33 years ago today, the second test launch of the Ukrainian Zenit-2 rocket was conducted from Site 45/1, Baikonur Cosmodrome. Zenit-2 was designed for two purposes: to act as a booster for the Energia rocket, and to be a separate two-stage orbital launch vehicle. While this was intended to be a suborbital flight, one of the vernier engines on the second stage clogged and exploded. The mass simulator ended up achieving orbit, and didn't re-enter for a week. Zenit-2 would be launched solo 37 times, with six failures. The first stage worked flawlessly on both Energia launches. It was last used in 2004, and was succeeded by the Zenit-3.
I think we can save Apollo 11 for one more year. ******** 18 years ago today, the first pair of Cluster II satellites were launched atop a Soyuz-Fregat rocket from Site 31/6, Baikonur Cosmodrome. The mission was the first of a pair of reflights for the original Cluster magnetospheric research satellites. The original mission was lost due to a failure in the first Ariane 5 launch. A replacement was outsourced to Russia, splitting the four probes to two Soyuz rockets. They were ultimately put into 16,000x117,000-km polar orbits. The second flight would take place six weeks later. The first two satellites were named "Salsa" and "Samba". They are still operating today.
33 years ago today, Kosmos 1669 was launched atop a Soyuz-U rocket from Site 1/5, Baikonur Cosmodrome. Kosmos 1669 was actually a Progress resupply ship targeted for Salyut 7, at the time assisting the station's salvage by Soyuz T-13. Control was lost shortly after launch, resulting in the Soviet space program initially writing the mission off. However, after it was officially designated Kosmos instead of Progress, they were able to regain control. Once it checked out okay, the ferry was sent to Salyut 7, where it unloaded needed replacement parts for the space station. It is also believed that Kosmos 1669 carried upgraded systems to test in preparation for the Progress-M upgrade and the next Soviet space station. Progress at that time was still derived from the antiquated Soyuz 7K-T spacecraft. The Progress-M would be derived from the Soyuz-TM spacecraft. It undocked and re-entered on August 30.
47 years ago today, Apollo 15 was launched atop a Saturn V rocket from Pad 39A, Kennedy Space Center, on what would be the fourth American manned mission to the surface of the Moon. The crew was Commander Dave Scott, CM Pilot Al Worden, and LM Pilot Jim Irwin. Apollo 15 was originally intended to be an H mission, using a hand buggy similar to what was used on Apollo 14, and would've been used on Apollo 13. When missions were cut, the original Apollo 15 was scrapped, and a J mission was slid forward into its slot, giving Apollo 15 three EVA's on the Moon instead of two, and the first use of the lunar rover. The crew actually had the final say on where they would land. Their final two choices were Marius crater, and Hadley Rille. Scott felt that Hadley Rille was "exploration at its finest". During launch, the S-IC stage failed to shut down entirely after staging, resulting in recontact with the S-II stage. Though the S-II was unharmed, it did knock out the telemetry package on the S-IC stage, leaving NASA unable to track its re-entry and disposal. One of CSM Endeavour's windows was treated to permit penetration of ultraviolet radiation, so the astronauts could take UV photographs from inside the spacecraft. Normally, all windows on American spacecraft were treated to block UV radiation, so as to limit radiation exposure. Following TLI, and during extraction of LM Falcon from the S-IVB stage, a malfunction occurred in the Service Propulsion System (SPS). Troubleshooting determined there was a short circuit in the ignition switch. It was swapped for the backup system, and the mission proceeded without incident. The first mid-course correction, however, was canceled. After separation and LM extraction, the S-IVB stage was ignited again and directed to impact the Moon near the crater Lalande.
47 years ago today, at about 4:06pm EDT, Dave Scott and Jim Irwin undocked LM Falcon, leaving Al Worden alone in CM Endeavour. Two hours later, during descent, Scott could not see a feature called "Mount Hadley Delta", something he had figured he would be able to see in his simulations. When the LM pitched vertical as programmed, he identified some craters that were alternate markers, and adjusted the landing target. Falcon landed at 6:16pm EDT. Its final resting place was 600 m south and 175 m west of its target. The LM was also leaning 10 degrees; the mission maximum for a landing site tilt was 15 degrees. In ordered to be fully prepared for EVA, Scott and Irwin would sleep after landing. Before that, however, Scott conducted a stand-up EVA to remove and stow the docking mechanism from the top of the LM. He would take a panorama of the landing site. While radar observation of the landing site from Earth suggested there may be large obstacles that would impede use of the lunar rover, astronauts on the ground found nothing of the sort, with the largest rocks in the vicinity of the LM being less than a foot wide.
47 years ago today, Apollo 15 conducted its first EVA to explore the vicinity of Hadley Rille. During the sleep cycle, the LM descent stage oxygen tank was detected to be losing pressure. Mission Control decided to let the crew sleep, but ultimately woke Dave Scott and Jim Irwin one hour early. It was found that the urine transfer device was left open; closing it stopped the leak. After the mission, Scott opined that the crew should have been woken immediately upon discovery of the leak. 8 pounds of oxygen was lost. But half of the 95 pounds of oxygen in storage was reserve above what was needed for the LM mission, so the mission was not endangered. The hatch of Falcon was opened at 9:12am EDT. After setting up the TV camera, they unloaded the mission's game-breaker app: the lunar rover. The Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV), or lunar rover for short, had been in design since 1964. Although many companies were consulted, the final rover was created by Boeing and General Motors. The wheels had spun-aluminum hubs, and tires constructed of zinc-coated steel bands and titanium treads. It featured an independent drive motor for each of the four wheels, and was powered by two 36V silver-zinc batteries, each with a capacity of 121 ampere-hours. The lunar rover was estimated to have a range of 57 miles. However, for safety reasons, their range for the first mission was limited by how far the astronauts could walk with remaining oxygen. For the first EVA, Scott drove the rover around Falcon, before he and Irwin went to the edge of Hadley Rille and Elbow Crater, then to St. George Crater. On the way back to Falcon, Scott did an unplanned stop (his excuse was that his seat belt had come undone) after identifying what he thought was a unique rock near Rhysling Crater. Once they returned to Falcon, Scott and Irwin set up the ALSEP experiments. They ran into a common issue: the drill for the heat flow experiment did not go anywhere near as deep as expected. The first hole went 1.6 metres before getting stuck, and the second hole only went 1 metre. Scott also had to fix the drill bit at one point when it froze up. The first EVA lasted a total of 6 1/2 hours. Irwin's water bag had failed, leaving him dehydrated at the end of the EVA; he was unable to drink during the entire first EVA.
On Day 3 at Hadley Rille, Dave Scott and Jim Irwin opened the hatch at 7:48am EDT. Three rover stops were originally planned. However, the first stop, Station 4, was canceled to allow the crew to make another attempt at completing the drilling for the heat flow experiment. After a brief stop at Spur, they went to Station 5, a location named "Front" as the base of Hadley Rille Delta. They found it was not much different than Spur, so they canceled Station 5 and instead went to Station 6, which was Delta itself. They took some soil samples, and also went into a crater to drill for a core sample. Near a boulder, they found greenish soil, which was later discovered to be magnesium oxide. At the edge of the crater, they discovered what would become one of the most famous samples of the Apollo program: sample #15415, "Genesis Rock". The material of Genesis Rock is referred to as anorthosite. It is believed to be just over 4 billion years old. Some crystals have been estimated to be around 4.46 billion years old; as old as Earth, predating the hypothesized time of the Moon's creation. Mission Control decided to reinstate Station 4, and the crew went to Dune crater. With only 10 minutes of exploration time left before they had to return to Falcon to complete ALSEP work, they got as many samples and photographs as they could. Back at Falcon, work on the heat flow drilling yielded no better results. After the mission, it was determined that the drill's design was flawed. Scott went to drill another hole for a core sample. It made it 2.4 metres deep. Trying to extract it before the EVA ended, he only got it out 20 cm before it got stuck. The last task of the second EVA was finally planting the American flag. EVA #2 lasted 7 hours, 12 minutes.
Overnight, Mission Control canceled one of the components of EVA-3 so the astronauts could finish extracting the core sample. The hatch was opened at 4:52am EDT. Both Dave Scott and Jim Irwin grabbed the core drill, and they were able to extract it after considerable effort. A vice on the rover designed to extract the sample from the drill was discovered to be installed backwards, and had to be fixed before they could proceed. Included in the early tasks were customary publicity photos (including the flag salute above) and a 16mm camera recording of driving the lunar rover for engineers back on Earth to study. After that, they took the rover toward Sharp crater, but Scott stopped at a nearby crater that met the objectives. The samples taken there were very soft, and are believed to be the youngest portion of the lunar crust explored in the Apollo program. After that, they drove to the edge of Hadley Rille itself, a 1 km wide trough. As well as a panorama of the site, Scott used a 500mm telephoto lens to get high-res photographs of the far side of Hadley Rille, so geologists could identify layering. At the final station of the mission, they found true bedrock to sample. They also took the largest individual sample of the mission, Sample #15555, a 9.6-kg football-shape rock dubbed "Great Scott". The last important task of the mission was an experiment: With no atmosphere on the Moon to disrupt results, Dave Scott proved once and for all that a heavy object and a light object fall at the same speed in the same gravity well, irregardless of each object's different mass. The rover was positioned so its camera could get good footage of the ascent stage's launch. Scott placed a Bible on the rover's hand control. He then found a small crater, where he placed a plaque with the names of 14 astronauts and cosmonauts who had died in missions or training to that point, along with a statuette called "Fallen Astronaut". The third EVA lasted 4 hours, 50 minutes. Falcon's ascent stage launched at 1:11pm EDT, and re-docked with Endeavour at 3:10pm EDT. The ascent stage of Falcon was unloaded over the afternoon and evening. It was undocked empty at 9:04pm EDT, and de-orbited. Due to Soyuz 11, Mission Control decided that the astronauts needed to don their spacesuits during all docking procedures for this mission. This led to a delay in undocking that caused Falcon to impact the surface of the Moon 56 km downrange from its intended target point.
For the two days following the return of the landing party, the crew of Apollo 15 had one prime directive: use all their film. With all three crewmembers aboard Endeavour, two could take pictures while the third kept tab of the ship. The crew was also instructed to leave the panoramic camera in the Service Module running until it exhausted all of its film. The camera was originally part of an Apollo mission type called the I mission, which would be a phase of the Apollo program dedicated to close-up survey of the Moon from lunar orbit. To conserve funding, its objectives were folded into the J missions. One of the last tasks while in lunar orbit was the release of a microsatellite. It would take gravometric measurements of the Moon, as well as study the interaction of the Moon with Earth's magnetic field. It sent data for a year and a half, and is believed to have crashed into the Moon some time in 1974. TEI took place at 5:22pm EDT on August 4.
47 years ago today, the first EVA conducted in translunar space was undertaken. Al Worden left Endeavour to become the first Apollo CM pilot to leave the spacecraft since his commander, Dave Scott, did so during Apollo 9. All three astronauts donned their spacesuits, and the hatch was opened at 11:31am EDT. Worden mounted a film camera and the TV camera on the hatch so his progress could be aired. He then crawled down the service module and collected the film from the panoramic camera and the mapping camera. While unloading the mapping camera, Worden examined it. It was thought the camera may have been obscured, but he found no obstruction of the lens. Later analysis found a high signal-to-noise ratio in the signal. The EVA only took 20 minutes. Afterward, the X-ray spectrometer was turned on to examine strong X-ray sources suspected to be black holes. After the EVA, the crew conducted a live in-flight press conference to describe their experiences during the mission.
The equipment in the service module of Endeavour was safed before separation of the command module. Re-entry went normally, with a max acceleration of 6 g. The fun started with the deployment of the parachutes. Initially, all three main parachutes inflated. However, after dumping the remaining RCS fuel, one of them deflated. It has never been confirmed for sure, but it is believed that half of the shroud lines for that parachute were corroded by the dumped nitrogen tetroxide. It was not a serious safety concern; only two of the parachutes were needed for a safe splashdown, with the third being a contingency. Endeavour splashed down at 4:45pm EDT, 330 miles due north of Honolulu—further north than any other splashdown in the Apollo program—and 6 mi away from its recovery ship, the amphibious assault ship USS Okinawa. Apollo 15 was the first crew to be recovered without the extreme biohazard measures taken in the first three lunar landings. The crew was airlifted first to USS Okinawa, then to Hickam AFB in Honolulu. They were then jetted to Ellington AFB in Houston, and were back at Johnson Space Center the next day. But things were far from over for Apollo 15...
It was common practice for missions to carry stamped envelopes and covers to be released by the United States Postal Service and private collectors. It was also standard procedure for the crew to get some of the official USPS covers. Apollo 15 was no different. In addition to the official USPS covers, someone in the crew (it's murky as to exactly who, but it was likely Al Worden, who was actually a stamp collector) arranged with German collector Horst Eisermann to prepare a special set of covers for him to sell in Europe. In exchange, each of the crew would get US$7,000. The crew would later say they agreed to the sum to get college tuition for their respective children, Other crews made similar arrangements, but not to this scale. It didn’t help that, due to a clerical error, the extra covers were not inventoried as part of the crew's personal effects. So when covers started hitting the market in Europe long before they were set to be released in the U.S., Chief Astronaut Deke Slayton was absolutely livid. A formal investigation into the covers was raised in June 1972. After three weeks of proceedings, including a closed-door meeting with a Senate committee, the crew was formally reprimanded, a measure that pretty much ensured none of them would ever fly again. Originally set to be the backup crew for Apollo 17, they were grounded, and replaced by the backup crew for Apollo 16. The crew was ordered not to accept the compensation agreed to with Eisermann. Their share of the covers was impounded, and they wouldn’t get them back until 1983. ******** Al Worden felt that he was scapegoated for the incident, and had to beg to keep his job at NASA; he also felt that people were conspiring to doctor his physicals so he would be unable to get further promotion beyond Colonel should he return to the Air Force. He was ultimately able to get a test pilot role at Ames Research Center. He retired from NASA and the Air Force in 1975 and entered the private sector. He would ultimately become an executive at Goodrich Aerospace. His 2011 memoir, Falling to Earth, would be an LA Times bestseller. His second wife of 32 years died in 2014. He has three children from his first marriage. ******** Before the scandal, Dave Scott was believed to be the likely commander of Apollo–Soyuz. While he never flew again, he was able to rehabilitate his reputation enough to be chosen to be Director at Dryden Flight Research Center in 1975. He held that position for 2 1/2 years before also going to the private sector. He was a commentator for the first Space Shutttle flight on British TV, and served as a technical advisor for both Apollo 13 and From the Earth to the Moon. As I have mentioned in the past, he co-wrote a biography, Two Sides of the Moon, with cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. He lives with his second wife, Margaret. He has two children from his first marriage. ******** Jim Irwin largely escaped scrutiny from the scandal, and announced his retirement from NASA before the reprimand was levied. But he had his own problems to deal with. Remember that broken water bag during the first EVA? The dehydration triggered a slow deterioration in Irwin's condition over the other two moonwalks. After Falcon returned to Endeavour, the flight surgeon was alarmed by Irwin's EKG. He was throwing PVCs AND PACs. His heart had developed a condition called "bigeminy". The atrial and ventricular portions of his heartbeat had separated into distinct actions. If this had happened on Earth, he would've been sent to the hospital and treated for a heart attack. It was a very real concern that Irwin could’ve become the first human to die in space from a medical condition. But it was probably a good thing this happened while he was in microgravity. Between that and the CM's 100% oxygen atmosphere—while not the high pressure atmosphere that doomed Apollo 1, it was still a higher partial pressure of oxygen than sea level—Irwin was already essentially in intensive care. He was monitored closely for the remainder of the mission, and had very limited duty. By the time re-entry was at hand, the bigeminy had disappeared. His health problems, however, had only just begun. Irwin was already known to suffer disrhythmias during strenuous exercise, and it was probably a factor in his retirement. Some believe his issues later in life may have been complicated—perhaps even triggered—by the dehydration he suffered during his first EVA on Apollo 15. He actually suffered heart attacks in 1973 and 1986; he required CPR after the second one. A third heart attack 27 years ago today finished Jim Irwin off. He left a wife and five children. At 61, he was the first—and, by far, the youngest—of the moonwalkers to die.
The last few post have been fascinating, as always, but the last one....2:42 AM!! Rays...you really need to get some sleep.
Yesterday morning, the Parker Solar Probe was launched atop a Delta IV rocket with a Star 48 kickmotor from Pad 37B, Cape Canaveral. When it reached escape velocity, its direction was against the orbit of Earth around the Sun. As a result, it was sent into a Hohmann transfer that sent it inward toward the Sun. In late September, just seven weeks from now, it will take a gravity assist by Venus that will direct it even further inward. At that point, its perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) will be inside Mercury's orbit. A total of seven fly-bys of Venus will edge the probe closer and closer to the Sun. Once it takes its final fly-by of Venus in November 2024, its perihelion will be a mere 3.95 million miles above the Sun's surface, just 8.86 solar radii. Each orbit will be 88 days, about as long as Mercury's orbit. At perihelion, it will be travelling at a blinding velocity of 200 km/sec, three times as fast as the last close-approach solar probe, Helios-B. That's just under 0.1% of the speed of light. From there, it is set for five close passes over the Sun to gather in-situ data on the solar corona, and attempt to determine the mechanics of the solar wind. During each perihelion pass, it will use a tiny secondary set of solar panels for power. At the final perihelion distance, solar intensity is estimated to be 650 kw/sq. m. A primary solar array will deploy beyond 0.25 AU to provide adequate power at aphelion. In order to protect the probe, it has a heat shield derived from Space Shuttle technology, made of reinforced carbon-carbon composite. Once the mission is over, the probe will eventually run out of reaction control fuel and burn up in the corona.
The predecessor of the Apollo Applications Program was the Apollo Extension Series, or "Apollo X". The initial phase for Apollo X, first outlined 54 years ago today, was a series of Earth-orbiting laboratories. The first mission would be a simple Apollo CSM with a two-man crew. With the fuel cells of the Block II service module, it could stay in orbit for up to 45 days. The first mission would use a Saturn IB rocket. From there, Apollo X's Earth-orbiting research would be launched by Saturn V with one or more "laboratory modules". These modules were probably the predecessors of the Orbital Workshop, what would become Skylab. They envisioned three-man crews doing up to 120-day missions. Apollo X also encompassed a four-phase lunar exploration program, and beyond. The first two phases were accomplished, with Phase 2 represented by Apollo's J missions (especially Apollo 15 and 17, with their specialized geological training). Phase 3, a lunar-orbit survey of the Moon, was actually evolved into the I mission type, then folded into the J missions. The fourth phase of Apollo X was the "Lunar Surface Rendezvous and Exploration Phase". It involved two launches per mission: a Lunar Module more dedicated to life support for a crew, and a Lunar Payload Module which would deliver cargo for a mission to the landing site autonomously. The LPM landing was planned up to three months before the crewed LM. Each mission was envisioned to last up to two weeks on the surface. This would eventually lead to a lunar base ("Lunar Exploration System for Apollo", or LESA), and later expand to a manned fly-by of Venus with a "wet workshop"-style Orbital Workshop. These involved later evolutions of the CSM which would never see the light of day.
43 years ago today, Viking 1 was launched atop a Titan IIIE rocket from Pad 41, Cape Canaveral. With America's first lander on Mars, it would enter orbit ten months later, and examine the red planet for the next seven years.
57 years ago today, Ranger 1 was launched atop an Atlas-Agena rocket from Pad 12, Cape Canaveral. It was the first test launch of the Ranger platform, which would dominate deep space exploration for the first half of the 1960s. It was intended to be launched into a highly-elliptical orbit. However, a misfiring of the Agena-B upper stage resulted in Ranger 1 only achieving a low-Earth orbit of roughly 275x110 miles. As a result of the low orbit, the solar cells did not recharge the batteries as intended, and the probe stopped working four days after launch when the batteries were drained. They were able to test most of the instruments, but were too close to Earth to test the magnetometer. The probe re-entered a week after launch, and its remains crashed into the Gulf of Mexico.
Happy 60th birthday to Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev. (Yes, I know this was yesterday. I've been wanting to do this for years. I'm not missing it this time.) Born in Leningrad, Krikalev would take the rare civilian route to the Soviet space program. After graduating from Baltic State Tech, he went to work for NPO Energia. He was one of the chief architects of the salvage operation on Salyut 7 in 1985, for which he was rewarded with selection to be a cosmonaut. Initially assigned to the Buran shuttle program, he would be transferred to Mir, and trained for long duration spaceflight. His first mission was a three-week stay on Mir with Expedition 4 in 1989, which would be the last mission to leave it unmanned for over a decade. His next mission was Long Duration mission 3 (LD-3) in 1991. This would encompass Expeditions 9 and 10, and would prove fateful; the coup attempt on Mikhail Gorbachev took place three months into Expedition 9, and the Soviet Union dissolved during Expedition 10. He spent over 10 months in space, and returned in March 1992 not to the Soviet Union, but to an independent Kazakhstan and Russia. Later in 1992, Krikalev was selected to train with NASA, and would become the first Russian to board an American spacecraft since Apollo-Soyuz when he flew STS-60 in 1994. He would serve as a CAPCOM in Houston for all the other joint US-Russian Shuttle flights. His next mission, however, would be STS-88 at the end of 1998, the first assembly mission for the International Space Station. Once Unity was docked to the Functional Cargo Block Zarya, Krikalev and Robert Cabana would enter Unity together. He would serve on ISS Expedition 1 in 2002, being on-board for 4 1/2 months. In 2005, Krikalev would finally command a Space Station expedition, when he commanded Expedition 11. It would be a six-month mission, and he'd be among the first travelers to utilize both American and Russian spacesuits during a mission, conducting different spacewalks in the Extravehicular Mobility Unit and the Sokol spacesuit. In 2007, Krikalev was named a Vice President of RKK Energia, putting him in charge of cosmonaut training. One of his first tasks was assisting repairs of ISS computer systems during Expedition 15. He is currently third overall for total time spent in space, at 803 days. Krikalev is married, and has one child. He also has taken part in aerobatics teams throughout his career.
There's been a leak at the International Space Station. While news headlines have suggested the station itself was leaking, the actual leak was detected in one of the docked Soyuz capsules, Soyuz MS-09. The leak was detected last night. The leak was small enough that they were able to keep the spacecraft pressurized while they tried to seal it. Once it was detected, it was temporarily covered with Kapton tape, after which Russian mission controllers suggesting dousing gauze with glue and pushing it into the hole as much as possible. The leak appears to have been stoppered for now. It is not believed to be in a location that would compromise its heat shielding, and the cosmonauts and astronaut that will return in Soyuz MS-09 in December 2018 will be wearing pressure suits anyway.
73 years ago today, the French rocketry program, under the guidance of French physicist Jean-Jacques Barré, was resurrected by the Free French armed forces. Born in 1901 (date unknown), Barré was initially interested in astronomy, and published a paper on telescope mirrors in 1923. From there, he decided to enter military science. A rocketry symposium in 1927 turned him to rockets. In November 1930, Barré, along with French rocket scientist Robert Ensault-Pelterie had convinced the French army to give funding to rocket research. Ensault-Pelterie is considered the French father of rockets, much like Konstantin Tsiolovsky of Russia, Hermann Oberth of Germany, and Robert Goddard of the United States. Barré and Ensault-Pelterie worked through the 1930s. In 1939, Barré proposed a tube-launched 240mm rocket, something akin to the Bazooka. It was considered unfeasible by the French Army. By then, it was too late. France was conquered by Germany in 1940, with a puppet state in the south while Paris was directly ruled by the Nazis. While officially working for Vichy France, Barré continued rocketry research covertly for the Free French. By this time, Ensault-Pelterie had effectively disappeared. Ensault-Pelterie died in 1957. When Vichy France was put under direct Nazi control in 1942, Barré was able to escape to the French Resistance and smuggle his research--including his most advanced work on a liquid-fueled rocket, the "EA-1941"--to Britain. A few of his workers were captured by the Gestapo. Ironically, one of them died in a concentration camp that was involved in slave labor producing Wernher von Braun's V-2 rocket. Once Paris was liberated, Barré was able to resume his work. The EA-1941 was promising enough for Barré to receive grants to develop the EA-1946 Eole rocket. At this time, however, France was given a share of the spoils of war, which included equipment, plans, and a few scientists from von Braun's program. The Eole program was eventually supplanted by a V-2-based program called Veronique in 1952; interestingly enough, their German scientists were the ones getting into storable fuels. By this time, Barré was heavily involved in French development of nuclear weapons. While the Veronique led eventually to the Diamant rocket, and to the French space program, the military program decided to stick with solid rockets for their nuclear missiles. There is very little info out in the open on Jean-Jacques Barré. He has no English Wikipedia page; all the info I could find on him is from Encyclopedia Astronautica and French Wikipedia. He left the French Army in 1960, and died in 1978.
54 years ago today, the first Orbiting Geophysical Observatory, OGO-1, was launched atop an Atlas-Agena rocket from Pad 12, Cape Kennedy. The first OGO probe was placed in a super-high near-polar orbit, with its perigee just beyond geostationary, and its apogee at around 70,000 miles. Two of the booms that carried the experiment modules failed to deploy properly. One of them blocked the horizon scanner, causing the probe to need to be spin-stabilized at 5 RPM. Nevertheless, all 20 experiments did work properly and return data. After launch, the battery permitted the probe to obtain data during 70% of its orbit. It would eventually degrade to only 10%. Over time, its perigee would be dragged further out, and its inclination would process from 88° to 58°. The probe was put in safe mode in November 1969, and the mission was officially terminated two years later.
71 years ago today, the Navy oversaw one of the first American tests of a sea-borne rocket launch with Operation Sandy. A V-2 rocket was launched from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Midway. The launch took place around 470 miles SE of Bermuda in the mid-Atlantic. The rocket reached a height of 10 km before malfunctioning and exploding. The test was prepared for with Operation Pushover, where a fully-fueled V-2 was intentionally exploded atop a simulated carrier deck at White Sands Missile Range to see how an aircraft carrier deck would hold up to a missile launch from it.
23 years ago today, Endeavour was launched on STS-69 from Pad 39A, Kennedy Space Center. The primary task of the flight was the second flight of the Wake Shield Facility. The eleven-day mission also did various biomedical experiments. One of the experiments in the payload bay was IEH-1, the first of five planned flights of the International Extreme Ultraviolet Hitchhiker payload. This experiment would examine the Sun and Jupiter at very high UV wavelengths. The experiments targeted at Jupiter were specific to the radiation belt emanating from Io. A six-hour spacewalk would practice construction techniques in preparation for the upcoming International Space Station.
57 years ago today, NASA entered into a contract with North American Aviation to produce the S-II, the second stage of the Saturn C-5 (later Saturn V) rocket. At the time, it would be the largest and most powerful single rocket stage fueled by liquid hydrogen. Originally planned to be powered by four Rocketdyne J-2 engines, it was changed to five J-2 engines. Like the S-IVB but unlike the S-IC, the S-II would have a common bulkhead that would encapsulate both the liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen tanks. In addition to development costs, the initial $140 million contract covered construction of ten rocket stages. A total of 19 were built, including three test articles, of which two were destroyed during testing. The remaining test article is on display at Marshall Spaceflight Center in Alabama, while the two remaining flight articles are part of the respective Saturn V models at Johnson and Kennedy Space Centers. An additional test article was canceled and never built.