16 years ago today, the first episode of the miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, "Can We Do This?", premiered on HBO. The first episode focused largely on the Gemini program, with emphasis given to Gemini 4 (first EVA), Gemini 8 (the near-disaster with the first Agena docking attempt), and Gemini 12 (the first truly successful constructive EVA). It also started with a reconstruction of Freedom 7, but left the bulk of Project Mercury untouched due to The Right Stuff. Tom Hanks, who was fresh off his success playing Jim Lovell in the Apollo 13 film, raised $68 million to do produce the 12-part miniseries. Ron Howard was also involved in the development. Although there are a few fictional characters (particularly newscaster Emmett Seaborn, a composite of the anchors of the time heavily inspired by Walter Kronkite, and played by Lane Smith; Jay Mohr plays a young reporter who is an obvious play on Dan Rather), all the others are real, and many of the stars were pretty big names at the time or today. A few examples: Ted Levine played Alan Shepard Chris Isaak played Ed White Tim Daly played Jim Lovell, the role previously played by Hanks Kieran Mulroney played Alexi Lalas Rusty Schweickart Mark Harmon played Wally Schirra Tony Goldwyn played Neil Armstrong Bryan Cranston played Buzz Aldrin Cary Elwes played Michael Collins Paul McCrane played Pete Conrad in the Apollo 12 episode (He was originally played by Peter Scolari in the first two, but they needed a shorter actor for the actual mission episode) Dave Foley, one of the masterminds of The Kids in the Hall, played Alan Bean Adam Baldwin played Fred Haise Dan Butler played flight director Gene Kranz Kevin Pollack played Joseph Shea, the NASA chief whose head rolled for Apollo 1 Nick Searcy played Chief Astronaut Deke Slayton Parts of the miniseries were produced at what is now Disney Hollywood Studios in Orlando. The moon surface sequences used helium-filled weather balloons to simulate lunar gravity. It was filmed on film, but in a 4:3 format. It has since been converted to HD, but in doing so, was chopped up a bit to get it to a 16:9 aspect ratio. It's not noticeable in most instances.
49 years ago today, the world's first commercial communications satellite, Intelsat 101 "Early Bird", was launched on a Thor-Delta D rocket from Pad 17A, Cape Kennedy. Based on the Syncom 1 prototype Hughes built for NASA, it went into commercial service for COMSAT, whose satellite business was later spun off into the company Intelsat, to relay TV, phone and fax signals between the U.S. and Europe. It would be used for four years, being deactivated after it covered Apollo 11.
13 years ago today, 2001 Mars Odyssey was launched to Mars on a Delta II 7925 rocket from Pad 17A, Cape Canaveral. Mars Odyssey was supposed to be a follow-up to the Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander of 1998. After both of those probes failed, they canceled the 2001 lander and focused on the orbiter instead. As stated previously, Mars Odyssey would arrive that October, and spend roughly three months aerobraking to circularize its orbit. Its primary mission was to try to determine if life ever existed on Mars. That's a question that is still yet to be answered. Today, it is the longest current mission at any given planet other than Earth, and the longest-lived mission at Mars so far. Second would be the Opportunity rover, followed by Cassini. It needs to make it to September 12, 2015, to bypass the Pioneer Venus Orbiter as the longest ever mission at any given planet other than Earth.
Fictional character index for the Moon landings: (Apollo 13 is from Apollo 13. The rest are from From the Earth to the Moon.) Apollo 11 CDR: President Fitzgerald Grant LMP: Walter White CMP: Dr. Lawrence Gordon Apollo 12 CDR: Dr. Robert Romano LMP: Dave Nelson CMP: Jack Pryor Apollo 13 CDR: Forrest Gump LMP: Bill Harding (in a meta-example, Bill Paxton also played Apollo 14 LMP Edgar Mitchell in a different production about the Moon missions, 2005's Magnificent Desolation) CMP: Ryan Hardy Apollo 14 CDR: Leland Stottlemeyer LMP: Mike Brady CMP: Owen Frank Apollo 15 CDR: Dan Fixx LMP: Mike Potter CMP: (unknown; Michael Raynor has no page on IMDb or Wikipedia) Apollo 16 CDR: Principal Spruell LMP: Sherman Catlett CMP: Robert Pender Apollo 17 CDR: Frank Ryan LMP: Dr. Harold Abbott CMP: (Ron Evans was not cast) And for the bonus round... Apollo 1 CDR: Dan Erickson LMP: Larry Simpson CMP: Roy Orbison Apollo 8 CDR: Robert Brewster LMP: Mickey Gavin CMP: Dr. Pete Wilder
30 years ago today, the first attempt to capture and repair a satellite in orbit was made on an EVA from Challenger in STS-41-C. Pinky Nelson and James van Hoften underwent the EVA, with Nelson going out on the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) to try to capture the Solar Maximum Mission satellite (Solar Max). A tool created to grasp the satellite failed to grab it. Nelson accidentally sent to satellite tumbling during his attempts, and had to abort. Controllers on the ground were able to stabilize the satellite with its on-board gyroscopes. ******** 10 years ago today, SpaceShipOne underwent its second powered flight, piloted by Peter Siebold. The engines fired for 40 seconds, taking it to a top speed of mach 1.6. It hit its first apogee over 100,000 feet, and its shuttlecock descent mode worked perfectly.
50 years ago today, Gemini 1 was launched unmanned on a modified Titan II rocket from Pad 19, Cape Kennedy. Gemini 1 represented a structural test during its intended launch profile, and systems test once in orbit. It did not feature a life support system, and contained ballast to simulate the mass of two suited astronauts. It performed as anticipated, except the Titan II placed it in a marginally higher orbit than expected. The Gemini capsule was kept attached to the Titan II second stage, and was destroyed upon re-entry over the South Atlantic four days after launch.
49 years ago today, NASA officially transferred in-flight manned spaceflight operations from Cape Kennedy to the Manned Spacecraft Center, what is now Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Texas. The facility opened in 1963 on the southeast side of the Houston area, on land previously owned by Rice University (now adjacent to the Clear Lake campus of the University of Houston), not far from Galveston Bay. It was manned by people originally based out of Langley Research Center in Virginia, and would become the training home of the Astronaut Corps. The first mission it would oversee would be Gemini 4, two months later.
35 years ago today, Soyuz 33 was launched from Pad 1/5, Baikonur Cosmodrome, with Soviet cosmonaut Nikolai Rukavishnikov and Bulgarian Intercosmos guest Georgi Ivanov. The mission was to replace Soyuz 32 for Salyut 6 Expedition 3. However, the main propulsion failed during approach to the station. It was the first failure of its kind in the history of the Soyuz program. The mission was aborted, and two days later Soyuz 33 de-orbited with its backup engines. The backup engines burned 25 seconds too long, subjecting the crew to an aggressive ballistic re-entry. A month later, Soyuz 34 was launched to Salyut 6 unmanned with an updated propulsion system, and Soyuz 32 returned unmanned.
30 years ago today, a second attempt was made by Challenger and STS-41-C to capture the Solar Max satellite. This time, Nelson and van Hoften worked out of the payload bay, and helped Terry Hart get the probe onto the Canadarm. From there, it was placed in a cradle in the payload bay. Once secured, Nelson and van Hoften were able to make the required repairs, consisting of replacing the electronics for the coronagraph, and installing a shield on another experiment. Ultimately the repairs were successful. Solar Max would operate for another 5 1/2 years before burning up on re-entry in December 1989. ******** It should be noted that STS-41-C was the first mission where the orbiter was placed directly into orbit at launch, not requiring the OMS-1 burn. This would eventually become their SOP. Challenger's initial orbit was also one of the most eccentric initial orbits of the Shuttle program, with a perigee of 133 miles, and an apogee of 289 miles. It was then circularized from apogee to reach Solar Max's orbit.
Yuri's Night again. The celebration of the first man in space, and the first Space Shuttle flight. After the launch of Vostok 1, President Kennedy flat out said the U.S. was second in space, and we had a lot of work to do to catch up. This is what likely inspired him to schedule a joint session of Congress a month later, by then buoyed by America's first manned spaceflight. Exactly a year after Vostok 1, the Soviet Union would announce their plans to send men to the Moon. But without the coordination of the American space program, their plans would be doomed. ******** 29 years ago today, Discovery was launched on STS-51 D from Pad 39A, Kennedy Space Center. The primary task of the mission was two satellite launches: Syncom IV-3 (Leasat 3), and Anik C-1 (Telesat 1). As I have mentioned before, the kickmotor of Syncom IV-3 failed to fire. Discovery approached the satellite, and astronauts David Griggs and Jeffrey Hoffman performed an unscheduled EVA to attach a device to the Canadarm to try to engage a switch on the spinning satellite to reset its post-deployment sequence. It didn't initiate, and it would have to be re-visited later in the year on STS-51-I. Dr. Hoffman would also lead a crucially vital experiment: How various toys behave in microgravity. The mission would also be the first to land at Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility. But the strip turned out to be too rough to handle the Orbiter's more aggressive landing profile, and Discovery blew out a landing gear tire. They wouldn't attempt another landing at Kennedy until after the Challenger disaster.
55 years ago today, Discoverer 2 was launched by a Thor-Agena rocket from Pad 1W, Vandenberg Air Force Base. It was the second launch test of the polar orbit KH-1 CORONA reconnaissance satellite. Its intention was to test recovery techniques. While it carried a recovery capsule, it did not carry a camera or film. The capsule was to be recovered over the North Pacific near Hawaii, but it was believed to have crashed in Norway. The Soviets thought it actually crashed in Siberia, but a capsule recovered in either 1959 or 1961 gave them no information.
50 years ago today, the first launch of Project FIRE took place when an Atlas D rocket was launched from Pad 12, Cape Kennedy. It carried a scale model of an Apollo command module with its proposed heat shield and various sensors. It was launched on a ballistic trajectory with an apogee of 520 miles. As it approached atmospheric interface, an Antares II solid rocket was fired, accelerating it to over 25,000 mph to simulate the speeds of a lunar return. This was way overboard. The steep angle attack of the ballistic trajectory exaggerated the re-entry temperatures, which reached in excess of 20,000 °F. (Re-entry heating from an actual lunar return only gets up around 5,000 °F.) It still produced important data on how the chosen protective material would behave.
48 years ago today, the people who were running the Apollo Applications Program—the program that eventually created Skylab—posited the idea of using Apollo hardware to send men to Mars, either on a fly-by or a landing mission. The fly-by was more likely, with the Apollo Telescope Mount being among the experiments on-board. Long-term biological experiments would also have been on the docket. Such a mission could've been flown as early as the mid-1970s. But Apollo 1 led to budget cuts that doomed any AAP ideas beyond the Earth system. A fly-by of Venus was also suggested, and reached further in development since it would be a shorter mission. But it also didn't make it.
50 years ago today, Joseph Shea sent a memo to North American from the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office (ASPO) regarding the projected changes for the Block II Apollo CSM. Block II would implement a docking system that would enable intravehicle transfer between the command module and lunar module. It would also greatly improve systems and reduce total CSM gross weight by 1,000 pounds.
Talk about buzzkill. The question of whether or not life ever existed on Mars may be close to being answered...in the negative. New evidence suggests Mars may never have had an atmosphere thick enough to sustain significant quantities of liquid water. There is still a good deal water on Mars in the form of subsurface ice. Occasionally, small streams of liquid water will be found, but they will quickly re-freeze or evaporate. It is believed now that, with too weak a magnetic field to protect the planet from the solar wind, Mars would not have had a thick enough atmosphere to have the right triple point for liquid water to be sustained. The new theory suggests massive volcanic explosions early in its life could've temporarily girded the atmosphere to be warm enough for significant water flows. But these would've eventually petered out as the dust settled and the volatiles were stripped away. So it's looking like the search for extraterrestrial life is going to have to move to Europa and Enceladus. ******** Speaking of volatiles, NASA has announced a huge discovery on Mercury. Mercury was once believed not to have volatile light elements. Models for its formation suggested that if it ever had them, they were stripped away after the massive impact that created Caloris basin. However, analysis from photos taken by MESSENGER suggest that volcanic eruptions and pyroclastic lava flows may have happened on Mercury as recently as 1 billion years ago. Explosive volcanic eruptions are only possible in the presence of volatiles like sodium.
48 years ago today, Helios B achieved perihelion at a distance just under 27 million miles from the Sun, or about 0.29 AU. This is the closest any spacecraft has ever come to a star. Its raw speed of 157,078 mph relative to the Sun is also the fastest ever achieved by any spacecraft.
44 years ago today, the Soviet Union was going over the circumstances of Apollo 13. The head of cosmonaut training, Nikolai Kamanin, said the final outcome of the salvaged mission highlighted everything that was right with the American space program--and everything that was wrong with the Soviet space program. He felt certain that if a similar issue happened to a manned N1-L3 mission, it would be fatal.
50 years ago today, NASA contracted with IBM to build version 3 of the Instrument Unit, the primary on-board computer for both the Saturn IB and Saturn V rockets. The ring-shaped unit contained several digital and analog computers to control the entire rocket, as well as gyroscopic attitude control. It was fitted between the LH2 tank of the S-IVB stage and the payload adapter that would hold the Lunar Module. Bendix created the first two versions, which flew on the Saturn I with the S-IV stage.
"There you are: Mysterious and Unknown Descartes. Highland plains. Apollo 16 is gonna change your image." 42 years ago today, the first EVA of Apollo 16 proceeded with commander John Young and LM pilot Charlie Duke. They landed late the previous night at the Descartes highlands, the furthest south of the Apollo landing sites, 235 miles SW of Tranquility Base and 626 miles E of Fra Mauro. After setting up the mission's ALSEP package, they drove the lunar rover to several geological sites to collect samples. At the end of the 7hr EVA, Young took the rover on a test drive to fully put it through its paces.
43 years ago today, the Soviet Union launched Soyuz 10, the first attempt at a mission to a space station, from Gagarin's Start. There were early reports that the launch was scrubbed for the day due to weather. Instead, they launched right before midnight that day. Now certainly you'd think they would've learned from the Americans that launching in bad weather is a bad idea. (see: Apollo 12 and Apollo 13) But they likely wanted to get the launch off on the birthday of Vladimir Lenin. On-board were commander Vladimir Shatalov, flight engineer Aleksei Yeliseyev and test engineer Nikolai Rukavishnikov. Only Rukavishnikov was a rookie.
43 years ago today, Soyuz 10 docked with Salyut 1. The spacecraft, however, was unable to make a sealed hard dock, preventing them from entering the space station. They remained in a soft dock with the station for about six hours, during which the docking drogue got stuck. They were able to safely pull it free. Gotta be honest, I don't know how they got this picture. If they could invest in a camera that could effectively take a selfie, I'm sure they could get the docking mechanism right. Probably explains a lot about the Soviet space program at the time.
44 years ago today, the People's Republic of China launched their first satellite, Dong Fang Hong 1, on a Long March 1 rocket from LA-2, Jiuquan Space Center, in Inner Mongolia. At 381 lbs., the satellite was larger in mass than the first orbital satellites of the Soviet Union, the U.S., France and Japan combined. It had an initial perigee of 272 miles, and apogee of 1,278 miles. It was spin-stabilized at a rate of 120 rpm. Its sole purpose was transmitting the patriotic march "The East is Red" (where the name of the satellite comes from). It was battery-powered, and lasted four weeks. ******** The Soyuz 10 mission ended 43 years ago today. Due to the unexpected early end, any landing on Soviet soil would require a nighttime landing, which made its sun-based orientation system problematic. Emergency landing sites in friendly territories in Africa or South America were considered. However, they ultimately came up with a solution of orienting in daylight, and using the gyroscopes on-board to keep it oriented. It worked fairly well, but they did end up a bit off-course. Instead of landing 75 miles southwest of Karagandy, they landed 75 miles northwest of Karagandy.
53 years ago today, Mercury-Atlas 3 was launched from Pad 14, Cape Canaveral, on a test flight of the Mercury spacecraft using the Atlas rocket. I'm unsure what the intent of the test flight was. What I do know is that it failed to enter its roll and pitch maneuvers. The launch escape system was activated 40 seconds into flight, and the Atlas rocket was destroyed thereafter. The capsule reached an apogee of 90 miles, but only splashed down one mile downrange. It was recovered, refitted, and re-used on Mercury-Atlas 4. ******** 52 years ago today, the second Saturn I rocket, SA-2, was launched from Pad 34, Cape Canaveral. This was the first launch to carry a payload: approximately 23,000 gallons of water which would be released around apogee to study the ionosphere. It was hoped it would form ice crystals and localized noctilucent clouds. The water was split evenly between the compartments that would be the nominal locations of the S-IV stage and the Apollo CSM boilerplate. The "second stage" was split vertically for an instantaneous water release, and the "third stage" had holes poked in it to release its water over several seconds. Lightning was observed in the clouds that formed. Wernher von Braun described it as "probably the first synthetic thunderstorm ever created in space". The S-I first stage carried 83% of its capacity of propellant, firing for just under 2 minutes. It was destroyed at 60 miles altitude as planned, and the created water clouds reached as high as 100 miles.
43 years ago today, NASA discontinued the practice of quarantining astronauts when they returned from a lunar landing. The crews of Apollo 11 and 12 were put in bunny suits upon splashdown, and then placed in a sealed Airstream trailer. The Apollo 14 crew was also put in the Airstream, but only had to wear gas masks upon splashdown. Biomedical studies by the program in charge of the quarantines, the Interagency Committee on Back Contamination, would continue through the end of the Apollo program.
55 years ago today, the astronauts of Project Mercury reported for duty to begin training, all on details from their current branches of services. Also on that day, NASA was given DX priority procurement status for Mercury, the highest priority for defense purchases.