Tag Archives: space shuttle

Military Shuttle Mission, Space Tourist, and Two Satellites Join the 'A-Train'

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First things first, the military mission: 20 years ago today — April 28, 1991 — the Space Shuttle Discovery launched on a dedicated DoD mission.


(Auroral image taken during the STS-39 mission. NASA image.)

The STS-39 crew — Michael L. Coats, L. Blaine Hammond, Guion S. Bluford, Gregory S. Harbaugh, Richard J. Hieb, Donald R. McMonagle, and Charles Lacy Veach — completed a combination of classified and unclassified mission objectives during their week in space.

On this same date a decade later — April 28, 2001 — the first “space tourist,” U.S. businessman Dennis Tito, rode aboard the Soyuz-TM-32 mission with cosmonauts Talgat A. Musabayev and Yuri M. Baturin. Their mission launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and docked with the International Space Station. I love the description of Tito in the linked write-up as “not a professional astronaut.”

And just 5 years ago today, the CloudSat and CALIPSO* meteorological satellites launched from Vandenberg AFB on a Delta-II rocket. They launched into the same orbit as the Aqua, PARASOL, and Aura satellites to join the A-Train of observational craft that pass overhead one right after the other.

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*CALIPSO = Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation, a U.S. and French collaborative spacecraft

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Two Space Stations, Thirty Years Apart

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Today’s space history installment shows how much the world can change …

Forty years ago today — April 19, 1971 — the Soviet Union launched the first space station, Salyut-1, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. A Proton-K rocket carried the station to orbit, where it awaited the arrival of its first crew.

The Salyut-1 experiment did not end as well as it began, however. The first mission to reach the station, Soyuz-10, docked in April 1971 but the crew did not cross over into the station. The Soyuz-11 crew successfully inhabited the station in June 1971, but the crew died on re-entry when their spacecraft depressurized. Salyut-1 itself was de-orbited later the same year.

In the “how the world changed” department, 30 years to the day after the Salyut-1 launch — on April 19, 2001 — the Space Shuttle Endeavour carried a U.S.-Italian-Russian crew on a mission to the International Space Station.


(STS-100 launch. NASA image.)

STS-100 installed the remote manipulator “Canadarm-2” and the Italian cargo container “Raffaello” during ISS Assembly Flight 6A. U.S. astronauts Kent V. Rominger, Jeffrey S. Ashby, Chris A. Hadfield, Scott E. Parazynski, and John L. Phillips spent 11 days in space on the mission with Italian astronaut Umberto Guidoni and Russian cosmonaut Yuri V. Lonchakov.

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Two Human Spaceflight Firsts, Two Decades Apart

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A half-century ago today — April 12, 1961 — the era of human spaceflight began.

On that historic date, Vostok-1 launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, then known mostly as Tyuratam, carrying Yuri Gagarin to triumph as the first man in space. After one orbit, his spherical capsule returned him to earth, but in a most unusual manner: he ejected from it and rode a parachute back to Earth.

Twenty years later, on this date in 1981, the U.S. scored a space first with STS-1, the first flight of a Space Shuttle.


(STS-1 launch. NASA image. Click here for high-resolution image.)

Astronauts John W. Young and Robert L. Crippen rode the shuttle Columbia as it launched from the Kennedy Space Center, and spent two days in space checking out its systems before landing at Edwards AFB.

One of the best commemorations of that first shuttle launch is the song “Countdown” by Rush. The image below calls to mind these lines:*

Floodlit in the hazy distance,
The star of this unearthly show
Venting vapors, like the breath
Of a sleeping white dragon


(STS-1 on the pad, prior to launch. NASA image. Click here for high-resolution image.)

It’s sad to see the Space Shuttle era coming to an end, but I hope to see another era of human spaceflight begin.

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*Copied from the lyric sheet in my head. Used, admittedly, without official permission.

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Two 'Gray Man' Space History Connections

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Fifteen years ago today — March 22, 1996 — the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from the Kennedy Space Center on a mission to Russia’s Mir space station.


(STS-76 launch. NASA image.)

Shuttle mission STS-76 was the third Shuttle-Mir docking mission, and carried astronauts Kevin P. Chilton, Richard A. Searfoss, Linda M. Godwin, Michael R. Clifford, Ronald M. Sega, and Shannon W. Lucid. Lucid stayed aboard Mir when the rest of the crew returned to Earth.

What’s the Gray Man connection to STS-76? When Dr. Sega became the Under Secretary of the Air Force, I worked for him until my retirement. In fact, he presided over my retirement ceremony:


(Two-time Shuttle astronaut Dr. Ron Sega, Under Secretary of the Air Force, presents Gray with a letter of appreciation from the Chief of Staff. USAF image.)

The second Gray Man space history connection comes from another launch, 5 years ago today: a Pegasus-XL rocket carried three microsatellites (ST5-A, -B, and -C) to orbit as part of NASA’s New Millennium Program. As I’ve mentioned before, when I was stationed at the AF Rocket Propulsion Laboratory at Edwards AFB many years before, I was on the Flight Readiness Review Committee for the first-ever Pegasus launch.

It looks ever more doubtful that I’ll get to fly in space, but it was nice to be at least marginally associated with the space program during my career.

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Space Station Assembly: Leonardo in Space

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Ten years ago today — March 21, 2001 — the Space Shuttle Discovery launched from the Kennedy Space Center on a mission to the International Space Station.


(Sunrise launch of STS-102. NASA image.)

Mission STS-102 was also known as ISS Flight 5A.1, and delivered personnel and equipment — including the Italian “Leonardo MultiPurpose Logistics Module” — to the station.

The Italian Space Agency built the Leonardo MPLM, the first of several such modules which served double duty as cargo carriers and space station work areas.

The primary shuttle crew consisted of astronauts James D. Wetherbee, James M. Kelly, Andy S.W. Thomas, and Paul W. Richards. The “Expedition 2” crew, U.S. astronauts James S. Voss and Susan J. Helms and cosmonaut Yury V. Usachev, were taken up to the ISS; the shuttle brought astronaut William M. Shepherd and cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Yuri P. Gidzenko, the “Expedition 1” crew, down from the station.

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Farewell, DISCOVERY

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With yesterday’s landing, the Space Shuttle Discovery itself moves into the realm of space history.


(Shuttle Discovery in orbit. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons. Click to enlarge.)

Yours truly worked two Discovery landings when I was stationed at Edwards AFB. Even though my duty station was across the lakebed at the AF Rocket Propulsion Laboratory, I got to be part of the AF Flight Test Center shuttle recovery team, and was part of the contingency convoy for the landings of STS-33 and STS-31. Quite a thrill for a space-happy young officer!

An era is ending … I hope the next era will be even more spectacular.

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Of Tethers and UFOs

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Fifteen years ago today — February 22, 1996 — the Space Shuttle Columbia launched from Kennedy Space Center on another attempt to study the behavior of tethers in space.


(Tethered Satellite System being extended from its cradle aboard STS-75. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.)

STS-75 carried the Tethered Satellite System Reflight (TSS-1R) — “reflight” because the tether jammed on its first flight (STS-46 in June 1992), demonstrating that even the simplest of ideas turn out to be not so simple in space. U.S. astronauts Andrew M. Allen, Scott J. Horowitz, Franklin R. Chang-Diaz, and Jeffrey A. Hoffman, along with Claude Nicollier of Switzerland, and Maurizio Cheli and Umberto Guidoni of Italy, deployed the TSS-1R’s conducting tether and monitored its performance … right up until the tether broke “just short of full deployment of about 12.8 miles (20.6 kilometers).”

The crew also conducted materials science and condensed matter physics experiments using the United States Microgravity Payload (USMP-3), but that’s not where the UFOs come in.

The UFO controversy surrounding STS-75 concerns images that appear in video of the TSS experiments. UFO enthusiasts content that the bright disk shapes may be alien spacecraft, but NASA maintains that they are simply out-of-focus dust particles and similar phenomena. If you’re interested, you can read about the issue on this page and in this discussion thread, or you can watch one of several online videos.

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Atlantis and Destiny

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Ten years ago today — February 7, 2001 — the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center, on its way to the International Space Station.


(Destiny module being installed on the International Space Station. NASA image.)

STS-98 astronauts Kenneth D. Cockrell, Mark L. Polansky, Robert L. Curbeam, Thomas D. Jones, and Marsha S. Ivins transported the U.S. laboratory module “Destiny” and installed it on the ISS.

And, speaking of destiny, 20 years ago today the Salyut-7 space station was de-orbited after nearly nine years of operations. The main character in my story, “The Rocket Seamstress,”* bemoaned its loss:

Where are Salyut and Mir, Mother Russia’s glorious outposts? Rusting homes to fish instead of men.

May we one day have outposts in space that are not in any danger of falling from the sky.

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*The story appeared in Zahir in 2007, and is available now on Anthology Builder.

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A Space History Tragedy

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The date may not register with all of us every year, but few space enthusiasts — and probably few U.C. citizens — over thirty will ever forget the mishap that destroyed the Space Shuttle Challenger.

It’s hard to believe that it was 25 years ago today — January 28, 1986 — that the Challenger lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-51L, and exploded a little over a minute into the launch profile.

To this day, I find it almost painful to watch the video of the explosion. Indeed, I find it hard to compose this post, even though I’ve known it was coming for a long time.

So I will just post this picture of the Challenger astronauts — Francis R. “Dick” Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Ellison S. Onizuka, Judith A. Resnik, Ronald E. McNair, Sharon Christa McAuliffe, and Gregory Jarvis — the way I like to remember them:


(STS-51L crew, leaving the Operations & Checkout Building. NASA image.)

Hopeful. Enthusiastic. Fearless.

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First Congressman in Space, a Quarter Century Ago

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Twenty-five years ago today — January 12, 1986 — the Space Shuttle Columbia launched from Kennedy Space Center carrying into orbit the first member of U.S. House of Representatives to fly in space.


(In-flight portrait of the STS-61C crew. NASA image.)

The entire STS-61C crew consisted of astronauts Robert L. “Hoot” Gibson, Charles F. Bolden, Franklin R. Chang-Diaz, George D. “Pinky” Nelson, Steve A. Hawley, and Robert J. Cenker, plus Congressman William C. Nelson. In addition to being the first time a sitting Representative flew in space, it was the first flight for Bolden, who is the current NASA Administrator, and for Chang-Diaz, the first Costa Rica-born astronaut.

The crew deployed the SATCOM KU-1 communications satellite and conducted a number of different experiments. Their landing was originally moved up one day, then had to be delayed because of weather.

The NASA mission summary doesn’t mention how much concern they had over seeing a piece of thermal insulation in orbit alongside the shuttle:


(One of the shuttle’s thermal insulation tiles photographed from inside Columbia. NASA image.)

I imagine that sort of thing, even if not uncommon, would increase the “pucker factor” when it came time for landing. But such is the life of the “steely-eyed missile men.”*

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*And women, of course, but there weren’t any on this mission.

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