Tag Archives: space shuttle

First Microgravity Laboratory Flight

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Twenty years ago today — June 25, 1992 — the Space Shuttle Columbia launched from the Kennedy Space Center carrying U.S. Microgravity Laboratory I (USML-1).


(The STS-50 crew in the Spacelab module. NASA image.)

The STS-50 crew consisted of astronauts Richard N. Richards, Kenneth D. Bowersox, Bonnie J. Dunbar, Ellen S. Baker, Carl J. Meade, Lawrence J. DeLucas, and Eugene H.Trinh. Over the course of their 13-day mission, they conducted over a dozen different experiments in the USML-1 module.

And, in bonus space history left over from my lazy birthday weekend: 30 years ago yesterday (June 24, 1982) the Soviet Union launched Soyuz T-6 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, carrying cosmonauts Vladimir A. Dzhanibekov and Alexander S. Ivanchenko, along with French astronaut Jean-Loup Chrétien, to the Salyut 7 space station.

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Extending the Space Station's Reach (Literally)

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Ten years ago today — June 5, 2002 — Space Shuttle Endeavour launched from the Kennedy Space Center on a mission to the International Space Station.


(STS-111 launch. NASA image.)

The STS-111 crew consisted of US astronauts Paul S.Lockhart, Kenneth D. Cockrell, Franklin Chang-Diaz, and Peggy Whitson, French astronaut Philippe Perrin, and cosmonauts Valery G. Korzun and Sergei Y.Treschev. Korzun, Treschev, and Whitson comprised the ISS “Expedition Five” crew, and stayed aboard the ISS when Endeavour departed with the Expedition Four crew.

Endeavour delivered supplies and equipment to the ISS, and returned unneeded hardware and materiel from the station. In a series of EVAs, the crew installed the Mobile Remote Service Base System on the Mobile Transporter, which extended the Canadarm2 robotic arm’s reach by allowing it to traverse the station’s length. They also replaced a wrist roll joint on the station’s robotic arm.

Finally …

This foray into space history wouldn’t be complete without noting how good it was to see SpaceX‘s Dragon space capsule become the first commercial vehicle to dock with the space station. Well done!

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First Energia Launch Attempt — And, Atlantis Flies to Mir

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Twenty-five years ago today — May 15, 1987 — the USSR launched its first Energia rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.


(Energia-Polyus, prior to being raised for launch. Image from the Buran-Energia site.)

The Energia was a heavy-lift booster built by the Soviet Union to launch their “Buran” space shuttle. On its maiden flight with the Polyus upper stage instead of Buran, the Energia performed as intended but the upper stage did not place the payload in orbit. According to the Wikipedia entry:

The Soviets had originally announced that the launch as a successful sub-orbital test of the new Energia booster with a dummy payload, but some time later it was revealed that the flight had, in fact, been intended to orbit the Polyus, a UKSS military payload. The two stages of the Energia launcher functioned as designed, but the Polyus payload failed to reach orbit. Due to a software error in its attitude control system, the burn of the Polyus’ orbital insertion motor failed to insert the payload into orbit. Instead, the payload reentered the atmosphere over the Pacific ocean.

According to the Buran-Energia site,

It would seem that Polyus is the Soviet response to the project “Star Wars” launched by the American president Reagan. It was to be in fact a space combat laser station. Finally, we know very few things about this apparatus and its real use. Officially it was intended to make scientific experiments in upper atmosphere.

Very interesting.

[BREAK, BREAK]

Ten years later — on this date in 1997 — the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-84. The shuttle carried U.S. astronauts Charles J. Precourt, Eileen M. Collins, C. Michael Foale, Carlos I. Noriega, and Edward T. Lu; French astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoy; and Russian cosmonaut Elena V. Kondakova to the Mir space station. Foale stayed on Mir, and the shuttle brought astronaut Jerry Linenger back to Earth after his 123-day space station stay.

Quite a contrast with the cold war days.

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Mark of the Shuttle Era: Satellite Capture Repair

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Twenty years ago today — May 7, 1992 — Space Shuttle Endeavour launched from the Kennedy Space Center on a mission to rendezvous with the Intelsat VI satellite.


(Three mission specialists work on the Intelsat VI satellite. STS-49 marked the first three-astronaut EVA. NASA image.)

STS-49 was the maiden flight of Endeavour, and included astronauts Daniel C. Brandenstein, Kevin P. Chilton, Richard J. Hieb, Bruce E. Melnick, Pierre J. Thuot, Kathryn C. Thornton, and Thomas D. Akers. Their mission was to retrieve the Intelsat VI satellite, which had been stranded in orbit since March 1990, and install a perigee kick motor to boost it to geosynchronous orbit.

The capture required three EVAs: a planned one by astronaut Pierre J. Thuot and Richard J. Hieb who were unable to attach a capture bar to the satellite from a position on the [Remote Manipulator System]; a second unscheduled but identical attempt the following day; and finally an unscheduled but successful hand capture by Pierre J. Thuot and fellow crewmen Richard J. Hieb and Thomas D. Akers as Commander Daniel C. Brandenstein delicately maneuvered the orbiter to within a few feet of the 4.5 ton communications satellite. An [Assembly of Station by EVA Methods] structure was erected in the cargo bay by the crew to serve as a platform to aid in the hand capture and subsequent attachment of the capture bar.

In addition to being Endeavour‘s first flight, STS-49 included the first extravehicular activity with three astronauts outside the shuttle at the same time, was the first shuttle mission to feature four EVAs and the first time a live rocket motor was attached to an orbiting satellite, and featured the first use of a drag chute during a shuttle landing.

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Space Station Spinal Surgery

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Ten years ago today — April 8, 2002 — the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center on its way to the International Space Station.


(Astronauts Steven L. Smith [R] and Rex J. Walheim during the third of STS-110’s four EVAs. NASA image.)

STS-110, also known as ISS Assembly Flight 8A, featured astronauts Michael J. Bloomfield, Stephen N. Frick, Jerry L. Ross, Steven L. Smith, Ellen Ochoa, Lee M.E. Morin, and Rex J. Walheim. The team completed four spacewalks during their 10 days in space, and delivered and installed the “Starboard-Zero” Center Integrated Truss Assembly.

The new truss was a key part of the ISS’s skeleton — its “center backbone,” according to this STS-100 information page — with attachment points for additional station modules and solar panels. In addition to mechanical attachments, the truss included power and thermal control systems, a Mobile Transporter to extend the reach of the station’s robotic arm, as well as other equipment needed to keep the station operational.

In addition,

The launch marked a milestone as Mission Specialist Jerry Ross became the first human to fly in space seven times, breaking his own and other astronauts’ records of six space flights.

You know, some of us would be satisfied with getting to fly in space just once.

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Microgravity Fire

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Sounds as if it should be a band name instead of a blog post title.

Anyway, 15 years ago today in space history — April 4, 1997 — the Space Shuttle Columbia lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on the first mission for the Microgravity Science Laboratory, which included experiments in, yes, microgravity fire.


(STS-83 on Pad 39-A with Comet Hale-Bopp in the background. NASA image.)

During mission STS-83, astronauts James D. Halsell, Susan L. Still, Janice E. Voss, Donald A. Thomas, Michael L. Gernhardt, Roger K. Crouch, and Gregory T. Linteris carried out a number of experiments, including the “fire-related experiments” alluded to earlier. The fire studies were carried out in specially-built combustion chambers in the Spacelab module. Unfortunately, a fault in one of the shuttle’s fuel cells caused mission managers to cut the mission short and bring the shuttle home after only 3 days.

In other space history, 40 years ago today the USSR launched a Molniya rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, carrying the Molniya 1/20 communications satellite into a highly-elliptical, high-inclination orbit known as a “Molniya” orbit. The French experimental satellite SRET-1 launched on the same rocket; it tested solar cell materials and studied the effects of radiation from the Van Allen belts.

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ATLAS Launch — No, Not the Rocket

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Well, a rocket, and ATLAS, but not an Atlas rocket. Confused yet?

Thirty years ago today — March 24, 1992– the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center on a mission to study atmospheric science and how space phenomena affect Earth’s environment.


(ATLAS-1 pallets in the shuttle’s payload bay. NASA image.)

The STS-45 crew included U.S. astronauts Charles F. Bolden — the future NASA administrator — Brian Duffy, Kathryn D. Sullivan, David C. Leestma, C. Michael Foale, and Byron K. Lichtenberg, as well as Belgian astronaut Dirk D. Frimout. Their 8-day mission was the first launch of the Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science (ATLAS-1).

ATLAS-1 consisted of a dozen instruments from seven different countries — the U.S., France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Japan — to study “atmospheric chemistry, solar radiation, space plasma physics and ultraviolet astronomy.” ATLAS-1 was not a free-flying platform, so it stayed on the SpaceLab platform in the shuttle’s cargo bay while it performed its observations.

The ATLAS platform flew on subsequent shuttle missions to continue the atmospheric research.

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Space History: Third Space Shuttle Qualification Flight

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Thirty years ago today — March 22, 1982 — the Space Shuttle Columbia launched from Kennedy Space Center on the third “shakedown” flight of the shuttle program.


(STS-3 landing at White Sands, New Mexico. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Astronauts Jack R. Lousma and C. Gordon Fullerton crewed Columbia during the STS-3 mission. They checked out the shuttle’s systems and documented problems ranging from lost communication links to toilet malfunctions, from space sickness to sleep cycles interrupted by unexplained static.

The shuttle was scheduled to land at Edwards AFB, but the dry lake bed was actually too wet to accomodate a landing. High winds at the back-up landing site at White Sands, New Mexico, forced a one-day mission extension. Columbia landed there on March 30th — the only time a shuttle ever landed at White Sands.

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Space History Today: Fourth Hubble Servicing Mission

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Ten years ago today — March 1, 2002 — the Space Shuttle Columbia launched from the Kennedy Space Center on the fourth servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.


(The Hubble Space Telescope in the shuttle cargo bay for repairs and upgrades, with a background of sunrise “airglow” on Earth’s horizon. NASA image.)

Astronauts Scott D. Altman, Duane G. Carey, John M. Grunsfeld, Nancy J. Currie, James H. Newman, Richard M. Linnehan, and Michael J. Massimino made up the crew of STS-109, and accomplished five spacewalks on this important mission.

The crew

  • removed and replaced the telescope’s two solar arrays with new, higher-efficiency arrays
  • installed a new Reaction Wheel Assembly
  • replaced the Power Control Unit
  • replaced Hubble’s Faint Object Camera with the Advanced Camera for Surveys
  • installed the Electronic Support Module and a cryocooler and Cooling System Radiator for an experimental cooling system for the Near-Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer

All of us who have enjoyed Hubble’s images and discoveries through the years can appreciate the effort to maintain and improve it over its operational life. Well done!

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For a little bonus space history, on the same day that Columbia launched, the European Space Agency launched ENVISAT-1 on an Ariane-5 rocket out of Kourou. At 8.1 tonnes (nearly 18,000 lb), ENVISAT-1 was “reported to be the most massive and expensive of the European satellites.” It carried ten instruments for remote sensing of terrestrial environmental conditions such as global warming and desertification.

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First Shuttle Captive-Carry Test

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Thirty-five years ago today — February 18, 1977 — NASA conducted the first captive-carry flight test of the Space Shuttle program, with the prototype orbiter Enterprise atop the 747 carrier aircraft.


(Shuttle prototype Enterprise during one of the captive-carry tests. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.)

After a series of taxi tests on the 15th, this was the first “inert” flight test of the approach and landing test program. The orbiter was powered down and no astronauts flew during this and the next four flights. The first “active” captive-carry flight took place on June 18, 1977, commanded by Apollo-13 lunar module pilot Fred Haise and piloted by Gordon Fullerton. Haise and Fullerton later flew the first glide test as well.

All of the shuttle flight tests took place at the Dryden Flight Research Facility at Edwards AFB. It was always cool to drive past Dryden on my way to and from the Rocket Lab, when we were stationed at Edwards in the late 80s.

If you want to see the Enterprise flight test vehicle, which has been on display for the last few years at the Udvar-Hazy annex to the National Air and Space Museum, it is supposed to be moved later this year to the Intrepid Air and Space Museum in New York.

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