Category Archives: Space

What’s NASA Going to Announce Today?

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This afternoon’s NASA “Science Update” is supposed to include an announcement about a “major extrasolar planet discovery” made by the Hubble Space Telescope. See this link for more information.

In today’s space history, a seeming disrepancy: one NASA site says today is the 30th anniversary of the launch of the “Einstein Observatory,” the second High Energy Astrophysical Observatory (HEAO-2), but this page gives the mission start date as yesterday. Since I found the 13th noted in more places than the 12th — not that I did any kind of exhaustive search — I’m comfortable posting this as today’s space anniversary. (It’s not as if I can go back and post it yesterday.)

Now, I wonder if blogging counts as reporting in terms of getting a spot in that NASA press teleconference this afternoon. 😉 It’s all research, isn’t it? It may not show up in the novel I’m writing now — unless they’ve discovered a planet with a moon like ours — but who knows what novel I might write next?

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A Little Lunar Exploration History

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For our continuing “this day in space history” series, today marks the 40th anniversary of the Russian’s Zond-6 mission to the moon. It successfully flew by the moon as planned, but a reentry problem apparently caused most of its photographic film to be lost. You can read about it on this NASA page or this Wikipedia page. I’m not sure what to make of the notation that France sponsored the mission, but I was very interested to see that Zond-6 launched on a Proton rocket out of Tyuratam: the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Why did that fact interest me? Because I watched the Nimiq-2 satellite and its Proton booster get prepped for launch at the Baikonur Cosmodrome back in November-December 2002. (I came home shortly before the launch.) While I was there I was inspired to write the first draft of my short story, “The Rocket Seamstress.”

In other writing and lunar-related news, yesterday I passed the 80,000-word mark on my novel, MARE NUBIUM. I’m beginning to doubt that I’ll hit 100K by December, but I’m trying to forge ahead.

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Space History: Mariner-10

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Thirty-five years ago today, Mariner-10 — the first spacecraft to visit Mercury — was launched. According to this NASA page, it was the seventh spacecraft in the Mariner series, and the first spacecraft to use the gravitational “slingshot” method to change course: it swung by Venus on its way to Mercury.

Just last month the MESSENGER spacecraft sent back vivid images that revealed parts of Mercury never seen before. With that in mind, it seems fitting to remember its predecessor today.

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15 Years Ago in Space History

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On November 1, 1993, the Space Shuttle Columbia landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, at the end of mission STS-58. The crew had spent 14 days aboard the orbiter.

At the time, we were still new to Vandenberg AFB on the California coast, and I was in the middle of the first project I would manage for the Titan System Program Office: finding and retrieving from the ocean floor pieces of a failed rocket. That was a fascinating project, and I have a piece of the rocket that they gave me as a going-away present.

In more recent news, I think I figured a way to tie in part of that search and salvage operation with the novel I’m writing. We’ll see how that works out.

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Tenth Anniversary of a Triumphant Return to Space

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I don’t know if anyone else is enjoying my ongoing series of space anniversaries, but I am.

Ten years ago today — October 29th, 1998 — the Space Shuttle Discovery lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-95. Aboard were seven astronauts, including one from Spain and one from Japan, who would conduct experiments in the SPACEHAB module and deploy and retrieve the “Spartan” free-flyer.

The crew were Curtis L. Brown, Steven W. Lindsey, Scott E. Parazynski, Stephen K. Robinson, Pedro Duque (Spain), Chiaki Mukai (Japan), and — making the triumphant return mentioned in the title — John H. Glenn. Thirty-six years, eight months and nine days after becoming the first American to orbit the Earth, Senator Glenn returned to space.

The mission also:

  • Was the first Space Shuttle launch watched by a U. S. President (President Clinton)
  • Included the first astronaut from Spain to fly in space
  • Included the first Japanese astronaut to fly twice into space

The mission lasted a few hours shy of nine days, making it a much longer stay in space than the first time for Senator Glenn. And longer than I’m likely ever to stay in space, despite my most fervent wishes. I suppose there’s still hope for my ashes, but hopefully that day won’t come for a long time.

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Space History Today: X-15 Last Flight

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Wow, three posts in less than two weeks that mention NASA test pilot Bill Dana — I didn’t see that coming. (The others were yesterday and October 15th.)

As you probably guessed, Mr. Dana piloted the last X-15 flight — number 199 — forty years ago today. He was dropped from the wing of the same B-52 that, years later, would drop the Pegasus launch vehicle during its first flights. When we were on the Pegasus Flight Readiness Review Panel in the late 1980s, I never thought I’d be blogging about him later … but then again, none of us knew what a blog was because they hadn’t been invented yet.

But here’s to you, Mr. Dana, and all those like you who have “danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.” May we follow, ever upward.

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Today's Space Anniversary: First HL-10 Powered Flight

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The “heavy” lifting body test program actually began in 1966, but the first powered flight of the HL-10 happened on October 23, 1968. The program was flown out of NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Facility at Edwards Air Force Base, and is briefly showcased here. Here’s a contact sheet of medium-resolution photos from the program.

I found it interesting that one of the HL-10 test pilots was Bill Dana, whom I mentioned on this blog a few days ago.

I also found the Wikipedia page on the program to be interesting, too, particularly the “What Might Have Been” section. Project engineer R. Dale Reed proposed

to heavily modify the HL-10 at the Flight Research Center with the addition of an ablative heat shield, reaction controls, and other additional subsystems needed for manned spaceflight. The now space-rated vehicle would have then flown on the Apollo-Saturn V launch vehicle in the same space which originally held the Lunar Module. Once in earth orbit, it was planned that a robotic extraction arm would remove the vehicle from the rocket’s third stage and place it adjacent to the manned Apollo CSM spacecraft. One of the astronauts, who would be trained to fly the vehicle, would then spacewalk from the Apollo and board the lifting body to perform a pre-reentry check on its systems.

It was planned that there would be two flights in this program. In the first, the lifting body pilot would return to the Apollo and send the HL-10 back to earth unmanned. If this flight was successful, on the next launch, he would then pilot the HL-10 back to earth for a planned landing at Edwards AFB.

That would’ve been cool.

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Lunar Programs: Then and Now, Ours and Theirs

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Forty years ago today, Apollo-7 splashed down in the Pacific after the first manned flight of the Apollo program. (See this blog post for more on the mission.)

That was then, and our mission. As for now, and their mission:

India made the next giant leap in its space program early Wednesday with the launch of the country’s first deep space mission, a probe to circle the moon with science gear from India, Europe and the United States.

(From Spaceflight Now)

The spacecraft, Chandrayaan-1, launched last night (in Zulu [Greenwich Mean] time, at 0052 Wednesday).

The probe flew into space aboard a beefed-up Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, a 146-foot-tall rocket originally built to haul Earth observation satellites into orbit.

And now it’s on its way. Congratulations and good luck!

If I ever — no, that’s too negative; make it “when I” — get back to work on my novel of lunar survival, which has been on hold for the past three weeks, I wonder if I can work any of this into it. Probably not, but at least it gets me thinking about it again.

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15 Years Ago (Yesterday) in Space

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I missed blogging about yesterday’s space anniversary, since I’ve been working on an NCSU-IES project this weekend. And since I haven’t come up with anything better, here goes:

15 years ago yesterday — on October 18, 1993 — Space Shuttle Columbia launched on mission STS-58 launched from the Kennedy Space Center. The crew, John E. Blaha, Richard A. Searfoss, M. Rhea Seddon, William S. McArthur, Jr., David A. Wolf, Shannon W. Lucid, and Martin J. Fettman, performed experiments on how the human body adapts to the “weightless” (i.e., the free fall) environment of space.

Now, back to work. [shrug]

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A Little Nuclear Detection History, and a Big Gripe

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Forty-five years ago today, the first nuclear detonation detection satellites, Vela-1 and Vela-2, were launched from the Eastern Space & Missile Center. Considering the possible proliferation of nuclear weapons, NUDET is as vital today as it ever was, and those spacecraft paved the way for the capabilities we have now. Just thought you’d like to know.

Now for my gripe.

It’s really not that big a gripe, despite the title above. It’s based on the trials of the write-submit-receive rejection-submit again cycle. I can’t gripe about the cycle itself; it’s part and parcel of the business of writing. But sometimes ….

Here’s the story: Back on August 23rd, I submitted for the first time an essay entitled, “An Unsolicited Proposal for the Next Secretary of Education.” It was rejected, and since then it’s been submitted and rejected two more times and is currently in review at a fourth venue. With every submission, I’ve tried to tell the editorial staff that this is a timely piece, and last night’s Presidential debate proved me right.

Referring to education, both candidates pointed out the difficult situation in the Washington, DC, school system. That’s great, but it irritated me because one of the central tenets of my essay had to do with establishing a model school in DC.

😡 Timing is everything, and once again it’s something I don’t have.

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