Tag Archives: space history

Another Space Shuttle Precursor Flies

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Forty years ago today — June 2, 1970 — NASA test pilot William H. “Bill” Dana flew the Northrop M2-F3 lifting body on its first flight.


(M2-F3 lifting body on the dry lakebed at Edwards AFB. NASA image.)

The M2-F3 was one of a series of lifting bodies flown by NASA and the USAF to test spacecraft reentry. On this flight, it was dropped from its B-52 mothership and Dana glided it to an unpowered landing on the dry lake bed at Edwards AFB, much the way Shuttle pilots glide their vehicle back to Earth.

The M2-F3 was rebuilt from the crashed M2-F2, with a center stabilizer added to reduce the pilot-induced oscillations that had caused the M2-F2 landing mishap. Powered flights of the rocket-equipped M2-F3 eventually took it up to Mach 1.6 and over 70,000 feet of altitude.

On a personal note, I wish I had known more of this history back in the late 1980s, so I could have asked Mr. Dana some pertinent questions when I met him at Edwards.

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Mapping the Universe … in X-Rays

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Twenty years ago today — June 1, 1990 — the US-UK-German Roentgen Satellite (ROSAT) launched from Cape Canaveral on a Delta II.


(X-ray image of Comet Hyakutake, taken by ROSAT’s High Resolution Imager. NASA image.)

True to its namesake, ROSAT was an X-ray observatory, designed to last 18 months and to conduct both a full survey of the sky and detailed observations of points of interest. The mission far exceeded expectations, as the spacecraft operated into 1999. ROSAT not only discovered X-ray emissions from comets, as seen in the image above, but specifically observed emissions from the impact of Comet Shoemaker-Levy on Jupiter.

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Another Apollo Boilerplate Mission

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Forty-five years ago today — May 25, 1965 — NASA launched Apollo boilerplate mission BP-26 from Cape Canaveral. This mission, like the previous mission in February, carried a satellite experiment.


(Launch of Pegasus-2, 3:35 a.m. EDT, May 25, 1965. NASA image.)

The Pegasus 2, like its predecessor, had large wings that detected impacts from micrometeoroids. The boilerplate Apollo command and service module acted as a protective shroud over the Pegasus experiment during launch.

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Infrared Space Surveillance, a Half Century Ago

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Fifty years ago today — May 24, 1960 — the Midas-2 spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral on an Atlas booster.


(The “launch cover” for Midas-2. Click to enlarge. Image from http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/dev/hillger/military-wx.htm. Note the price of the postage.)

Midas-2 was the first satellite to carry an experimental IR surveillance payload into orbit. (The Midas-1 launch attempt in February 1960 failed because of a problem with the booster.)

The Air Force’s “Missile Defense Alarm System” proceeded through a series of launches to test gradually more powerful detectors, but did not produce workable missile warning satellite coverage. However, the technical lessons from Midas launches were applied to the Defense Support Program series of missile warning spacecraft: the very same DSP satellites that provide launch detection today.

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Spektr: Demilitarized Space Station Zone

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Fifteen years ago today — May 20, 1995 — the Russian Spektr (“spectrum”) module launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on a Proton-K rocket.


(Mir space station, photographed from STS-81. The Spektr module is in the upper right, with the two straight and two angled solar arrays. NASA image.)

Spektr was originally designed as a military outpost for surveillance and anti-missile experiments. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the module was grounded until U.S.-Russian cooperative missions began in the mid-90s. The Russians removed their military hardware, refurbished the module, and installed additional solar panels and several U.S. experiment packages, in what might be thought of as the space age equivalent of beating a sword into a plowshare.

Spektr was mated to the Mir space station and served as an experimental laboratory and crew quarters for U.S. astronauts until it was damaged by a Progress resupply ship in 1997. Mir residents closed off the damaged module and eventually succeeded in routing power cables from its solar arrays into the interior of the station. Because of an air leak that was never located, however, the Spektr module could not be occupied again.

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ATLANTIS at the Space Station, a Decade Ago

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Ten years ago today — May 19, 2000 — the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-101.


(Launch of STS-101. NASA image.)

Astronauts James D. Halsell, Jr., Scott J. Horowitz, Mary Ellen Weber, Jeffrey N. Williams, James S. Voss, and Susan J. Helms, along with cosmonaut Yuri V. Usachev, carried the SPACEHAB module into orbit and took part in International Space Station Assembly Flight ISS-2A.2a. They installed new equipment, delivered a ton of supplies, and made repairs to the station.

And today, of course, Atlantis is taking part in another space station mission at this very moment: installing equipment, delivering supplies, and making repairs. Its current mission also happens to be the last scheduled mission for Atlantis.

We look forward to a successful conclusion and a graceful retirement for shuttle Atlantis.

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Sputnik-4, the Controversial Manned Spaceflight Pathfinder

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Fifty years ago today — May 15, 1960 — the Soviet Union launched Sputnik-4 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

The mission was designed to test the systems for launching men into space, but sources conflict about the design and operational details. It is clear that Sputnik-4 was launched by a modified SS-6 ‘Sapwood’ intercontinental ballistic missile, the same rocket that would become known (if it wasn’t already) as the Vostok. But spacecraft details vary.

Sputnik-4’s mass is listed on the National Space Science Data Center page (above) as 1477 kg, but this fascinating page, complete with detailed illustration, lists its mass as over 4500 kg. Some sources say the spacecraft carried a pressurized cabin in which sat an instrumented mannequin, others that it only carried a mock-up of the manned cabin.

The sources agree that the orbiting spacecraft malfunctioned when its retro rockets fired while the vehicle was oriented incorrectly. Instead of descending into the Earth’s atmosphere, it was actually boosted into a higher orbit. The effect of the malfunction became the subject of some controversy, as the spacecraft did not re-enter the atmosphere where it was supposed to. It is said to have de-orbited in October 1965, but this Wikipedia page mentions that debris from the spacecraft impacted in Manitowoc, Wisconsin in September 1962.

But the biggest controversy about this launch is the theory that it contained a living person rather than a mannequin or mock-up. Radio calls were apparently overheard between the spacecraft and the ground that had the character of distress calls, but they were attributed to taped transmissions meant to test the communications equipment.

This final controversy also includes an unlikely witness: author Robert A. Heinlein, the science fiction Grand Master.

This Wikipedia page about the so-called ‘lost cosmonauts’ reminded me that Heinlein had been touring the Soviet Union in the same timeframe as this launch (and of Francis Gary Powers’s crash in his U-2). Of course I pulled my copy of Expanded Universe down off the shelf to find this tidbit in the article “‘Pravda’ Means ‘Truth'”:

I am sure of this: At noon on May 15 a group of Red Army cadets were unanimously positive that the rocket was manned. That pravda did not change until later that afternoon.

You must decide on your own, of course, if you believe the official version.

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Challenger Launches with Spacelab, and a Titan-IV Farewell

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Twenty-five years ago yesterday* — April 29, 1985 — the Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-51B.


(STS-51B launch. NASA image.)

Astronauts Robert F. Overmyer, Frederick D. Gregory, Don L. Lind, Norman E. Thagard, William E. Thornton, Lodewijk van den Berg and Taylor G. Wang launched the student-built Northern Utah Satellite (NUSAT-1) and spent a week in space with the European Space Agency’s Spacelab-3.

And on April 29, 2005 — 5 years ago yesterday — the last Titan-IV to be launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station blasted off with a classified National Reconnaissance Office satellite aboard. Titan rockets had been launching military and civil payloads for nearly five decades, and this launch left one final Titan-IV in the inventory, which launched from Vandenberg AFB in October 2005.

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*Apologies for the tardy space history entry. As Poppa says, I’m “a day late and a dollar short.”

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Two Space Anniversaries: a First for China, and Hubble Reaches Orbit

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Forty years ago today — April 24, 1970 — China joined the “space club” by launching its first satellite, appropriately named China-1. China was the fifth nation to launch its own satellite.

And 20 years ago — on this date in 1990 — the Space Shuttle Discovery launched from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-31 to deploy the Hubble Space Telescope.


(STS-31 mission patch. NASA image. Click to enlarge.)

The STS-31 crew consisted of astronauts Loren J. Shriver, Charles F. Bolden (the current NASA Administrator), Steven A. Hawley, Bruce McCandless and Kathryn D. Sullivan. The HST had more than its share of problems, given its blurred optics and the need to mount a repair mission, but its launch was still a momentous occasion for space science. It has brought us remarkable images year after year, more than I can count.


(Hubble Space Telescope deployment from STS-31. NASA image.)

It was momentous for yours truly, also: when it landed on April 29th at Edwards AFB, I was once again on duty as part of the AF Flight Test Center shuttle recovery team. It really doesn’t seem like so long ago, yet it seems like another lifetime ….

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First Molniya Satellite — Highly Elliptical Orbit for High Latitude Communications

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Forty-five years ago today — April 23, 1965 — the Soviet Union launched Molniya-1 on a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur.

The satellite was placed in a very particular orbit: highly elliptical, with perigee (the lowest altitude) very close to the Earth’s southern hemisphere and apogee (the highest altitude) far above the northern hemisphere. By carefully selecting the angle of inclination (how “tilted” the orbital plane is from the equatorial plane), they produced a situation in which the satellite’s apparent motion over the northern hemisphere was very small, providing extended communications coverage in the polar regions where geosynchronous satellites could not.

The orbit soon became known as a Molniya orbit, after the Molniya satellites that were first inserted there. “Molniya,” itself, means “lightning.”

Here’s a wonderful YouTube video showing how the Molniya orbit works:

— BREAK, BREAK —

And, congratulations to the Air Force’s X-37B team for their successful launch last night. (Head to the Space Warfare Forum if you want to discuss it.) Well done!

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