The Moon doesn't seem to want to let countries other than Russia, the US, or China land there. India's Vikram lander, part of its Chandrayaan 2 lunar mission, attempted to land there on Friday. But telemetry cut out at an altitude of about 2 km. This is worrying. pic.twitter.com/SNYmFG8Pqv— Chris Bergin - NSF (@NASASpaceflight) September 6, 2019 Unlike Beresheet, it didn't even have the courtesy to tease them by turning back on right when it was about to crash. But ISRO isn't giving up hope. The orbiter actually located the lander's location, and they seem to think they might be able to re-establish contact with it.
If you want a story of someone who worked their way back up, have I got one for you. This one has it all. Charles Simonyi was born on September 10, 1948, in Budapest. He was the grandson of the Hungarian prime minister that signed the Treaty of Trianon which defined the post-World War I state of Hungary as its own entity separate from Austria (along with several others). His dad, Karoly, was a noted physicist and electrical engineer. But in Post-WWII Hungary, part of the Warsaw Pact, Charles was in a more rigid social construct. He was able to get work as a teenager as a security guard at a computer lab that housed a Soviet mainframe. A programmer took him under his wing, and by 16 he was selling compilers to the Hungarian government himself. At 17, he defected to Denmark. A Danish computer company, Regnecentralen (RC), took interest in his compilers, and he worked on a well-known early computer OS, RC 4000. By 1968, he had made enough money to emigrate to America, and went to UC-Berkeley, where he earned dual degrees in statistics and engineering math in 1972. Out of college, Simonyi was hired by Xerox, where he went to work on their Alto, one of the earliest personal computer concepts. He also designed a document preparation software, Bravo, one of the first pieces of WYSIWYG software developed. He got a doctorate in computer science from Stanford in 1977. In 1981, Simonyi was sniped by Microsoft, and got to work on what became Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. In the process, he earned American citizenship in 1982. His concepts for programming shaped the way Microsoft does business, and he became one of their top developers. He made a boatload of money in the process. By the time he left Microsoft in 2002, he was one of the dot-com billionaires. He would go on to create the concept of intentional programming, founding a company that was later acquired by Microsoft in 2017, netting him another boatload of money. So what does this have to do with my thread? Well, Charles Simonyi is another tourist cosmonaut. In fact, he's flown into space twice. He began training for his first flight in August 2006, and was launched on a two-week mission to the International Space Station in April 2007. He would travel to the ISS with Expedition 15 cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Fyodor Yurchikhin on Soyuz TMA-10, and return two weeks later aboard Soyuz TMA-9 with Mikhail Tyurin and astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria. Not satisfied with just that, he took a second space tourism flight in early 2009. He returned to space on Soyuz TMA-14 with Expedition 19 cosmonaut Gennady Padalka and astronaut Michael Barratt (sic), and returned two weeks later on Soyuz TMA-13 with Expedition 18 crewmembers Yuri Lonchakov and Michael Fincke. While in space, he communicated with people on Earth via telephone and amateur radio, using both American and Hungarian callsigns. During one of his communques with a middle school in the Bay area on his second flight, he described returning to Earth after a lengthy spaceflight as like "breathing Pepto Bismol". Simonyi was a bit of a playboy in his earlier days; at one point, he dated Martha Stewart. (Yes, that Martha Stewart.) In 2008, he married the daughter of a Swedish millionaire; she was 32 years his junior. They have two children together. He's a patron of, among many other things, Seattle's Museum of Flight. He acquired, and donated to that museum, one of NASA's Space Shuttle orbiter trainers.
Happy 82nd birthday to astronaut Robert Crippen. Born in Beaumont, Texas, he graduated with an aeronautical engineering degree from the Navy ROTC at Texas in 1960. Becoming a Naval aviator, he flew the A-4 off the carrier USS Independence during two deployments in the early 1960s. In 1967, Crippen was selected on the second group of Manned Orbiting Laboratory astronauts. When the program was canceled in 1969, he was selected to join NASA. He served in the support crew for all Skylab missions and Apollo-Soyuz. Crippen would hold a prominent position in the early history of the Space Shuttle, leading him to be selected as pilot for the first manned flight, STS-1. He and commander John Young were selected both for the original STS-1 planned for 1979, and the ultimate one that actually flew in 1981. After that mission, he would go on to command three Shuttle missions, all on Challenger: STS-7 (SPAS platform maiden flight), STS-41-C (Solar Max repair, LDEF deployment), and STS-41-G (Earth Radiation Budget Satellite). He was scheduled to command the first polar orbit mission, STS-62-A aboard Discovery, but that mission was canceled after the Challenger disaster. Crippen was taken out of the mission rotation, and put in charge of Space Shuttle operations at Kennedy Space Center as an Associate Director. In 1990, he was promoted to Director of the Space Shuttle program, and in 1992, he became Director of Kennedy Space Center, a position he'd hold for three years before retiring from NASA in 1995. In the private sector, Crippen would spend a year at Lockheed Martin's IT facility in Orlando, then six years as President of Thiokol. (My grandfather actually worked at that IT facility, though he retired five years before Crippen got there, back when it was Martin Marietta.) Crippen has three children in his first marriage. He later re-married with a woman who was in charge of orbiter engineering at KSC for Challenger and Atlantis.
There are some days that just have a lot of items I could cover, and I end up missing some important things. I get reminded of these things in the weirdest ways. For example, I found out recently that, this coming weekend, Rice was going to be hosting Texas in college football. That immediately made me think of one of the most famous speeches JFK gave about space exploration. Something I haven't covered yet, but really should've. By dumb luck, I remembered the date for that speech last night. ******** 57 years ago today, President John F. Kennedy was given a tour of the new Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. The tour was led by Mercury astronauts John Glenn and Scott Carpenter. During the tour, he was given an update on Project Apollo. That afternoon, he gave a speech on America's space exploration goals at Rice Stadium in front of approximately 40,000 people, mostly students of Rice University. Allegedly, the quip about Rice and Texas was scribbled onto the script by JFK. Interestingly enough, 1962's Texas-Rice game would end in a 14-14 tie, the only time it has ever happened in this particular matchup. Rice-Texas was one of the cornerstone rivalries of the Southwest Conference, but one that was increasingly dominated by Texas. Since JFK's famous speech and that tie, Rice has won only 2 of the last 44 meetings, including a 28-game losing streak, and the current 12-game losing streak. Rice last won the game in 1994. With the dissolution of the SWC in 1996, their meetings have been increasingly rare. They played only six times in the 2000s, and this will be the fourth time in the 2010s. As for Kennedy's overture for peaceful cooperation in Space, and implicitly in going to the Moon... that would die with him. At least, until after the race to the Moon was won.
59 years ago today, NASA solicited bids for a mission that would involve a spacecraft on a simple circumlunar flight using the Saturn C-2 rocket. The Saturn C-2 was proposed to use the original Saturn I first stage with a separate second stage, and then the S-IV as a third stage. It was believed the resulting rocket could send 6,800 kg to the Moon. NASA wanted three astronauts to be able to conduct a mission of up to two weeks in a shirtsleeve environment. The proposal went nowhere. The final lunar-prepared Apollo Command/Service Module would weigh more than four times as much. And that didn't even include the Lunar Module.
Happy 58th birthday to astronaut Pamela Melroy. Born in Palo Alto, California, she got double bachelor's in physics and astronomy from the Wellesley Air Force ROTC in 1983, then got a masters in planetary sciences from MIT in 1985 before being commissioned. Specializing in the McDonnell Douglas KC-10 Extender tanker, she flew in support of Operation Just Cause and Operation Desert Storm. After those, she went to the Air Force Test Pilot School, and joined the C-17 Combined Task Force to check out a new mid-sized cargo carrier. Melroy was chosen as part of NASA Group 15 in 1994 in the pilot track. She was the pilot of STS-92 in 2000 aboard Discovery, bringing the Z1 truss and PMA-3 to the International Space Station; and STS-112 in 2002 aboard Atlantis, bringing the S1 truss and a full bank of radiators to the ISS. In 2007, Melroy became NASA's second female Shuttle commander, commanding STS-120 aboard Discovery. Her crew brought the Harmony node to the ISS, and moved a solar array from Z1 to P6. The mission visited Expedition 16, at the time commanded by Peggy Whitson; the first time two female commanders were in space at the same time. Melroy retired from the Air Force in 2007 as a Colonel, and left NASA in 2009. She spent some time at DARPA after leaving NASA. She is married, and has no children.
13 years ago today, Soyuz TMA-9 was launched atop a Soyuz-FG rocket from Site 1/5, Baikonur Cosmodrome. The flight carried Expedition 14 members Mikhail Tyurin and Michael Lopez-Alegria, and Iranian-American space tourist Anousheh Ansari. She was the first person of Iranian descent, and the first Muslim woman, in space. Ansari would return on Soyuz TMA-8 nine days later with Expedition 13 members Jeffrey Williams and Pavel Vinogradov. Tyurin and Lopez-Alegria would return to Earth in April 2007 with space tourist Charles Simonyi. ******** Anousheh Raissyan was born on September 12, 1966, in Mashhad, a city in the northeast of Iran. Her family would move to Tehran during her childhood. As the Iranian Revolution began to deepen its hold on the country, she immigrated to the United States before turning 18. She got a bachelors in electrical engineering from George Mason in 1989, and began working at MCI, where she met fellow Iranian expatriate Hamid Ansari. They married in 1991. She would get her masters from George Washington University in 1992. In 1993, as the U.S. telecom industry was deregulating, Anousheh convinced Hamid and his brother, Amir, to go in with her on a business, the telecom company TTI. The company would be a pioneer in software-based telephone switching, also known as "call control". All three would make a boatload of money. When TTI was bought by Sonus Networks in 2001, Anousheh was made a vice president. The Ansaris made many contributions to private spaceflight. Anousheh was a boardmember of the X Prize Foundation, and she and Amir made a large monetary contribution to their first award. So they essentially bankrolled the prize awarded to Scaled Composites in 2004 for becoming the first private venture to launch a human into space. Anousheh also contributed to Space Adventures, and eventually paid for her own space tourism seat. (She prefers the term "spaceflight participant".) She served as a backup for Japanese entrepreneur Daisuke Enomoto. When Enomoto was pulled from the flight due to a chronic kidney ailment, Ansari took his place. Prior to the flight, Michael Lopez-Alegria had expressed uncertainty about space tourism in general. But Ansari's participation in his launch changed his tune. Both he and Tyurin felt they all worked well together. Ansari currently runs a private technology management company, and participates in many charities, including the Make-a-Wish Foundation. She has no children, but is the aunt of child actresses Yara and Sayeed Shahidi. She is also related to the rapper Nas.
Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolovsky was born on September 17, 1857, in Izhevskoye (present-day Spassky), Russia, a town about 200 miles SE of Moscow. His father was Polish and his mother was part Tatar, and his family was part of the growing middle class. At age 10, he suffered scarlet fever, and lost a good chunk of his hearing. Due to his hearing problems, he was not admitted into elementary schools from then on, and literally had to educate himself, espcially after his mother died when he was 13. Inspired by the work of Jules Verne (Anyone else see a common thread there?), as well as Russian philosopher Nikolai Feodorov, he began to think that space travel was not only possible, but the eventual destiny of humanity. Tsiolovsky got enough of a grasp of physics and math that he was able to get a teaching certificate at age 19, and got a job teaching in the Moscow suburb of Borovsk. He married at this time, and fathered at least two children. Being self-educated, some of his earliest theories turned out to have already been discovered. But he eventually figured out some new ideas, particularly in aerodynamics. Some of his work led to metallic dirigibles. In 1892, he published papers regarding some early theories on spacecraft design, and was among the earliest proponents of using liquid hydrogen as fuel. The problem with Tsiolovsky is that, if you consider the lack of interest in the early ideas of Goddard and Oberth, Tsiolovsky faced even deeper apathy. It didn't help that he faced some personal tragedies in the early 20th century. His son Ignaty committed suicide in 1902, and his daughter Lyubov was arrested in 1911 on suspicion of revolutionary activities. In addition, many of his papers were lost in a flood in 1906. By the time World War I began, he had given up on rocket science, and focused more on social issues. Tsiolovsky himself supported the Bolshevik Revolution. He retired from teaching in 1920, and was granted a lifetime pension in 1921. The Soviet Union finally recognized his work, and began funding his research. In the mid-1920s, he presented theories regarding perfecting rocket thrust. In 1929, he proposed multi-stage rockets for spaceflight. It should be noted, Tsiolovsky never built a rocket himself. Although the Soviets began to push Tsiolovsky's research as genius, his personal involvement was increasingly limited. He had become a hermit, and in many circles was ostracized due to his support for eugenics. He died 84 years ago today in Kaluga after surgery for stomach cancer, aged 78. Subsequently, his work was studied by Ukrainian rocket scientists Sergei Korolev and Valentin Glushko, and German translations of his work made it to Wernher von Braun.
40 years ago today, the third High Energy Astronomy Observatory satellite, HEAO 3, was launched atop an Atlas-Centaur rocket from Pad 36B, Cape Canaveral. There were three instruments on the satellite: a cryogenically-cooled spectrometer, and two cosmic ray detectors. One of the cosmic ray instruments was specifically designed in the hopes of looking for heavy elements. The spectrometer operated on the border between the X-ray and gamma ray ranges. One of its objectives was to search for antimatter. The spectrometer operated for seven months before its coolant was exhausted. The probe re-entered in December 1981. Each of the instruments had a different science team. The heavy elements experiment was overseen by Dr. Edward Stone of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also the chief investigator for Voyager.
Happy 64th birthday to NASA astronaut Richard Hieb. Born in Jamestown, North Dakota, he got a double bachelors in math and physics from Northwest Nazarene College in 1977, then a master's in aeronautical engineering from Colorado in 1979. After Colorado, he got a non-astronaut job at Johnson Space Center working in Mission Control, and also developing rendezvous procedures for the Space Shuttle program. He was selected as an astronaut with Group 11 in 1985. Hieb's first mission was an unclassified DoD mission aboard Discovery with STS-39 in April-May 1991. He used the Canadarm to hold and manipulate the mission's payload, the Infrared Background Signature Satellite. He was chosen to be part of the Intelsat 603 rescue mission on Endeavour's maiden flight, STS-49 in May 1992. He would conduct three EVAs with Pierre Thuot, along with Rick Akers on the third, to conduct the rescue and get the satellite on a new kickmotor. Hieb's last mission was as payload commander for STS-65 aboard Columbia in July 1994. The Spacelab mission was the second flight of the International Microgravity Laboratory. Hieb left NASA in 1995, and went to work at various aerospace companies, including Orbital Sciences. After 14 years as an executive at Lockheed Martin, he retired from the private sector and took a teaching role at the University of Colorado. He is married, and has two children.
Happy 89th birthday to Soviet cosmonaut Peter Kolodin. (At least, I'm assuming he's still alive. There's literally no data on him beyond 1986.) Born in Novovasilevka, Ukraine, he studied meteorology for the Soviet Air Force, then switched to engineering, getting advanced education in the subject in the late 1950s. He would work at both Baikonur and Plesetsk Cosmodromes before being selected in the second Soviet Air Force cosmonaut group in 1963. Being older than many of the selections in the first cosmonaut group doubtlessly put him behind the eight ball. He was on the reserve crew (that's the backup to the backup) for both Voskhod 2 and Soyuz 5, then was backup to Soyuz 7. It wouldn't be until Soyuz 11 that Kolodin finally made a prime crew for the second planned mission to the Salyut 1 space station. Then Valeri Kubasov was suspected of contracting tuberculosis. The crews were swapped, and the original backup crew died on re-entry. Kolodin would continue to train with the cosmonaut corps, but wouldn't be selected to another mission until Soyuz 27, where he was the flight engineer for commander Vladimir Dzhanibekov. This, also, was not to be. After issues with Soyuz 25, an all-rookie crew, the space program decided that at least one veteran cosmonaut needed to be on every mission. Since Soyuz 27 was also all-rookie, Kolodin was cut. He was replaced by Oleg Makarov, who would fly his third mission. He would finally be pushed out of the cosmonaut corps in 1983, and retired from the Soviet Air Force as a colonel in 1986. After that, he would work in the press corps for the Mission Control Center in Kaliningrad/Korolyov, though I have no idea for how long. Like I said, no information beyond 1986. Alexei Leonov's still alive, I'd like to think he'd know what's up with him. Kolodin is married, and had one child.
20 years ago today, IKONOS was launched atop an Athena II rocket from Pad 6, Vandenberg AFB. Intended to be the second of a pair of commercial Earth observation satellites, its sister probe was lost in a launch mishap five months before. The probe, operated by Space Imaging, took color photos of Earth with a 1m resolution, a capability rivaling spy satellites at the time. It could also take multispectral photos, similar to Landsat, at 4m resolution. Beginning in 2000, Space Imaging began selling images to the general public. One of its biggest customers was Microsoft, who initially made the imagery available through its Terraserver service. Space Imaging merged with rival Orbimage in 2006, forming GeoEye. GeoEye was bought by DigitalGlobe in 2013. Today, its images are used by Google Maps, Apple Maps, Bing Maps, and just about everyone else on the Internet. IKONOS was retired in March 2015. It had taken over 597,000 images during its lifetime. It hasn't decayed very far from its original 421-mile SSO.
John Sumter Bull was born on September 25, 1934, in Memphis. I have absolutely no idea if he personally knew Elvis. He graduated with a mechanical engineering degree from the Navy ROTC at Rice in 1957, and trained to become a Naval aviator. He served in the VF-114 fighter squadron flying the F-3 and F-4 off three different aircraft carriers. He would then fly for the Naval Air Test Center out of NAS Patuxent River in Maryland. Bull was selected as an astronaut with the Original 19 in 1966, and was on the support crew for Apollo 8, which would've made him a CAPCOM for the mission. But during his training, preparing for a Lunar Module qualification test with Jim Irwin, he was found to have a sinus problem. He was diagnosed with a rare chronic pulmonary disorder, and was disqualified from further consideration to go into space. He left the Astronaut Office in July 1968, but remained with NASA and transferred to Ames Research Center. He also left the Navy with the rank of lieutenant commander. Not long after entering the aviation simulation program at Ames, he took a leave of absence from NASA and went to Stanford, where he ultimately got a doctorate in aeronautical engineering in 1973. He then returned to Ames, and developed simulations for fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. By 1983, Bull was the chief of the Aircraft Systems Branch at Ames. In 1986, he took a NASA-wide management role in systems automation. He left NASA in 1989, and would spend the next eight years as an independent consultant at Ames. Bull died on August 11, 2008, of complications from asthma, aged 73. He left a wife and two children.
22 years ago today, Atlantis was launched on STS-86 from Pad 39A, Kennedy Space Center. Atlantis would dock with Mir, conducting another battery of joint experiments. It would also swap Shuttle-Mir astronaut Michael Foale with David Wolf. As part of the mission, Scott Parazynski and Vladimir Titov would conduct an EVA, staging a device to attempt to cap the leaks on Spektr caused by the collision of Progress M-34 three months earlier, and retrieving an earlier exposed experiment. Oddly enough, the launch occurred on the 14th anniversary of the Soyuz T-10-1 launch abort, which Titov was also aboard. With this mission, Frenchman Jean-Loup Chretien became the first space traveler to officially become both a cosmonaut and an astronaut. Previous cosmonauts on Space Shuttle missions (including Titov on this one) did so representing Roscosmos, and astronauts that flew on Soyuz did so representing NASA.
16 years ago today, an Ariane 5G rocket was launched from Pad 3, Guiana Space Centre, with two prime payloads. One of the payloads was India's latest comsat, INSAT-3E. I'll get into that in a sec. The other payload was SMART-1, a probe intended to study the Moon. It was designed in Sweden, and carried a 68-millinewton ion engine with 80 kg of xenon propellant. The solar panels afforded the probe 1,190 watts of power. Starting from a GTO with a perigee of around 7,000 km, SMART-1 spent 13 months raising its orbit slowly toward the Moon's gravitational influence. It entered lunar orbit on November 11, 2004, and spent the next 8 months lowering its orbit around the Moon. It settled with a polar orbit of 2,200 x 4,600 km around the Moon. The probe contained a small CCD camera, and various X-ray and spectrometer experiments. It also carried an experimental Ka-band radio for telemetry. It lasted 14 months in lunar orbit, with the Moon's gravometrics slowly pulling it closer. It was crashed into the Moon on September 3, 2006, south of Mare Humorum. The impact was observed by Earth-based telescopes. Its exact impact point was located by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2017. The experiments on SMART-1 were used to improve equipment to be used on the BepiColombo mission to Mercury. ******** As for INSAT-3E, it was parked at 55°E for over 10 years before its orbit was lowered out of the Clarke belt. It had run out of oxidizer before running out of fuel. GSAT-16 would replace its capabilities.
48 years ago today, Luna 19 was launched atop a Proton-K rocket from Site 81/24, Baikonur Cosmodrome. The probe was a lunar-orbit test of the heavy next-gen Soviet lunar landing bus, which would serve both sample-return and rover missions for the rest of the 1970s. It was placed in a circular 140-km orbit around the Moon. It carried a battery of remote sensing experiments and a television camera. It would conduct experiments for the next 13 months.
57 years ago today, the first Canadian space probe, Alouette 1, was launched atop a Thor-Agena rocket from Pad 2E, Vandenberg AFB. The probe, built by RCA Victor, carried experiments for ionospheric research and the detection of extraterrestrial radio sources. Its gamebreaker app was an antenna model that was coiled against the satellite, and deployed by centrifugal force when the probe was spun up. It remained in contact for the next 10 years. A backup unit, Alouette 2, was launched three years later, and also lasted 10 years.
Happy 55th birthday to NASA astronaut Stephen Frick. Born in Pittsburgh, he got an aeronautical engineering degree from Navy in 1986. A carrier pilot, he flew the F/A-18 off the USS Saratoga in combat missions during Operation Desert Storm. After returning from overseas, he earned a master's from the Naval Postgraduate School in 1994. Frick was selected to NASA with Group 16 in 1996 in the pilot track. He left the Navy with the rank of Captain when he joined NASA. He flew STS-110 on Atlantis, delivering the S0 Truss and Canadarm2's Mobile Transporter to the International Space Station, in 2002. He would then command STS-122, also on Atlantis, in 2008, delivering ESA's Columbus laboratory module to the ISS. After his second mission, Frick spent his time detailed to the Naval Postgraduate School as a visiting professor in their aerospace engineering program. He left NASA in 2015 to enter the private sector. He is currently the Director of Operations for the Space Systems division of Lockheed Martin. He is married, and has no children.
50 years ago today, ESRO 1B was launched atop a Scout B rocket from Pad 5, Vandenberg AFB. The probe was primarily an investigation into aurorae. It also carried some basic technology associated with navigational satellite research. The Scout B's Altair upper stage underperformed slightly, resulting in a slightly lower-than-planned orbit. Though the probe had a full mission, the launch was characterized as a partial failure. The probe would remain in orbit for 7 weeks.
57 years ago today, Mercury-Atlas 8, Sigma 7, was launched atop an Atlas rocket from Pad 14, Cape Canaveral. On-board was NASA's fifth astronaut, Wally Schirra. It extended the mission profile for Project Mercury. While Glenn and Carpenter each orbited the Earth three times, Schirra did six orbits. The primary goal of the mission was to prove the durability of the Mercury spacecraft in preparation for a day-long spaceflight in 1963. Schirra experienced some capsule heating issues, though the cooling system in his spacesuit compensated. He engaged in a surprising amount of photography, though some of the intended observation goals were not met due to cloud cover. Sigma 7 made the first splashdown in the Pacific, landing about 300 miles NE of Midway Island. Schirra requested he remain in the capsule as it was hoisted aloft and airlifted to its recovery craft, the aircraft carrier USS Kearsage. Once on the deck, Schirra manually blew the capsule's emergency hatch. It was an experiment to see the effects of manually firing the emergency hatch, as part of the investigation into what happened to Liberty Bell 7 the previous year. Manually engaging the hatch resulted in Schirra injuring the hand that pulled the ejector switch. Gus Grissom did not have similar injuries after his emergency hatch spontaneously blew at the end of his mission, resulting in his capsule sinking, thus proving once and for all he had not caused it. Schirra was not as impressed by the observations from orbit as his predecessors, comparing what he saw to what he could see flying an aircraft at 50,000 feet. He also found the periscope unhelpful for observation, leading to its removal from Faith 7. He rated the mission as "textbook" by his judgment. Sigma 7 today belongs to the Astronaut Hall of Fame; it was displayed at its original standalone museum since 1990, and moved with the museum to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in 2002. The Atlas booster that launched Sigma 7 re-entered the day after the launch.
Leroy Gordon Cooper, Jr., was born on March 6, 1927, in Shawnee, Oklahoma. His dad was a WWI Navy veteran, and was recalled as a JAG during World War II. Gordo, as he was called, wanted to get right into WWII when he graduated high school, but opportunities for flight training right out of high school dried up. He enlisted in the Marine Corps, but the war ended before he could go anywhere. He was discharged after a year. By that time, his father had transferred to the newly-formed Air Force, and he went to Honolulu for new opportunities. Gordo joined the Army ROTC at Hawaii, and found his first wife, Trudy, through a local flying club; he was the only one of the Mercury Seven whose wife was a licensed pilot herself. They married in 1947, and wasted no time having two daughters. While initially commissioned in the Army, Gordo was able to transfer to the Air Force as well, and began flight training. After flying in West Germany in the early days of the Cold War, he went to the Air Force Institute of Technology, where he became friends with Gus Grissom. They both went to Edwards AFB to join their test pilot program. Gordo focused on the Convair F-102 and F-106 interceptors while there. Gordo was the youngest of the selectees for the Mercury Seven. There was just one problem: his wife had left him after he had an affair. He was able to convince her to re-join him, as the program wanted American men with stable relationships, and she saw it as an opportunity for adventure. For what it's worth, some of the other pilots were surprised at Gordo's selection. They saw him as more an engineer than an actual test pilot. Gordo would ultimately fly the sixth and final Mercury flight, Mercury-Atlas 9, aboard the capsule Faith 7, becoming the first American to spend more than a day in space. He would go on to command Gemini 5 with pilot Pete Conrad, spending another eight days in space. But as he trained for Apollo, he was beginning to get on NASA's nerves. Deke Slayton felt he was lax on training. While some newer astronauts noted he was one of the few to study geology, others noted he was resistant to going into simulators. Gordo was swapped out of the command slot to backup Apollo 10 in 1969 when Alan Shepard returned to flight status. He resigned from NASA and retired from the Air Force (as a Colonel) in 1970. A divorce from Trudy quickly followed. Gordo floated around the private sector in the 70s and 80s. At one point, he was involved with Walt Disney World, doing R&D for the EPCOT project. His attempts at going into business for himself, however, usually went bad. He re-married in 1972, and had another two daughters with his second wife. Later in life, he developed Parkinson's disease. He died of natural causes in suburban Los Angeles 15 years ago today, aged 77. He was cremated, and portions of his ashes have been granted to several space burial missions. Most recently, some of his ashes were included in a space burial canister placed in the exposed trunk of the second SpaceX Dragon test flight in May 2012. It burned up at the end of the mission as planned. As a note: allegedly, many of the things said by Dennis Quaid in playing Gordo in the 1983 film The Right Stuff were actually spoken by Gordo at some point. Gordo was directly involved in its production, and worked personally with Quaid.
52 years ago today, the Soviet space program began testing for the new parachute system for the Soyuz capsule. Soyuz 1, six months earlier, literally had dozens of design faults that imperiled the mission. Ultimately, the fault that killed cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was the last one: the parachute. But you already knew that. Engineers at OKB-1 felt they needed to complete a total of 70 test drops to ensure that the system was properly designed. But the chief of the Soviet space program, Vasily Mishin, wanted it ready for a possible return-to-flight launch in November. So three tests were planned for the first day. The first one did not go well. Though, to be fair, it was not the parachute’s fault. Soyuz has a set of landing rockets underneath its heat shield. Since it lands on land instead of doing a splashdown, it needs those rockets to cushion its landing. Normally, they fire right before landing, at an altitude of 1.2 metres. They fired at 2000 m altitude. This set the capsule off kilter, and it hit the ground on its side at 8 m/s. The angle was such that the shock absorbers built into the crew couches would not have functioned. If a crew had been on board, they would’ve been seriously injured.
14 years ago today, Cassini conducted its first fly-by of Dione. Its closest approach was 500 km. Dione was the last of a group of four satellites of Saturn discovered by Giovanni Cassini in the late 17th century. It, along with Iapetus, Rhea, and Tethys, are termed the Sidera Lodoicea, as Cassini made the discoveries at the Paris Observatory under the patronage of King Louis XIV. Dione is the fourth-largest moon orbiting Saturn, and not much different from any of the other icy natural satellites found around Saturn and beyond. Its 1:2 orbital resonance with Enceladus is believed to be a source of the heating generating cryovulcanism on the latter. Dione itself is not known to have active cryovulcanism. In fact, the best description of Dione is that it combines the characteristics of Enceladus (internal liquid ocean) with Rhea (hemispherical terrain differences).
54 years ago today, a Titan IIIC rocket was launched from Pad 40, Cape Kennedy. It carried the rocket's first operational payloads: a Lincoln Labs radar calibration sphere, and a magnetospheric satellite. While it achieved orbit, its Transtage exploded on ignition for its second burn. Debris from the incident would take seven years to completely decay from orbit.
26 years ago today, Columbia was launched on STS-58 from Pad 39B, Kennedy Space Center. The mission was Spacelab Life Sciences 2, a follow-on to SLS-1 two years earlier. Dr. Rhea Seddon, who flew the first mission as well, served as Payload Commander, and would be a principal investigator for the medical experiments on the 14-day mission. Also tested was PILOT, a laptop-based simulation program to help the commander and pilot practice re-entry procedures while on orbit. Near the end of the mission, Dr. Seddon gloated about having more time in orbit than her husband, then-Chief Astronaut Robert Gibson. He would end up flying one more mission 17 months later.