Tag Archives: space history

Two Launches, for Ultraviolet and Infrared Astronomy

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Two satellite observatories launched on this date in space history, both boosted by Delta rockets, both international in scope, to look at opposite ends of the spectrum.

First, 35 years ago today — January 26, 1978 — Explorer 57, also known as the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE), was launched out of Cape Canaveral. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center built the satellite and its optical instrumentation, Britain’s Science Engineering Research Council provided television cameras, and the European Space Agency provided the solar panel paddles as well as a European control center.


(IRAS. NASA image.)

Five years later, on January 26, 1983, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) (pictured above) launched from Vandenberg AFB. A joint mission between the US, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, this mission completed a full-sky survey that detected nearly 350,000 infrared sources and revealed the core of our Milky Way galaxy.

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Solar Observer Rides a Pegasus

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Ten Five years ago today — January 25, 2003 — a Pegasus XL rocket carried the SOlar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) satellite to orbit.


(SORCE during pre-launch integration. Orbital Sciences Corporation image from the University of Colorado SORCE page.)

The SORCE Sun-Earth Connection observation system was developed to measure incoming energy from the Sun for the purpose of studying its effects on climate change. Its instruments measured total solar radiation, including visible light, ultraviolet, infrared, and x-rays.*

The Pegasus rocket that carried the spacecraft to orbit was dropped from its L-1011 “mothership” after flying out of Cape Canaveral.

You can find more information about SORCE on its University of Colorado page.

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*Bonus points to anyone who can tell me, without Googling, why I listed them as “ultraviolet, infrared, and x-rays.”

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Space History Triple Play: Apollo, Endeavour, Pioneer

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First up: 45 years ago today — January 22, 1968 — a Saturn 1B launched the unmanned Apollo 5 mission from Cape Canaveral.


(Apollo 5 launch. NASA image.)

Apollo 5 was the first test flight of the Lunar Module (LM) ascent and descent stages. Once the LM was released into Earth orbit, its engines were fired in sequences that simulated a lunar approach and landing, including an abort scenario. Despite one premature shutdown of the descent propulsion system, the overall mission was considered a success.

Thirty years later — 15 years ago today — the Space Shuttle Endeavour launched from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-89. US astronauts Terrence W. Wilcutt, Joe F. Edwards, Jr., James F. Reilly, Michael P. Anderson, Bonnie J. Dunbar, and Andrew S.W. Thomas, along with Russian cosmonaut Salizhan S.Sharipov, docked with the Mir space station where Thomas replaced astronaut David Wolf.

Finally, on this date 10 years ago, we received the last signal from the Pioneer 10 spacecraft. On its 30-year mission (far exceeding its 21-month design life), Pioneer 10 visited Jupiter and explored the outer solar system. At the time of its last contact, the spacecraft “was 7.6 billion miles from Earth, or 82 times the nominal distance between the Sun and the Earth,” cruising in the general direction of Aldebaran.

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Shuttle Columbia's Last Liftoff

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Ten years ago today — January 16, 2003 — the Space Shuttle Columbia launched from Kennedy Space Center on a mission that would end sixteen minutes too soon.


(STS-107 crew in-flight photo. NASA image.)

At the time the shuttle launched, we (by which I mean the public) thought the mission profile was nominal. The STS-107 crew — Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, Michael P. Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David M. Brown, Laurel B. S. Clark, and Israel’s first astronaut, Ilan Ramon — busied themselves with scientific investigations around the clock during their 15 days in space.

KSC landing was planned for Feb. 1 after a 16-day mission, but Columbia and crew were lost during reentry over East Texas at about 9 a.m. EST, 16 minutes prior to the scheduled touchdown at KSC. A seven-month investigation followed, including a four month search across Texas to recover debris. The search was headquartered at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, La. Nearly 85,000 pieces of orbiter debris were shipped to KSC and housed in the Columbia Debris Hangar near the Shuttle Landing Facility. The KSC debris reconstruction team identified pieces as to location on the orbiter, and determined damaged areas. About 38 percent of the orbiter Columbia was eventually recovered.

In perhaps a fitting tribute to the STS-107 crew, some of the science experiments were found during the debris recovery effort. While much of the data the astronauts gathered had been transmitted during flight to colleagues on the ground, the recovered experiments produced additional valuable information.

Visit the STS-107 memorial page for more information.

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Return to Flight for Sea Launch

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Now there’s a space history headline that’s hard to parse out of context!

Five years ago today — January 15, 2008 — Sea Launch successfully placed a payload in orbit from its floating launch platform, after a year-long hiatus due to a previous launch failure.


(Thuraya 3 launch. Image linked from Sea Launch web site.)

The payload was Thuraya 3, a communications satellite for the United Arab Emirates. The Zenit 3SL rocket lifted off from the Odyssey launch platform while the vessel held position along the equator, almost due south of Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean.

I have a soft spot in my heart for Sea Launch, having spent a lot of time at their Long Beach headquarters and gone to sea with them in 2002 for the Galaxy IIIC launch, so it was great to see them have another launch success.

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A Space History First, AND a New NASA Communication Relay Satellite

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Twenty years ago today — January 13, 1993 — the Space Shuttle Endeavour launched from the Kennedy Space Center carrying a new Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS).


(EVA-1 Crewmember Greg Harbaugh working in the Shuttle’s payload bay. NASA image.)

The STS-54 crew — John H. Casper, Donald R. McMonagle, Gregory J. Harbaugh, Mario Runco, and Susan J. Helms — spent almost six days in space. They deployed the fifth TDRS spacecraft during their first day in orbit; the TDRS’s Inertial Upper Stage maneuvered it into its higher operational orbit.

The crew spent their remaining time in space conducting a variety of experiments: they took spectrographic readings of X-ray sources with the Diffuse X-ray Spectrometer (DXS); studied biological systems under microcravity using the Commercial General Bioprocessing Apparatus (CGPA), the Chromosome and Plant Cell Division in Space Experiment (CHROMEX), and the Physiological and Anatomical Rodent Experiment (PARE); measured flame propagation in microgravity with the Solid Surface Combustion Experiment (SSCE); et cetera.

As for the space history “first” — on this mission, then-Major Helms became the first U.S. military woman to fly in space. Still on active duty in the USAF, she is now a Lieutenant General and the Commander of 14th Air Force at Vandenberg AFB.

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Fire and Ice — Delta II Polar Orbit Double Shot

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Ten years ago today — January 12, 2003 — a Delta II rocket launched from Vandenberg AFB carrying two very different spacecraft.


(A representation of ICESAT’s orbit and its measurement of ice sheet thickness. NASA image.)

On the “fire” side, CHIPS — the Cosmic Hot Interstellar Spectrometer — was an astrophysics spacecraft sent up to study the plasma in the “local interstellar bubble.” It primarily looked at “hot and diffuse nebulae at about a million degrees temperature.”

CHIPS rode into space with ICESAT, the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite. ICESAT carried the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System to measure the thickness of ice sheets.

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Three Days, Three Lunar Launches … A Few Years Apart

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It seemed interesting that the anniversaries of three lunar launches fell on three consecutive days, so I’ve grouped them all in one blog post.


(Lunar Prospector. NASA image.)

The first of the three launches happened 45 years ago today — January 7, 1968 — when Surveyor 7 launched from Cape Canaveral on an Atlas Centaur rocket. The spacecraft landed on the Moon on January 9, making it the fifth of the Apollo pathfinder series to achieve a soft landing.

And 40 years ago tomorrow — January 8, 1973 — the Soviet Union launched Luna 21 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on a Proton K rocket. Luna 21 carried and deployed Lunokhod 2, the USSR’s second lunar rover. The rover covered about 37 km during its four months of operations.

Finally, 15 years ago yesterday — January 6, 1998* — Lunar Prospector launched on an Athena 2 rocket out of Cape Canaveral. Lunar Prospector entered a low lunar polar orbit in order primarily to map the Moon’s surface for possible polar ice deposits, though it also carried instruments to study the Moon’s magnetic and gravity fields.

The mission ended on 31 July 1999 at 9:52:02 UT (5:52:02 EDT) when Lunar Prospector was deliberately targeted to impact in a permanently shadowed area of a crater near the lunar south pole. It was hoped that the impact would liberate water vapor from the suspected ice deposits in the crater and that the plume would be detectable from Earth, however, no plume was observed.

The spacecraft was sent into Shoemaker crater, and carried a portion of the remains of astronomer Eugene Shoemaker, which became a topic of discussion among the lunar colonists in my unpublished novel, Walking on the Sea of Clouds.

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*It was already January 7 under Greenwich Mean Time (Universal Time).

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Launch of a Satellite I Babysat for Over 8400 Miles

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Ten years ago today — December 29, 2002 (GMT) — the Nimiq 2 communications satellite launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome atop a Proton rocket. Before that, though, it had to get there …


(Antonov AN-124 ‘Condor’ ready to on- or off-load cargo. Image by Mike Young, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Nimiq 2 was a Canadian satellite, built for Telesat by U.S. manufacturer Lockheed Martin and launched by ILS — International Launch Services — on a Russian booster. I got involved in the program as a space technology security monitor, responsible for making sure no U.S. technology or satellite design methodology was transferred to the foreign companies.

As part of the monitoring effort, I had the task of escorting the satellite from the San Jose, California, factory to Baikonur. The spacecraft was loaded onto a Russian Antonov AN-124 cargo aircraft, and I rode with it for the entire trip — including eating Thanksgiving tuna-and-crackers en route.

Because the spacecraft and its support equipment made the aircraft so heavy, we could not fly directly to Baikonur. Instead, we made the trip in several hops, stopping for fuel each time:

  • San Jose to Winnipeg, Canada (1490.11 miles / 2398.1 km)
  • Winnipeg to Goose Bay, Canada (1605.93 miles / 2584.49 km)
  • Goose Bay to Shannon, Ireland (2118.3 miles / 3409.07 km)
  • Shannon to Ulyanovsk, Russia (2320.05 miles / 3733.76 km)
  • Ulyanovsk to Baikonur (909.67 miles / 1463.98 km)

Most of the stopovers were short, except for the stop in Shannon where the aircrew enjoyed the RON (rendezvous overnight) in a local hotel while I got to stay aboard the aircraft with the satellite. So much for my first trip to Ireland! I never strayed from the tarmac at the Shannon airport.

Once we arrived at Baikonur, I spent the early part of December 2002 observing the launch preparations, including mating the satellite to the Proton rocket and enclosing it in the payload fairing. Some of that experience went into my short story, “The Rocket Seamstress,” which was published in the literary magazine Zahir in 2007. (The story is now available on Anthology Builder.)

I did not stay at Baikonur long enough to see the Nimiq 2 launch, however. My boss flew in to take over monitoring the final prep and the launch itself, and I flew home (via Moscow and a couple other stops) in time for Christmas. But it was good to know that I had a part in the first commercial launch of a Proton with the Breeze-M upper stage.

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First Launch of NRO's 'Poppy' Spacecraft

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Fifty years ago today — December 13, 1962 — a Thor Delta rocket out of Vandenberg AFB launched the first set of electronic intelligence (ELINT) spacecraft in the Poppy program.


(Poppy Type II satellite. NRO image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Also known as 1962 Tau Beta (among other names), the Poppy spacecraft were a follow-on to the Galactic Radiation and Background (GRAB) series of ELINT satellites, pictured in this previous blog entry. Several Poppy spacecraft were launched together, in tandem with the Injun 3 instrumentation satellite.

The National Reconnaissance Office declassified the Poppy program in 2005, and prepared a report entitled Raising the Periscope that contains select details about it and the GRAB program.

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