Tag Archives: nasa

Of X-Planes and Moon Rocks

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Fifty years ago today — September 17, 1959 — Scott Crossfield made the first powered flight in an X-15, dropped off the wing of NASA’s B-52 flying out of Edwards AFB, CA.


(Cutaway drawing of the X-15. NASA Photo E62-7893.)

Here’s a NASA story commemorating the first flight, and a nice feature on Crossfield and his career.

And forty years ago today, the Smithsonian Institution unveiled the first lunar rock ever put on public display: brought back by Apollo-11, of course. Today I wonder if we have the national will to go back to the moon, or to go anywhere; the recent Augustine Panel noted that it’s technically feasible, but by damn it better be technically feasible by the 2020s if we did it back in the 1960s. It’s all a matter of money, and whether we see it as a cost or as an investment.

For the moment we have to content ourselves with the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission, due to smash into crater Cabeus-A in about three weeks to try to verify if the hydrogen concentrations detected on the moon are in the form of water ice.

I hope LCROSS finds water, and more than expected . . . but even if it doesn’t, that’s only one spot in one crater. It will take other investigations to prove whether the moon is completely devoid of water. (Why I care: The characters in my novel collect ice that’s been dredged up microgram by microgram out of the bottom of Faustini crater, and since Faustini was on the “short list” of possible LCROSS impact points [according to a graphic shown during the 11 September press conference] I think my fictional world is still plausible for now.)

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Space History: Big Joe 1 and STS-64

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Fifty years ago today — September 9, 1959 — the Mercury capsule test “Big Joe 1” launched from Cape Canaveral on an Atlas rocket. The booster operated nominally but its two outboard engines didn’t separate as planned, which left the payload 500 miles short of the predicted impact point; the overall test flight was still considered a success.

(Big Joe launch vehicle. Click to enlarge. USAF photo from the Johnson Space Center image collection.)

And fifteen years ago today, in 1994, Richard N. Richards, L. Blaine Hammond, Jr., Jerry M. Linenger, Susan J. Helms, Carl J. Meade, and Mark C. Lee launched from the Kennedy Space Center aboard Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-64.


(STS-64 mission patch, from NASA.)

The STS-64 mission was the first flight of the LIDAR (i.e., light detection and ranging, like radar but with lasers instead of radio) In-Space Technology Experiment, or “LITE.” Astronauts Lee and Meade accomplished the first untethered U.S. space walk in 10 years.

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Genesis Crash

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Five years ago today — September 8, 2004 — NASA’s Genesis sample return capsule crash-landed in the Utah desert. The spacecraft was returning with samples collected from the solar wind, but its drogue parachute failed as it descended. It hit the ground traveling 311 km/hr.

(Genesis sample container crash site. Click to enlarge. USAF photo from NASA web page.)

The damaged container was taken into a clean room as soon as possible so NASA scientists could analyze the sample fragments. This page explains how some of the Genesis findings solved a mystery about the isotopic composition of lunar rocks brought back by the Apollo missions.

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Problems in the Search for Lunar Ice

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Last week controllers lost contact with the Indian lunar probe Chandrayaan-1, which was about to embark on a new series of observations in conjunction with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Now those radar observations won’t happen, as explained in this New Scientist article.

That sets back the search for ice in lunar craters, which will be vital to future lunar outposts. But this passage especially caught my eye:

Chandrayaan-1 flew over “a lot of little craters that looked like they had ice” and mapped 95 per cent of the polar regions before its mission ended,

according to Stewart Nozette of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. That sounds encouraging.

And provided that LCROSS — the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite — doesn’t experience another in-flight emergency, we should get a closer look at the contents of one crater in just a few weeks.

But no matter what any of these probes reveal: in the world of my novel, WALKING ON THE SEA OF CLOUDS, the colonists retrieve ice from the permanently shaded floor of Faustini Crater.

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Pioneer-11's Saturnian Encounter — PLUS, A Scavenger Hunt

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Thirty years ago today — September 1, 1979 — Pioneer 11 became the first spacecraft to fly by Saturn. It flew past Saturn’s rings, passing 13,000 miles above the planet’s cloud tops.


(Pioneer-11 image of Saturn during its approach to the planet on August 26, 1979, from a distance of 1,768,422 miles. Saturn’s moon Titan is visible in the upper left. NASA image.)

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Dragon*Con is coming!

For those of you who may be interested, Anthology Builder is sponsoring a scavenger hunt at the con. Nancy Fulda, the founder and high potentate of Anthology Builder — where, as the name implies, you can build your own anthology of (mostly science fiction and fantasy) short stories — produced a series of badges which con-goers can collect and display to win a free anthology. Details of the scavenger hunt are on this page, and here’s the badge for yours truly — not sure why the first version stopped working —

(Click to enlarge.)

— made to come as close as possible to the grandmother who is the lead character in “The Rocket Seamstress,” my story on the site.

So if you’re going to Dragon*Con, look for the badges … and if you’re not, pop on over and see all the stories that are available on Anthology Builder.

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Space History: First Flight of Shuttle Discovery

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Twenty-five years ago today — August 30, 1984 — the Space Shuttle Discovery launched from Kennedy Space Center on its maiden voyage.


(STS-41D launch. NASA image.)

Astronauts Henry W. Hartsfield, Jr., Michael L. Coats, Judith A. Resnik, Steven A. Hawley, Richard M. Mullane, and Charles D. Walker made up the crew of STS-41D, which was the first mission on which three separate satellites were deployed (SBS-D, Syncom IV-2, and Telstar 3-C).


(STS-41D mission patch. NASA image.)

The mission also carried an experimental solar wing with different types of solar cells that deployed to its full size (102 feet x 13 feet) several times to demonstrate large lightweight solar arrays — not unlike those currently on the International Space Station.

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Nimbus-1 Weather Satellite: From Launch to STAR TREK

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Forty-five years ago today — August 28, 1964 — the Nimbus-1 satellite, “the first in a series of second-generation meteorological research-and-development satellites,” launched from Vandenberg AFB on a Thor-Agena rocket.


(Nimbus Satellite Diagram, from www.ucsb.edu)

According to the National Space Science Data Center,

a short second-stage burn resulted in an unplanned eccentric orbit. Otherwise, the spacecraft and its experiments operated successfully until September 22, 1964. The solar paddles became locked in position, resulting in inadequate electrical power to continue operations.

Nevertheless, Nimbus-1 produced the first nighttime cloud-cover images from space and was followed by six more satellites in the Nimbus series.

So where does STAR TREK come in? According to Memory Alpha, a diagram of Nimbus-1 in its polar orbit was part of the data accessed by the Talosians when they scanned the Enterprise‘s data banks in the original pilot episode “The Cage.”

Science fact meets science fiction … I like it.

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Space History: Voyager-2 at Neptune

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Twenty years ago today — August 25, 1989 — the Voyager-2 spacecraft made its closest approach to the planet Neptune. It was the first man-made craft to visit the distant planet.

Passing about 4,950 kilometers (3,000 miles) above Neptune’s north pole, Voyager 2 made its closest approach to any planet since leaving Earth 12 years ago. Five hours later, Voyager 2 passed about 40,000 kilometers (25,000 miles) from Neptune’s largest moon, Triton, the last solid body the spacecraft will have an opportunity to study.

You can read more about Voyager’s encounter with Neptune on this NASA page.

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Speaking of space history, I recently added a new history section to the North Carolina Aerospace Initiative web site. It’s part of our “aerospace education” function, and as we add to it I hope teachers and other folks will find interesting tidbits on it. Here’s the link to the first installment: August aerospace history.

Hope you enjoy it!

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Three Nations, One Space Mission: AMPTE

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Twenty-five years ago yesterday* — August 16, 1984 — a Delta rocket launched from Cape Canaveral carrying three different satellites known as the Active Magnetospheric Particle Tracer Explorers, or AMPTE. The three spacecraft were:

  • The U.S.-built Charge Composition Explorer
  • The Federal Republic of Germany’s Ion Release Module
  • And the mysteriously-named United Kingdom Satellite

One interesting feature of the mission were “active ion releases” by the German spacecraft:

two releases of clouds of lithium ions in the solar wind in front of the magnetosphere (September 11 and 20, 1984), barium “artificial comet” releases in the dawn and dusk magnetosheaths (December 27, 1984 and July 18, 1985), and two each releases of lithium and barium ions in the near magnetotail (March 21; April 11, 23; May 13, 1985)

to study the interactions between the cool injected material and the “hot, magnetized, rapidly flowing natural plasmas of the magnetosphere and solar wind.”

For more on the U.S. part of the mission, visit the AMPTE/CCE Science Data Center.

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*Yes, I realize I’m late with this space history item. Sundays are busy days for me, and yesterday was busier than usual, so I didn’t get it done. If you’re curious about why Sundays are so busy for me, I refer you to this blog entry (and especially the associated free download).

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Orbiting Solar Observatory and Conflicting Internet Sources

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Forty years ago today — August 9, 1969 — an LTTAT-Delta rocket launched from Cape Canaveral carrying the sixth Orbiting Solar Observatory (OSO-6). According to the National Space Science Data Center, “OSO 6 was the sixth in a series of satellites designed to conduct solar physics experiments above the earth’s atmosphere during a complete solar cycle.” The spacecraft operated successfully until the end of 1972.

One curious thing: the first source on which I found the OSO-6 anniversary said it launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base. Just goes to show, you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet.

Oh, and LTTAT-Delta refers to a “long-tank thrust augmented Thor-Delta,” which started launching in 1968 and made many successful launches according to NASA.* In case you were wondering.

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*Yes, some other Internet sources contradict this. So pick the source in which you have the most trust.

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