Tag Archives: space history

Viking-2, and Star Trek

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Thirty-five years ago today — September 9, 1975 — the Viking-2 orbiter and lander were launched on their way to Mars by a Titan-IIIE booster out of Cape Canaveral.


(First color image of Utopia Planitia taken by the Viking-2 lander. NASA image.)

The first Viking lander had been launched a few weeks earlier, as noted in this blog post.

Viking-2 landed about a year after launch at Utopia Planitia. Fans of many Star Trek iterations will recognize Utopia Planitia as the place starships are built — with facilities on planet and in orbit above. For more information on the science fictional Utopia Planitia Shipyard, try this Memory Alpha page or this starship guide.

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Atlantis in Orbit: Prepping the ISS

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Ten years ago today — September 8, 2000 — the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from the Kennedy Space Center on a mission to prepare the International Space Station to receive its first crew.


(STS-106 launch. NASA image.)

STS-106 carried astronauts Terrence W. Wilcutt, Scott D. Altman, Daniel C. Burbank, Edward T. Lu, and Richard A. Mastracchio, along with cosmonauts Yuri I. Malenchenko and Boris V. Morukov, on an 11-day mission to the nascent space station. They unloaded supplies; routed and connected power, data, and communications lines; installed equipment; and boosted the station to a higher orbit.

In other space history, on this date a half-century ago, President Eisenhower and Mrs. George C. Marshall dedicated the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

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Shuttle Endeavour, Two For Two

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Fifteen years ago today — September 7, 1995 — the Space Shuttle Endeavour launched from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-69.


(Close-up of STS-69 launch. NASA image.)

STS-69‘s crew — David M. Walker, Kenneth D. Cockrell, James S. Voss, James H. Newman, and Michael L. Gernhardt — deployed and retrieved two satellites, the first time that happened on the same mission.

The first satellite deployed and recovered was SPARTAN-201 number three, or 201-03, a small satellite that studied the sun’s outer atmosphere, and especially its transition into the solar wind. This was the third of four planned flights for the SPARTAN spacecraft.

The second spacecraft the STS-69 crew deployed was the Wake Shield Facility-2, a stainless steel disk which produced in its wake an “ultravacuum” environment. In that extreme vacuum, NASA grew thin films of material to study space-based production techniques and results. WSF-2 was, as its name suggests, the second flight of the WSF; it was also the first spacecraft to use its own cold gas nitrogen thruster to maneuver itself away from the Shuttle, rather than the Shuttle moving away from it.

The Endeavour crew spent 10 days in space before landing safely on runway 33 at KSC.

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Satellite Triple Play, Plus One

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Twenty-five years ago today — August 27, 1985 — astronauts Joe H. Engle, Richard O. Covey, James D. Van Hoften, William F. Fisher and John M. Lounge lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center aboard Space Shuttle Discovery.


(Unidentified STS-51I astronaut in the Shuttle Discovery’s open cargo bay. NASA image.)

Mission STS-51I lasted a week, during which the crew deployed three communications satellites: American Satellite Company 1 (ASC-1), Australian Communications Satellite 1 (AUSSAT-1), and Synchronous Communications Satellite IV-4 (SYNCOM-IV-4), also known as LEASAT-4 because most of its communications capacity was to be leased out to the military.

The crew also retrieved SYNCOM-IV-3 (LEASAT-3), which had been launched the previous April by STS-5lD but had failed to activate. As described on this Boeing page,

After attaching special electronics assemblies to LEASAT 3 during two days of space walks, astronauts manually launched the satellite again. The electronics allowed ground controllers to turn on the satellite and, at the end of October, fire its perigee rocket and send LEASAT 3 into orbit.

While LEASAT-3’s repair was a success, LEASAT-4 developed its own problems. The satellite reached its intended orbit, but its ultra high frequency (UHF) downlink failed during testing and it was declared a total loss.

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Gemini-V

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Forty-five years ago today — August 21, 1965 — astronauts Gordon L. Cooper, Jr., and Charles P. “Pete” Conrad, Jr. launched from Cape Canaveral on the Gemini-V mission.


(Gemini-V launch. NASA image.)

Cooper and Conrad spent eight days in space, evaluating the effects of prolonged weightlessness and testing rendezvous capabilities and maneuvers in advance of the Apollo missions to the Moon.

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Going A-Viking to the Red Planet

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We haven’t really gone “a-viking” to another world (yet), but 35 years ago today — August 20, 1975 — we did launch the Viking-1 mission from Cape Canaveral. Viking-2 was launched a few weeks later, on September 9th.


(Viking-1 image of Chryse Planitia, looking northwest over the lander’s radioisotope thermal generator (RTG) cover. NASA image, August 30, 1976.)

Launched by Titan-IIIE boosters, the Viking missions each consisted of a lander and an orbiter. In addition to cameras that returned stunning images of the Martian landscape, the Viking landers carried instruments to study the Martian surface in terms of biology, chemical composition, meteorology, seismology, and other properties.

Viking-1 entered Mars orbit on June 19, 1976. The orbiter and lander orbited Mars together for a month while the orbiter took images which NASA used to select a landing site. The lander and orbiter separated and the lander descended to the surface on July 20th.

Other than the failure of the seismometer and difficulty with a stuck locking pin on the sampler arm, all of the experiments on the Viking-1 lander performed well. The lander “was named the Thomas Mutch Memorial Station in January 1982 in honor of the leader of the Viking imaging team.” Contact with Viking-1 was lost on November 13, 1982.

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Space Goes to the Dogs … No, the Other Way Around

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Fifty years ago today — August 19, 1960 — the USSR launched Sputnik-5 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.


(Strelka, shown in a television image from Sputnik-5. Image from the National Space Science Data Center. The raster lines in the TV signal give the image an interesting quality.)

Sputnik-5 carried two dogs, “Strelka” and “Belka,” into orbit to test Russian systems intended for their manned space program.

Sputnik-5 and its canine crew spent one day in orbit, after which the spacecraft and dogs de-orbited and were successfully recovered. This marked the first time a “biologic payload” was brought back safely from orbit.

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First Successful CORONA Mission

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Fifty years ago today — August 18, 1960 — Discoverer-14 launched from Vandenberg AFB. It was known to the public by that name, but to insiders in what would become the National Reconnaissance Office it was known as CORONA Mission 9009.


(Aerial recovery of Discoverer-14. USAF image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Discoverer-14 was the first CORONA mission in which the film canisters were successfully recovered from orbit.

The National Space Science Data Center describes the film recovery process:

Over Alaska on the 17th pass around the earth, the Agena ejected Discoverer 14 from its nose and retrorockets attached to the reentry vehicle fired to slow it for the return from orbit. After Discoverer 14 reentered the atmosphere, it released a parachute and floated earthward. The descending parachute was sighted 360 miles southeast of Honolulu, Hawaii, by the crew of a US Air Force C-119 recovery aircraft from the 6593rd Test Squardon based at Hickam AFB, Hawaii. On the C-119’s third pass over the parachute, the recovery gear trailing behind the aircraft successfully snagged the parachute canopy. A winch operator aboard the C-119 then reeled in the Discoverer after its 27-hour, 450,000 mile journey through space. This was the first successful recovery of film from an orbiting satellite and the first aerial recovery of an object returning from Earth orbit.

The NSSDC also notes that “38 Discoverer satellites were launched by February 1962,” although the CORONA project itself continued until 1972. CORONA was declassified in 1995.

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Venus Lander Launched, Four Decades Ago

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Forty years ago today — August 17, 1970 — the USSR launched the Venera-7 mission from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.


(Venera-7 capsule. Image from the National Space Science Data Center.)

Venera-7 landed on Venus on December 15, 1970, and was “the first man-made object to return data after landing on another planet.”

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An Echo in Space, and a Mission to Mars

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Fifty years ago today — August 12, 1960 — a Thor-Delta rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral* carrying the Echo-1 satellite.


(Echo-1 satellite, fully inflated, inside a Navy hangar in Weeksville, NC. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Echo-1 was a Mylar balloon 100 feet in diameter which reflected radio waves aimed at it. Its only transmitter was for telemetry: for communications, it was a passive reflector. One of the first signals reflected by Echo-1 was a recorded radio message from President Eisenhower.

The spacecraft should probably be known as Echo-1A, since the original Echo-1 was lost when its launch vehicle failed the previous May, but the Echo-1 name has endured.

Fast forward forty-five years …

Five years ago today, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter launched from Cape Canaveral aboard an Atlas-5 rocket. It has been in orbit around Mars since March 2006, sending back detailed images of the red planet’s surface and sub-surface features.

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*One source gave the launch site as Vandenberg AFB, which was the launch site for Echo-2 in 1964.

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