,000 km (62,000 mi) of the cloud-shrouded planet.

From Venus to Eros …

Forty years later, on this date in 2001, the NEAR spacecraft — i.e., the Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous spacecraft — touched down successfully on the asteroid Eros (even though the vehicle was not designed as a lander). On its way to touchdown, NEAR sent back high-resolution close-up images of the asteroid’s surface.

The Roman goddess of love, and the Greek god of love — a good day in space history for this Valentine’s weekend!

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Atlantis and Destiny

By | |
Comments Off on Atlantis and Destiny

Ten years ago today — February 7, 2001 — the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center, on its way to the International Space Station.


(Destiny module being installed on the International Space Station. NASA image.)

STS-98 astronauts Kenneth D. Cockrell, Mark L. Polansky, Robert L. Curbeam, Thomas D. Jones, and Marsha S. Ivins transported the U.S. laboratory module “Destiny” and installed it on the ISS.

And, speaking of destiny, 20 years ago today the Salyut-7 space station was de-orbited after nearly nine years of operations. The main character in my story, “The Rocket Seamstress,”* bemoaned its loss:

Where are Salyut and Mir, Mother Russia’s glorious outposts? Rusting homes to fish instead of men.

May we one day have outposts in space that are not in any danger of falling from the sky.

___
*The story appeared in Zahir in 2007, and is available now on Anthology Builder.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Rocket Mail

By | |
Comments Off on Rocket Mail

Eighty years ago today — February 2, 1931 — Friedrich Schmiedl launched the first official “rocket mail,” sending 102 covers (i.e., envelopes)* and postcards to Radegund, Austria.

Several old photographs of rocket mail attempts are found on this Scienceray page.

At least one source listed the official date as being in May, but sources such as The Rocket Mail Page (which includes a photograph of Schmiedl later in life) and this astrophilately site agree that Schmiedl’s launch occurred on this date in space history. (The Rocket Mail Page does note, however, that rockets were used to send mail from ships to islands in Fiji as early as 1902.)

Wonder how much a stamp would cost today, if we were still sending mail by rocket ….

___
*Postal covers are envelopes or other outer wrappings that have been through the mail, usually with cancelled postage, and are often collected and valued for their historical significance.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailby feather