Tag Archives: space history

Three Solstice Launches

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As Jethro Tull sang, “Ring, solstice bells!” Happy midwinter, everyone.

Forty-five years ago today — December 21, 1964 — Explorer-26 launched on a Delta rocket out of Cape Canaveral, to study the Van Allen radiation belt. Also known as EPE-D, or the Energetic Particle Explorer, it measured trapped particles in the geomagnetic field.

Twenty years later, in 1984, the Soviet Union launched the second of its probes to Venus and Halley’s Comet. Vega-2, or Venera-Halley-2, launched atop a Proton-K rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. They’d launched Vega-1 back on the 15th, as I noted in this blog entry.

And ten years ago, in 1999, ACRIMSAT — the Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor satellite — launched from Vandenberg AFB on a Taurus rocket.* ACRIMSAT was launched as a secondary payload with the Korean KOMPSAT, and was designed to study variations in solar radiation.

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*Note that this launch took place late at night on December 20th on the West Coast; it was already December 21st on the East Coast, so different references list the launch date as one or the other. I think it made a nice trifecta to list it with these others.

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Holiday Hubble Service Mission, A Decade Ago

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Ten years ago today — December 19, 1999 — the Space Shuttle Discovery launched from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-103.


(STS-103 mission patch. NASA image.)

Astronauts Curtis L. Brown, Scott J. Kelly, Steven L. Smith, C. Michael Foale, and John M. Grunsfeld, plus Switzerland’s Claude Nicollier and Jean-Francois Clervoy of France, became the first Space Shuttle crew to spend Christmas in space during their mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. In fact, they released the HST from the cargo bay on Christmas day.

Also of note: Curtis Brown is one of several astronauts with ties to North Carolina, and is featured on several North Carolina Aerospace History pages that I’ve built for the North Carolina Aerospace Initiative. For instance, here’s the December aerospace history page, which features STS-103 — along with another famous flight….

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A European Symphonie and the Health of Our Planet

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Thirty-five years ago today — December 18, 1974 — the first European-built communications satellite was launched aboard a Thor-Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral. Symphonie-1 was a cooperative French-German spacecraft, as detailed on this Wikipedia page. (Note that the page lists the launch as December 19th because it’s based on UTC — what used to be known as Greenwich Mean Time — but it was still the 18th on the East Coast of the US.)

And 10 years ago today, an Atlas-2AS rocket launched Terra, a joint US-Japanese-Canadian weather satellite, from Vandenberg AFB.


(Terra launch. NASA image.)

Terra was “the first of a series of large satellites meant to monitor the health of our planet” by monitoring cloud formation, radiation balances, and aerosols in the atmosphere. As the NASA web site puts it, “Terra’s primary mission is to answer the question: How is the Earth changing and what are the consequences of change for life on Earth?”

This page shows some interesting comparative images taken by Terra.

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Two Launches: One Local, One to Venus and Halley's Comet

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Forty-five years ago today — December 15, 1964 — the San Marco-1 satellite launched from Wallops Island, VA, on a Scout rocket. This was the first in a series of Italian atmospheric science spacecraft, and the only one to be launched from the U.S.


(San Marco satellite in checkout at Wallops Island, VA. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Succeeding missions were launched starting in 1967 from the San Marco platform, a converted oil platform anchored off the coast of Kenya. I find that fascinating, as the San Marco platform was a precursor to the Sea Launch operations I observed over 30 years later.

And 25 years ago today, in 1984, the Soviet Union launched its Vega-1 mission atop a Proton-K rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. (I wonder if it was processed in the same building in which I later saw the Nimiq-2 satellite get mated to a Proton launch vehicle.) Vega-1 — also known as Venera-Halley 1 — was a very successful mission that deposited a lander as well as a set of balloon-borne experiments on Venus, and then continued to a 1986 flyby of Halley’s comet.

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Rocket Sleds and Murphy's Law — and a Couple of Rocket Launches, Too

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Fifty-five years ago today — December 10, 1954 — U.S. Air Force Colonel John P. Stapp rode a rocket sled at Holloman AFB, New Mexico, to over 600 mph. Stapp set a record for the greatest recorded g-forces endured by man when the sled decelerated. From his obituary in the New York Times,

Dr. Stapp was known as the ”fastest man on earth” for his 1954 ride, though the speed has since been surpassed and was never accepted by auto racing officials as an official land speed record. The speed was impressive, at any rate. Dr. Stapp accelerated in 5 seconds from a standstill to 632 miles an hour. The sled then decelerated to a dead stop in 1.4 seconds, subjecting Dr. Stapp to pressures 40 times the pull of gravity.

Stapp’s early rocket sled tests were done at Edwards AFB, and I remember seeing the old tracks and trenches out on South Base. It was during those early tests that Stapp fell victim to what became known as Murphy’s Law:

Dr. Stapp . . . suffered an injury in the experiment that inspired Murphy’s Law after a somewhat less rapid sled ride in 1949.

An assistant, Capt. Edward A. Murphy Jr., had designed a harness to strap in the rider. The harness held 16 sensors to measure the acceleration, or G-force, on different body parts. There were exactly two ways each sensor could be installed. Captain Murphy did each one the wrong way.

The result was that when Dr. Stapp staggered off the rocket sled with bloodshot eyes and bleeding sores, all the sensors registered zero. He had been strained in vain.

A distraught Captain Murphy proclaimed the original version of the famous maxim: ”If there are two or more ways to do something and one of those results in a catastrophe, then someone will do it that way.”

If rocket sleds don’t quite qualify as “space history” for you, there were two December 10th rocket launches that fit the bill. First, 35 years ago today, a Titan III-E rocket launched the Helios-1 spacecraft from Cape Canaveral. Helios-1 was a joint effort by the U.S. and West Germany to measure the solar wind and examine the surface of the sun. And on December 10, 1999, the European Space Agency launched an Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana, carrying their X-ray Multimirror Mission (XMM) telescope. XMM-Newton was the ESA’s equivalent of NASA’s Chandra space observatory.

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Space History, a Half Century Ago: Little Joe-2

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Fifty years ago today — December 4, 1959 — the “Little Joe-2” rocket launched from Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia, with a very special passenger: the rhesus monkey “Sam.”


(Rhesus monkey “Sam” in fiberglass protective shell. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Sam reached an altitude of over 50 miles and traveled nearly 200 miles downrange before landing in the Atlantic Ocean. The US Navy recovered Sam and the boilerplate Mercury capsule; here’s a link to a post-flight photo of Sam.

Lucky space monkey . . . .

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Space History Today: Prep Flight for Apollo-Soyuz

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Thirty-five years ago today — December 2, 1974 — cosmonauts Anatoliy V. Filipchenko and Nikolai N. Rukavishnikov launched from Baikonur aboard Soyuz-16. Their flight was a pathfinder for the upcoming Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975, and was the only manned test flight leading up to the joint US-USSR mission.

Fascinating details about the Soyuz-16 mission, including some of the geopolitical considerations, can be found on this page.

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First Mission to Mars: Mariner-4

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Forty-five years ago today — November 28, 1964 — Mariner-4 launched atop an Atlas Agena from Cape Canaveral.


(Mariner-4 spacecraft. NASA image.)

Mariner-4 arrived at Mars on July 14, 1965, where it conducted the first successful flyby of the planet and sent back the first pictures of the Martian surface.

Maybe Mariner would be a good name for the first ship to take people to Mars. Sure wish I could go….

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Space History: Military Space Mission, and My Role In It

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Twenty years ago yesterday — November 22, 1989 — astronauts Frederick D. Gregory, John E. Blaha, Kathyrn C. Thornton, F. Story Musgrave, and Manley L Carter, Jr., lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center aboard Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-33.*

(STS-33 mission patch. NASA image. Click to enlarge.)

STS-33 was a classified Department of Defense mission, and one of the four shuttle missions I worked as part of the Air Force Flight Test Center’s Space Shuttle Recovery Team. Edwards AFB was the “abort once-around” recovery site, so we were in place (at the fire department) several hours before the launch in case the shuttle had to land right after liftoff. We also stayed on standby the entire time the shuttle was in orbit. And since this shuttle landed at Edwards AFB on November 27, we rolled out to meet the vehicle, parked right off the nose of the orbiter while NASA checked it out and the crew disembarked, and escorted the shuttle down the flightline to NASA-Dryden.

That was a fun job….

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*Editor’s note: One NASA site had this launch listed for November 23, but it looks as if that was wrong. I think that may be when the crew actually deployed the classified satellite.

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Four Launches: Scout, Thor-Delta, Atlas-Centaur, Titan

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This day in space history, November 21, was a busy day for launches. They were launched at five-year intervals, but still …

Today in 1964 — 45 years ago — NASA launched its first dual payload when it sent up Explorer-24 and Explorer-25 on a Scout rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base.


(A Scout vehicle launch from 1967. National Air & Space Museum image.)

Forty years ago today, in 1969, the United Kingdom sent up its first communications satellite. Skynet-1 launched on a Thor-Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral.

On November 21, 1974 — 35 years ago — an Atlas-Centaur rocket launched from Cape Canaveral carrying the Intelsat IV F-8 communications satellite.

And 30 years ago today, in 1979, a Titan-IIIC rocket out of Cape Canaveral sent up two Defense Satellite Communication System satellites, DSCS II-13 and DSCS II-14.

We shouldn’t forget, of course, that 40 years ago today the U.S. also had astronauts returning from the moon. Mission Commander Charles Conrad, Jr., Command Module pilot Richard F. Gordon, and Lunar Module pilot Alan L. Bean made their transearth injection at 3:49 p.m. EST on November 21st, 1969.

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