Tag Archives: space history

Laika's Launch

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Fifty-five years ago today — November 3, 1957 — the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 2 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.


(Laika, in her padded cabin. Image from the National Space Science Data Center.)

Sputnik 2 is most famous for carrying a dog, Laika, the first living thing in orbit.

The first being to travel to outer space was a female part-Samoyed terrier originally named Kudryavka (Little Curly) but later renamed Laika (Barker). She weighed about 6 kg. The pressurized cabin on Sputnik 2 allowed enough room for her to lie down or stand and was padded. An air regeneration system provided oxygen; food and water were dispensed in a gelatinized form. Laika was fitted with a harness, a bag to collect waste, and electrodes to monitor vital signs. The early telemetry indicated Laika was agitated but eating her food. There was no capability of returning a payload safely to Earth at this time, so it was planned that Laika would run out of oxygen after about 10 days of orbiting the Earth.

Unfortunately, part of the spacecraft did not separate, which interfered with the cooling system. In addition, some thermal insulation came loose during launch. As a result, it is believed that Laika “only survived a day or two” before her spacecraft fell back to Earth.

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Two DoD Comsats in One Launch

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Thirty years ago today — October 30, 1982 — two Defense Satellite Communication System spacecraft were launched from Cape Canaveral on a single Titan 34D vehicle.


(DSCS III. USAF image.)

The launch of DSCS II (pronounced “discus two”), flight 15, and DSCS III, flight 1, marked the first use of the Titan 34D with the Inertial Upper Stage.

Several years later, after two failed Titan 34D launches, I would become involved in the Titan 34D Recovery Program; specifically, setting up the facilities for, and monitoring the environmental effects of, the first-ever full-scale nozzle-down test of one of the solid rocket motors, at the AF Rocket Propulsion Laboratory at Edwards AFB.

[BREAK, BREAK]

And 10 years ago today, in 2002, Soyuz TMA-1 launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, carrying cosmonauts Sergei V. Zalyotin and Yuri V. Lonchakov, along with Belgian astronaut Frank De Winne, to the International Space Station (ISS). Later in 2002, I ended up at Baikonur for the launch preparations of the Nimiq-2 satellite.

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Mapping the (Artificial) Radiation Belt

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Fifty years ago today — October 27, 1962 — Explorer 15 was launched from Cape Canaveral on a Thor Delta rocket, to study a radiation belt produced three months earlier.


(The Starfish nuclear explosion, as seen from nearly 900 miles away in Honolulu, HI.
US Government image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Explorer 15 was instrumented with an array of radiation detectors, as its mission was to study the radiation belt produced by the Starfish nuclear test conducted on July 9, 1962. The Starfish test — conceived by the Atomic Energy Commission and what would become the Defense Nuclear Agency, and launched from Vandenberg AFB by the Air Force — revolutionized the understanding of electromagnetic pulse, but the energetic particles it created contributed to the failures of several low-earth-orbiting satellites.

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Space History: Chinese Lunar Orbiter, and Mistaken Identity in a Near-Nuclear Crisis

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Five years ago today — October 24, 2007 — the People’s Republic of China launched a spacecraft to orbit and study the Moon.


(Chang’e 1 launch. Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Chang’e 1, “named for a Chinese legend about a young goddess who flies to the Moon,” entered lunar orbit on November 7, 2007. It carried eight different scientific instruments, and its objectives were to

obtain three-dimensional stereo images of the lunar surface, analyze the distribution and abundance of elements on the surface, survey the thickness of lunar soil and to evaluate helium-3 resources and other characteristics, and to explore the environment between the Moon and Earth.

The spacecraft remained in orbit around the Moon until March 2009, according to the Wikipedia entry.
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In other space history, 50 years ago today — October 24, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis — the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 22, which was intended to be an interplanetary mission to fly by Mars. The spacecraft and the upper stage of the rocket

either broke up as they were going into Earth orbit or had the upper stage explode in orbit during the burn to put the spacecraft into Mars trajectory. In either case, the spacecraft broke into many pieces, some of which apparently remained in Earth orbit for a few days.

That debris reportedly showed up on the radar at the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) site in Alaska, and “was momentarily feared to be the start of a Soviet nuclear ICBM attack.”

Those were scary times. This incident points out the simple fact that space launch technology is of a kind with ballistic missile technology, which is why we spent so much time and effort protecting our U.S. designs and methodologies when I served in the Defense Technology Security Administration.

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Space Station Expansion … and Repairs

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Five years ago today — October 23, 2007 — the Space Shuttle Discovery launched from the Kennedy Space Center on a mission to the International Space Station.


(Astronaut Parazynski approaching the damaged P6 solar array. NASA image.)

The mission STS-120 crew — Pamela A. Melroy, Daniel M. Tani,, George D. Zamka, Douglas H. Wheelock, Scott E. Parazynski, Stephanie D. Wilson, and Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli — spent a little over two weeks in space, and installed the connecting module called Harmony on the ISS. The new node, named by schoolchildren in a contest, would make it possible for the European Columbus and the Japanese Kibo laboratories to be connected to the ISS on future missions.

When STS-120 docked with the ISS, it marked the first time two women — Pamela Melroy on the shuttle, and Peggy Whitson of ISS Expedition 16 — commanded the two spacecraft at the same time. The mission also involved impromptu repair work: one of the solar arrays on the ISS’s P6 truss, which had been folded while the truss was moved to a new location, snagged on a guide wire when they were unfolded. Mission controllers and the crew were able to plan and execute the repair before the orbiter returned to Earth.

Read more details of this mission in this comprehensive mission overview.

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International Science in Space History

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Twenty years ago today — October 22, 1992 — the Space Shuttle Columbia launched from the Kennedy Space Center on an international science mission.


(LAGEOS-II deployment from STS-52. NASA image.)

STS-52 carried a six-member crew: James D. Wetherbee, Michael A. Baker, Charles L. Veach, William M. Shepherd, Tamara E. Jernigan, and Canadian astronaut Steven G. MacLean. They deployed the joint U.S.-Italian Laser Geodynamic Satellite II (LAGEOS II) — second in a series of laser-ranging target satellites* — and conducted a variety of internationally-sponsored materials science experiments.

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LAGEOS I had been launched in 1976.

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One Space Launch, One Space Landing

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Fifty years ago today — October 18, 1962 — Ranger 5 was launched from Cape Canaveral on its mission to the Moon.


(Ranger 5. NASA image.)

Ranger 5 launched atop an Atlas Agena rocket, but unfortunately it did not complete its mission. It was intended primarily to “transmit pictures of the lunar surface to Earth stations during a period of 10 minutes of flight prior to impacting on the Moon, to rough-land a seismometer capsule on the Moon,” and to complete other objectives, but

Due to an unknown malfunction after injection into lunar trajectory from Earth parking orbit, the spacecraft failed to receive power. The batteries ran down after 8 hours, 44 minutes, rendering the spacecraft inoperable. Ranger 5 missed the Moon by 725 km. It is now in a heliocentric orbit.

In more successful space history, on this date 45 years ago, the Soviet Union’s Venera 4 landed on Venus.

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Cassini Heads to Saturn

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Fifteen years ago today — October 15, 1997 — the Cassini/Huygens mission launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard a Titan IVB/Centaur rocket.


(Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, in front of the ringed planet. NASA image from the Cassini spacecraft.)

The Cassini orbiter and the Huygens lander were launched together, and since Huygens was destined to land on Titan it was appropriate that they launched on a Titan vehicle. Huygens, built by the European Space Agency, landed on Titan in January 2005.

The Cassini launch was somewhat controversial: the orbiter is powered by three radioisotope thermal generators, and the mission faced protestors who were afraid the launch vehicle would fail and the RTGs’ plutonium dioxide fuel would end up in the ocean. Having spent a good portion of my assignment at Edwards AFB working on the Titan 34D Recovery Program, and then serving from 1993-95 in the Titan System Program Office at Vandenberg AFB, I was very pleased when this launch succeeded flawlessly.

For current mission status, and access to dozens of spectacular images like the one above, visit this Jet Propulsion Laboratory page or the main Cassini mission page.

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Sound Was No Longer a Barrier, 65 Years Ago Today

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Not strictly “space history,” but a fun item nonetheless: 65 years ago today — October 14, 1947 — then-Captain Charles E. “Chuck” Yeager broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1.


(X-1 in flight. NASA image.)

As noted in this NASA biography, Yeager’s performance in the USAF Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB led to his selection as the X-1 pilot.

I saw General Yeager in the Officer’s Club when I was stationed at Edwards. It was one of those unexpected celebrity sightings — standing at the salad bar and suddenly realizing the guy next to you is this famous person you’ve heard of all your life. And just like that, the moment was over and we both took our salads back to our tables.

Finally, here’s the link to http://www.chuckyeager.com/, the official Chuck Yeager web site.

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A Week's Worth of Space History

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I’ll be on the road for a few days, and I’m not sure how the connectivity will be, and I wasn’t forward-thinking enough to front-load a bunch of space history items for automatic posting, so … here are a few different space history items that you can enjoy* all at once.

One hundred thirty years ago today — October 5, 1882 — Robert H. Goddard, the father of modern liquid-fueled rocketry, was born in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Twenty years ago tomorrow — October 6, 1992 — the joint Swedish-German Freja mission to study the aurora was launched on a Chinese Long March rocket out of Jiuquan. (It was launched along with the PRC 36 mission.)

Ten years ago Sunday — October 7, 2002 — the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The crew of STS-112 consisted of U.S. astronauts Sandra H. Magnus, David A. Wolf, Pamela A. Melroy, Jeffrey S. Ashby, and Piers J. Sellers, along with cosmonaut Fyodor N. Yurchikhin. They delivered and installed a new truss as part of the station’s structural support system.


(The International Space Station, taken from STS-112. NASA image.)

And finally, let’s note two other space station-related launches in this compendium:

  • On October 9, 1977 — 35 years ago — the Soviet Union launched Soyuz-25 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, carrying Vladimir V.Kovalyonok and Valeri V.Ryumin to their Salyut-6 station. The docking maneuver failed, however, and the cosmonauts returned early. Cosmonauts:.
  • On October 10, 2007 — 5 years ago — Soyuz TMA-11 launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome carrying a Russian,Yuri I. Malenchenko; American Peggy A. Whitson; and a Malaysian, Shukor A. Muszaphar, to the ISS.

Have a great week!

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*Or ignore.

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