Tag Archives: space history

50 Years Ago: The Dawn of Project Mercury

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Project Mercury was announced in 1958, but 50 years ago this month the astronauts were selected and presented to the public. I found two different selection dates — April 1st, according to this NASA page about the 40th anniversary, and April 2nd, according to this NASA list of anniversaries.*


(NASA publicity photo of the Mercury Seven)

All sources agree that the “Mercury Seven” astronauts were announced at a NASA press conference on April 9, 1959. They were Scott Carpenter, L. Gordon Cooper, Jr., John H. Glenn, Jr., Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Walter M. Schirra, Jr., Alan B. Shepard, Jr., and Donald K. “Deke” Slayton.

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*From which I get the space anniversaries I want to highlight here on the blog.

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Catching Up From a Busy Weekend, and a Near-Disaster Revealed

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I missed two space anniversaries this weekend, because I spent most of the time finishing a short story and most of the rest of the time either at church or preparing for the worship services. (Excuses, excuses.)

First, the space anniversaries I missed:

– Ten years ago Saturday — March 28, 1999 — Sea Launch launched their “DemoSat,” essentially a ballast-filled “dummy” spacecraft, from the Odyssey launch platform, a converted North Sea oil drilling platform. I had the pleasure of sailing on the Odyssey three years later for the launch of the Galaxy III-C spacecraft.

– Thirty-five years ago yesterday — March 29, 1974 — Mariner 10 made the first flyby of Mercury.

As for the near-disaster, Spaceflight Now ran a CBS News story Friday in which Robert “Hoot” Gibson recalled details of the damage sustained by the shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-27, which launched on December 2, 1988. The shuttle received more damage than on any other mission, and the crew worried that they might not survive re-entry. It’s a frightening story of miscommunication: the classified military mission was conducted under a communications blackout, so when the crew sent video of the damaged areas the encryption degraded the images so much that NASA engineers didn’t believe there was a real problem.

I checked into the mission a little more, and when I saw the mission patch this story became even more compelling to me. I didn’t realize it when I posted the space anniversary of the launch, but when Atlantis landed at Edwards AFB I was on duty as part of the AF Flight Test Center recovery team. We, of course, knew nothing about the damaged tiles or how close that shuttle came to not making it back at all.

(STS-27 mission patch. Click to enlarge.)

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Today in Space History: Shuttle Delivery

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Thirty years ago today — March 24, 1979 — the Space Shuttle Columbia was transported to Kennedy Space Center, marking the first time a shuttle was delivered to the launch base. It was carried atop a modified Boeing 747 as shown in the attached image.*

(NASA Photo EC01-0055-1. Click to enlarge.)

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*The image is of a later flight, in March 2001.

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Space History — Shuttle Launches With TDRS

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Twenty years ago today — March 13, 1989 — Space Shuttle Discovery launched from KSC on mission STS-29. Astronauts Michael L. Coats, John E. Blaha, James P. Bagian, James F. Buchli, and Robert C. Springer launched the TDRS-4 satellite to complete the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite constellation. The crew landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California on March 18th.

Unfortunately, I can’t remember if that was one of the landings I watched. I know it wasn’t one of the landings I worked as part of the AFFTC recovery crew; somewhere I have the mission emblems from those four landings, framed together, and the STS-29 mission emblem isn’t among them.*

And finally, if you’re interested, here’s a little bit about TDRS.
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*I should take that memento to my office and hang it up, but that would require finding it first.

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50 Years Ago in Space History

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Fifty years ago today — March 10, 1959 — NASA flew the X-15 research plane on its first “captive” flight attached to their B-52 test aircraft.

(NASA Image E-4935. Click to enlarge. For more images, see NASA’s X-15 photo collection.)

The X-15 program eventually carried pilots to the edge of space from Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

And in the category of personal nostalgia, I have a picture of that same B-52 aircraft on my office wall, courtesy of my boss at the Rocket Lab at Edwards. In my picture, it doesn’t have an X-15 attached to the pylon: it’s carrying the Pegasus space launch vehicle, for which I served on the Flight Readiness Review panel. (Which was still pretty cool for a starry-eyed young lieutenant.)

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Space History Today: Shuttle Delivery

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Thirty years ago today — March 8, 1979 — the Space Shuttle Columbia was delivered to NASA from the factory in Palmdale, California.

And 15 years ago today, it was in orbit. Columbia launched on March 4, 1994 from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-62, carrying astronauts John H. Casper, Andrew M. Allen, Pierre J. Thuot, Charles D. Gemar, and Marsha S. Ivins. They spent almost two weeks in space, landing back at KSC on March 18th.

And now you know.

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This Space History Series Makes Me Feel Old

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Especially items like this one: 30 years ago today — March 5, 1979 — Voyager-1 passed Jupiter at a distance of 278,000 kilometers (c. 173,000 miles … closer than the moon is to the earth) and sent back photos and data about the gas giant.

On another note, it’s unfortunate that Voyager had to star in the awful first STAR TREK movie.

In other space history, 35 years ago today the X-24B research vehicle made its first supersonic flight with NASA pilot John A. Manke at the controls. This took place, of course, at Edwards AFB, where I would be stationed just a few years later at the Air Force Rocket Propulsion Laboratory (seen in the background of the attached photo of an X-24B landing; more available here).

(NASA Photo ECN-4351. Click to enlarge.)

Yes, just a precious few years later I was climbing around those test stands on Leuhman Ridge. Those were good days, but these days are good, too.

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Apollo Prep Mission, 40 Years Ago Today

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On March 3, 1969, a Saturn-V rocket lofted the Apollo-9 mission into earth orbit from the Kennedy Space Center, carrying astronauts James A. McDivitt, David R. Scott, and Russell L. Schweickart. This mission accomplished a number of objectives in advance of the first manned mission to the moon:

  • It was the first launch of the complete Apollo configuration, including the Command Service Module and the Lunar Module, aboard a Saturn V.
  • It was the first time a human crew tested the lunar module in space, with the first docking between the CSM and LM and the first time astronauts fired the LM ascent and descent engines in space.
  • On this mission, LM pilot Rusty Schweickart made the first EVA by an astronaut without being attached to spaceship life support equipment.
  • The mission tested the Portable Life Support System in space for the first time.

Apollo-9 was a great success, and paved the way for all the moon missions to come.

And in more space history with a lunar component: Ten years before Apollo-9, on March 3, 1959, the U.S. launched Pioneer-4 from Cape Canaveral in an International Geophysical Year launch. Pioneer-4 was the country’s first sun-orbiting space probe, and marked the first successful flyby of the Moon en route to another destination.

Now, if we could only get back there ….

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Recent Space History: Cometary Explorer Launched

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Five years ago today — March 2, 2004 — the European Space Agency launched their Rosetta space probe on an Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana. Rosetta is headed toward comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which it should reach in 2014. Its study of the comet will include releasing the “Philae” lander.

(And, because I missed posting yesterday because of a raucous headache: 85 years ago yesterday, NASA astronaut “Deke” Slayton was born. I wrote an alternate history story which referenced an Apollo mission that never happened, but because of which Deke Slayton was a hero and inspiration to the main character. No one’s read that little story, because no one’s published it yet. But that’s how it goes.)

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Space History (That Repeats Again and Again)

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Fifty years ago today — February 28, 1959 — the Discoverer-1 satellite was launched by a Thor Agena rocket from Vandenberg AFB. It was the first joint U.S. Air Force/Advanced Research Projects Agency launch of a reconnaissance satellite — what would eventually become the CORONA satellite program.

Unfortunately, the Agena upper stage apparently malfunctioned and the satellite is believed to have landed near the South Pole. And fifty years later, the OCO satellite earlier this week also failed to make orbit — and ended up in the ocean near Antarctica.

I look forward to the day when space launch is routine and reliable — and if it can be affordable, too, so much the better.

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