Tag Archives: space history

The Final — No, the Most Recent — Lunar Mission

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Forty years ago today — December 7, 1972 — Apollo 17 lifted off aboard a Saturn V rocket out of Cape Canaveral as the last Apollo lunar mission.


(Gene Cernan, the most recent man to walk on the Moon. NASA image.)

Astronauts Eugene A. Cernan, Ronald E. Evans, and Harrison H. Schmitt comprised the Apollo 17 crew. On their first day in space, the crew took the iconic “Blue Marble” photograph with a hand-held Hasselblad camera.

Cernan and Schmitt landed the Lunar Module “Challenger” in the Taurus-Littrow region of the Moon on December 11. Evans stayed in lunar orbit aboard the Command and Service Module “America.”

Apollo 17 focused on surveying surface features and sampling geological materials in a region selected because it would yield both older and younger samples than previous Apollo missions, and featured Schmitt as the first scientist to land on the Moon. Schmitt and Cernan drove the lunar rover a total of 30.5 kilometers during their 75-hour stay on the Moon, and collected 110.4 kilograms (243 pounds) of lunar material.

When Cernan climbed aboard the Lunar Module to depart the moon, he said, “We leave as we came and God willing as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.”* Usually he is referred to as the last man to walk on the Moon, but I prefer to think of him as the most recent man to walk on the Moon.

And even though I won’t get to be the next person to walk on the Moon, I hope someday to see another person walk on the Moon, and Mars, and even other worlds.

___
*Shameless plug: I made that sentiment a key part of my short story, “Memorial at Copernicus.”

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Vanguard Launch Attempt, 1957

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Fifty-five years ago today — December 6, 1957 — the U.S. tried to launch the Vanguard satellite from Cape Canaveral, atop a Vanguard rocket.


(Vanguard explosion. US Navy image, from NASA.)

Also known as Vanguard TV3, for Vanguard Test Vehicle 3, the spacecraft was “a 1.36-kg aluminum sphere 15.2 cm in diameter, [that] contained a 10-mW, 108-MHz mercury-battery powered transmitter and a 5-mW, 108.03-MHz transmitter powered by six solar cells mounted on the body of the satellite.” Its mission, other than testing the launch vehicle itself, was to “study the effects of the environment on a satellite and its systems in Earth orbit,” and to “obtain geodetic measurements through orbit analysis.”

As seen in the image above, the launch vehicle exploded shortly after lifting off the pad.

When I was writing speeches in the Pentagon, I included the Vanguard story in a speech I wrote for the Under Secretary of the Air Force to deliver on December 6, 2004:

At 11:44 Eastern time at Cape Canaveral, the test conductor gave the final “go” command and Paul Karpiscak, a young engineer, flipped the final switch. Out on the pad, the rocket’s first stage ignited. It rose about four feet into the air, but lost power and came crashing down after only two seconds. It fell against the firing structure, its fuel tanks ruptured, and it immolated itself in a roaring ball of flame.

That was the 6th of December, 1957. It was Project Vanguard — our first attempt to launch a satellite. The experience was so new to the engineers in the control room that, when they saw it blow up, someone shouted, “Duck!” — and almost everyone did.

…

To wrap up, … the Vanguard Story has a happy ending.

For one thing, as that first launch vehicle crumbled in flame, controllers noticed that the satellite’s transmitters were still beeping. The payload had been thrown clear of the launch pad — it bounced a few times on the ground, but it still worked! At least they knew their satellite design was solid.

And … three Vanguard launches were successful, starting with Vanguard I on Saint Patrick’s Day, 1958. It wasn’t the US’s first satellite — that was Explorer-1 — but Vanguard I is still up there. It’s the world’s longest orbiting man-made satellite, and still provides data on atmospheric drag and other phenomena.

The lesson I take from the Vanguard story is that failure is, much of the time, a necessary step on the way to success.

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Final Classified DoD Shuttle Mission

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Twenty years ago today — December 2, 1992 — the Space Shuttle Discovery launched from the Kennedy Space Center carrying … something.


(STS-53 crew. NASA image.)

STS-53 was the last classified Department of Defense mission for the shuttle fleet. Astronauts David M. Walker, Robert D. Cabana, Guion Bluford, Jr., James S. Voss, and Michael R. Clifford deployed the payload and conducted a series of experiments.

The names of the secondary payloads and the experiments on this mission are interesting — particularly the last three:

  • Orbital Debris Radar Calibration Spheres (ODERACS)
  • Shuttle Glow Experiment/Cryogenic Heat Pipe Experiment (GCP)
  • Microcapsules in Space (MIS-l)
  • Space Tissue Loss (STL)
  • Visual Function Tester (VFT-2)
  • Cosmic Radiation Effects and Activation Monitor (CREAM)
  • Radiation Monitoring Equipment (RME-III)
  • Fluid Acquisition and Resupply Experiment (FARE)
  • Hand-held, Earth-oriented, Real-time, Cooperative, User-friendly, Location-targeting and Environmental System (HERCULES)
  • Battlefield Laser Acquisition Sensor Test (BLAST)
  • Cloud Logic to Optimize Use of Defense Systems (CLOUDS)

After a week in space, the shuttle landed at Edwards AFB because of cloud cover at Kennedy.

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First Satellite from Down Under

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Forty-five years ago today — November 29, 1967 — Australia launched its first satellite into orbit.


(Construction of Wresat-1. Australian Space Research Institute image.)

Called Wresat 1, the spacecraft was built by the Australian Weapons Research Establishment — the “WRE” in Wresat. The small satellite was launched from Woomera atop a Sparta launch vehicle (a modified Redstone rocket). It sent back data for five days, and deorbited after 42 days.

This Australian Space Research Institute page has additional information on Wresat’s development and launch.

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ISS Expansion, a Decade Ago

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Ten years ago today — November 23, 2002 — the Space Shuttle Endeavour launched from the Kennedy Space Center en route to the International Space Station.


(The shuttle’s cargo bay during STS-113, with the limb of the earth providing the main illumination. NASA image.)

Mission STS-113 astronauts Paul Lockhart, James B. Wetherbee, Michael E. Lopez-Alegria, John B. Herrington, Kenneth B. Bowersox, and Donald R. Pettit, along with cosmonaut Nikolai M. Budarin, delivered and installed the P1 truss on the space station. This mission also exchanged the ISS Expedition Five crew — cosmonauts Valery Korzun and Sergei Treschev and astronaut Peggy Whitson — with the Expedition Six crew — Bowersox, Pettit and Budarin.

Also on this date, 35 years ago, the European Space Agency’s Meteosat 1 was launched from Cape Canaveral on a Delta rocket as part of the Global Atmospheric Research Program.

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Two Weeks of Microgravity Science

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Fifteen years ago today — November 19, 1997 — the Space Shuttle Columbia launched from the Kennedy Space Center on the eighth shuttle flight of 1997.


(Shuttle Columbia in the Vehicle Assembly Building, prior to mission STS-87. NASA image.)

STS-87 carried U.S. astronauts Steven W. Lindsey, Kevin R. Kregel, Winston E. Scott, and Kalpana Chawla, Japanese astronaut Takao Doi, and Ukrainian cosmonaut Leonid K. Kadenyuk. The crew spent a little over 15-1/2 days in space, primarily operating the US Microgravity Payload on its fourth mission.

The crew also deployed the SPARTAN free-flying observatory, but problems with its attitude control system made it necessary to retrieve and stow it. During the retrieval operation, Doi became the first Japanese astronaut to complete a spacewalk.

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Project High Water II

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Fifty years ago today — November 16, 1962 — another pre-Apollo test flight of the Saturn-1 launch vehicle was made from Cape Canaveral.


(SA-3 on the launch pad. NASA image.)

Dubbed SA-3, this mission was the first to be flown with the Saturn first stage fully-fueled. The upper stages carred 23,000 gallons of water which would be released in the “Project High Water II” cloud experiment.

When the vehicle reached the zenith of its sub-orbital flight, the upper stage was detonated to release the water. The resulting cloud of ice particles was intended to shed light on the physics of the upper atmosphere, but the telemetry was not good enough to produce reliable data.

Aside from the poor data from the “High Water” experiment, however, the main objectives for the flight test itself were all met.

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First Operational Shuttle Mission, 1982

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A fine Veteran’s Day to you all …

Thirty years ago today — November 11, 1982 — the Space Shuttle Columbia launched from Kennedy Space Center on the first truly operational mission of the shuttle program.


(Satellite release from STS-5. NASA image.)

Mission STS-5 astronauts Vance D. Brand, Robert F. Overmyer, Joseph P. Allen, and William B. Lenoir carried two commercial communications satellites to orbit and released them from the shuttle’s payload bay. Both SBS 3, belonging to Satellite Business Systems, and Telesat Canada’s Anik C3 were successfully launched during the mission. The shuttle landed at Edwards Air Force Base five days after its launch.

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Space History Today: First Successful Saturn V Launch

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Forty-five years ago today — November 9, 1967 — NASA launched the unmanned Apollo 4 mission from the Kennedy Space Center.


(Apollo 4 launch. NASA image.)

Also known as Apollo-Saturn 501, Apollo 4 was the first test flight of the complete Saturn V rocket, carrying a full-up Command and Service Module. The mission was designed to test

  • launch vehicle and spacecraft compatibility
  • the vehicle’s structural integrity under launch loads
  • heat shield and thermal systems
  • stage separation and reentry operations
  • and other factors, including mission support facilities and operations

It wouldn’t be long after Apollo 4 before crews were launching on operational Apollo missions.

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Another Election is Over … Plus Some Space History

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“Every country has the government it deserves.” So said Joseph de Maistre, and his words ring true to me.

What is it we deserve, then? On a national level, it seems that the politics of class warfare, handouts, and cradle-to-grave coddling have again won the day, and since the resulting system is unlikely to be sustainable over the long term, it seems that we deserve to — or we have at least voted to — decline as a nation. I hate to think it, and I will work to postpone and even correct it, but we seem to be living out the aphorism about the people destroying the republic by voting themselves largesse out of the public treasury.*

Meanwhile, the calendar turned over, and it is another day. And forty-five years ago today — November 7, 1967 — Surveyor 6, the fourth in the series to soft-land on the Moon, was launched from Cape Canaveral on an Atlas Centaur rocket. It would be less than two years before human beings — our countrymen — walked on the Moon.


(We went there, a long time ago, remember? NASA image.)

We had ambitions then, and big dreams. Those were the days.

___
*Attributed in various forms to several different people, including Benjamin Franklin, George Orwell, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Alexander Fraser Tytler.

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