BigSoccer IN SPACE!!! (The BigSoccer Space Exploration Thread)

The Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS for the system, TDRS for an individual satellite) was a vital component needed for the Space Shuttle system. Before then, objects in low-Earth orbit could only communicate with the ground when they were within the limited scope of a ground relay. Since 70% of the Earth is covered by water, that severely limits coverage on most orbits.

Having a relay system in geosynchronous orbit allows each satellite to cover over 1/3 of the planet at any given time, and with a consistent level of support. These satellites would also not be subject to the political whims of foreign countries where ground stations might be located. All ground traffic goes to four ground locations: two redundant terminals at White Sands, NM; one at Goddard Space Flight Center in Bethesda, MD; and one in Guam.

The first TDRS was put in orbit in 1983 with STS-6. There was a mishap getting to orbit, requiring it to burn much of its fuel to get where it needed to go. So once enough other satellites were in orbit, it was put in semi-retirement establishing service to McMurdo Station in Antarctica. Still, when it was activated for STS-8, it proved a boon. It was said of TDRS-A: "Working solo, [TDRS-A] provided more communication coverage, in support of [STS-8], than the entire network of NASA tracking stations had provided in all previous Shuttle missions."

The second one was delayed to STS-51-L. Yup, a TDRS satellite was the primary payload lost in the Challenger disaster. The third satellite was also the payload of STS-26, the Return to Flight after that disaster. The basic constellation of three satellites was finally completed with STS-29 in 1989.

A total of six first-generation TDRS satellites were launched by 1995. Four of them are still active today. In 2000 and 2002, three second-generation TDRS satellites were launched on Atlas IIa boosters. Today, all American low- and moderate-Earth orbit satellites, as well as the ISS, use the TDRSS system. Since there is tons of surplus bandwidth, one satellite is also always used for nonstop contact with McMurdo Station.

TDRS satellites are essentially dumb relays. All they do is amplify signals and relay them on, in either direction. They typically have two different relay systems: one for low-orbit satellites, and one for moderate-orbit satellites.

TDRS-K will be the first third-generation TDRS satellite. Each generation only really represents a quantum leap in bandwidth. It will be launched on an Atlas V in its basic 401 config (4m diameter nose cone, 0 SRBs, 1 engine Centaur upper stage). The first-gen satellites are scheduled to be decommissioned in 2015.

The United Launch Alliance was created as a joint effort by Boeing and Lockheed Martin to coordinate the EELV program after they were found to have engaged in mutual industrial espionage. The ULA is technically the producer of both Boeing's Delta IV, and Lockheed Martin's Atlas V. SpaceX challenged their joint effort as an illegal monopoly, though the FTC has approved the ULA for operation.

 

402 years ago today, Galileo turned his telescope to the night sky for the first time. Over his first ten days of observations, he would find the texture of cratering on the Moon and discover what are now known as the Galilean satellites around Jupiter. He also innovated methods to use a telescope to observe the Sun, and discovered sunspots as a result.

(Interesting note: these days, a good digital SLR camera on a stable tripod in a sufficiently dark environment can make out the Galilean moons without telescopic help.)

 

Happy 56th birthday to British-American astronaut Dr. Colin Michael Foale.

Veteran of five Shuttle missions and one Soyuz mission, Dr. Foale was on the Mir space station in 1997 when a Progress cargo pod crashed into the Spektr module, causing a module depressurization. Nobody was hurt, but it was definitely the worst in-flight spacecraft mishap since Apollo 13.

He was also on ISS Expedition 8. He currently holds the cumulative spaceflight time record for a UK national at 373 days, and is one of only three Americans to have spent more than a year total in space.

 

28 years ago today, Japan launched its first interplanetary probe, Sakigake ("Pioneer"). Its primary purpose was as a test payload for their newest home-brewed solid rocket, the Mu-3SII.

Once it launched and escaped Earth's gravity successfully, it would become the vanguard of the Halley Armada, a series of international space probes that would visit Halley's Comet in March 1986.

Early data from Sakigake would be used to improve its twin probe, Suisei (PLANET-A), which was launched in August to also encounter Halley's Comet.

 

The "doomsday asteroid", 99942 Apophis, has been observed in the past few days, leading to a slight increase in its size estimate from 300 m across to 325 m across.

It's referred to by that nickname because when it was discovered in 2004, it was initially believed that it could strike Earth in either 2029 or 2036. On April 13, 2029, it could fly within 22,000 miles of Earth.

As it stands now, an impact in 2029 has been ruled out, but there's still a risk of about 1 in 7 million that it could strike Earth in 2036.

If it did strike Earth on land, it would have an impact anywhere from 500-800 megatons, or about 10-15 times larger than the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated (the Soviet Union's 57-MT Tsar Bomba). Such an impact would likely devastate a range equivalent to a moderate-sized U.S. state, and create environmental impacts equivalent to the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora (namely, global decrease in temperature).

If it struck on water, it's very likely it would be an upscaled replay of the Indian Ocean tsunami, only played out in either the Pacific or Atlantic to much more devastating impact.

 

Stupid alarmists. Score one for rational science.

 

38 years ago today, Soyuz 17 was launched to the recently-orbited Salyut 4 space station, allowing the Soviet Union to resume the space station program that would become their signature move to this present day.

That program was thwarted in 1971 when Soyuz 11 landed after three weeks at Salyut 1 with three dead cosmonauts on-board. A mishap prior to re-entry led to their air getting sucked out, killing all three. (Long story, I'll tell it later.)

Salyut 2 ended up in a uselessly-low orbit and burned up within days of launch. Salyut 3, their first Almaz military space station only had one successful docking, with a 15-day mission.

Alexei Gubarev and Georgi Grechko, both Russians, would spend 29 days in space. Among the features in the brand-new station was a teleprinter, allowing Star City to send easy-to-read instructions to the cosmonauts on-board instead of reading said instructions over the radio.

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Also, 35 years ago today, Soyuz 27 linked to the Salyut 6 space station. Soyuz 26 was there already, making it the first time two spacecraft were linked to the same space station at the same time.

 

27 years ago today, we sent our second Congressman into space.

STS-61-C was the last successful Shuttle launch before the Challenger disaster. It was also the first launch for Columbia in over two years, as it received its first major refit to update equipment and eliminate some of the artifacts of its test flights.

The aforementioned congressman was then-Representative Clarence William "Bill" Nelson, current senior Senator for Florida. He was trained alongside then-Senator Jake Garn of Utah, who flew in 1985. Of course one was Republican and one was Democrat. And both represented states that were vital to the Shuttle program: Utah is where the SRBs were manufactured, and Florida is where the Shuttles were launched.

The prime payload was an RCA satellite. Various experiments were executed, though a camera designed to observe Halley's Comet failed. A lot of activity on Halley's Comet will come in March.

 

47 years ago today, the prime driver of human spaceflight, Ukrainian-Russian engineer Sergei Korolev, died. He was 59.

Prior to his death, his existence was a closely-guarded state secret (he was known here only as "Chief Designer"), and rightfully so. Up until this point, the Soviet Union had a massive lead in the Space Race. But 1966 was a slow year for the Russians that allowed the U.S. to catch up, and 1967 had massive setbacks on both sides. Decisions made by Korolev's successors (in some cases, his rivals during his life) would doom Russia's lunar pursuits.

Cause of death: a botched hemorrhoid surgery. What made it worse was the fact that he couldn't be intubated because beatings he sustained while in the gulags in the 1930s royally f*cked up his jaw.

Today, his name is on the suburb of Moscow where the Russian space program is headquartered (formerly Kaliningrad, a name also given to the historic city of Königsburg), as well as on the corporate name of its primary aerospace engineering company, RKK Energia.

 

I was trying to look this image up. It is the launch of Helios B, which occured 37 years ago today. It was the second of two probes sent inside the orbit of Mercury to study the Sun closer than ever before.

When I did, I also got "Helios 2B", which is confusing since Helios B is also known as Helios 2. "Helios 2B" is actually a French spy satellite launched in 2009, and looks nothing like this.

That is the Titan IIIE-Centaur rocket. In addition to the two Helios probes, it sent the Viking landers to Mars (launched both between Helios A and Helios B), and sent the Voyager probes out of the solar system in 1977.

It would reach a perihelion, the closest point in its solar orbit, of a mere 43.4 million kilometers, becoming the closest probe ever to reach the Sun. That's 3 million km closer than Helios A., and 3m km closer than the closest point of the planet Mercury from the Sun. (Its distance from the Sun varies in its orbit from 46m km to 70m km.)

It would also become the fastest man-made object in history. At perihelion, Helios B is moving at over 157,000 mph. That's over 4 times faster than the velocity required to directly escape the solar system from Earth.

 

I've been spending most of the day trying to figure out what I was really going to type about here today...

"Oh yeah!"



35 years ago today, NASA announced the selection of Astronaut Group 8, the first group of astronaut candidates selected for the Space Shuttle program. Interestingly enough, there were 35 candidates in this group, who were nicknamed "Thirty-Five New Guys", whose acronym is a play on a salty military term ("the f***ing new guy").

14 pilots, and 21 mission specialists. 29 men and 6 women. Most of the specialists had doctorates.

Three black men were among the group: pilot Fred Gregory, and specialists Guy Bluford and Ron McNair. Bluford would go first, and Fred Gregory would become the first black mission commander on STS-33. (Charles Bolden is in the next group in 1980.) Also among the group was the first astronaut of Asian descent, Ellison Shouji Onizuka. (I think he's also the first astronaut from Hawaii.)

The six women selected, all specialists, were Sally Ride, Anna Fisher, Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid, Judy Resnik and M. Rhea Seddon. Dr. Lucid was the only mother among them when they were selected, though Dr. Fisher would have a child later, and ultimately become the first mother in space.

All 35 would ultimately fly in space. Not including those killed in the Challenger disaster (four in this group: pilot Dick Scobee, and specialists Resnik, McNair and Onizuka), all but four would fly more than once.

None of the members have flown in the 21st century. The most recent pilot was David Walker, who commanded STS-69 in September 1995. The most recent specialist was Steven Hawley, who flew on STS-93 in 1999.

Two still work in the Astronaut Office: Anna Fisher and Shannon Lucid. Dr. Lucid is currently the longest continually-serving astronaut in the program, but is not eligible for flight. Dr. Fisher took 7 years off, so she cannot share the service record, but she is still on active duty, making her the oldest eligible American astronaut.

Seven of the group have died: the four from the Challenger disaster, along with Sally Ride (2012, 60, cancer), David Walker (2001, 56, "brief illness") and David Griggs (1989, 49, airplane crash).

 

Happy 70th birthday to astronaut Dan Brandenstein.

A captain in the Navy who flew in Vietnam, he was among the initiates in the aforementioned Astronaut Group 8 (back row, second from left). He served as CAPCOM during the first two Shuttle missions (STS-1 and STS-2) before focusing on training for a mission of his own, and was launch shift CAPCOM on both. Meaning the three voices you were hearing were the public relations officer, the shuttle commander (in those cases John Young and Joe Engle, respectively) and him.

Kind've like how you hear Charlie Duke talking to Neil Armstrong during the Apollo 11 moon landing.

He was pilot of Challenger for STS-8, which was the first night launch of the Shuttle (and also was Bluford's first launch). They launched an Indian communication satellite, tested the Canadarm with a large dummy payload (placeholder for a delayed payload), and provided the first full operational test of the TDRS-A relay satellite.

After that he commanded STS-51-G (Discovery 1985, three satellites, deploy-and-retrieve SPARTAN platform), STS-32 (Columbia 1990; satellite deploy, Long-Duration Exposure Facility retrieval) and STS-49 (Endeavour maiden flight 1992; INTELSAT-VI repair). He was Chief of the Astronaut Office (succeeding John Young) from 1987 through his retirement after STS-49.

 

52 years ago today, the headline of the CPSU's propaganda rag, Pravda, was the announcement of the birth of six puppies from Strelka, one of the dogs that was launched successfully in the orbital test flight Korabl-Sputnik 2. A test flight of Vostok hardware, dogs Belka and Strelka flew and returned in August 1960. The stud was Pushok, a male used in the space program for ground-based testing.

Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev brought one of the pups, Pushinka (Fluffy), to America, and gave it to JFK's daughter, Caroline, as a gift. Some security personnel were concerned Pushinka might be used to hide bugging equipment, but JFK refused to believe the Soviets would be that heartless to do that to a puppy.

JFK's own dog, Charlie, eventually took a liking to Pushinka. The resulting pups were called "pupniks". Their descendants can still be traced today.

 

A lot of launches occured today, including the TIROS 9 weather satellite in 1969, Orbiting Solar Observatory-5 (OSO-5) in 1969, Landsat 2 in 1975 and STS-42 (Discovery with the Spacelab International Microgravity Laboratory module) in 1992.

I was going to look for something related to STS-107 (currently ongoing 10 years ago), only to discover its Wikipedia article is woefully underdeveloped in terms of mission highlights, unlike Shuttle missions that have occured since Wikipedia opened.

 

23 years ago today, Japan launched Hiten, the first lunar probe launched by someone other than the U.S. or the Soviet Union. It was the first robotic probe sent to the moon since Luna 24 in 1976.

Japan used an exotic, highly-elliptical orbit whose apogee was actually far beyond the Moon. It eventually tried to release a piggyback probe called Hagoromo. It made it into orbit around the Moon, but malfunctioned and failed.

Hiten did some experiments with exotic trajectories, utilizing the Lagrangian points of the Earth-Moon system and also experimenting with aerobraking in Earth's upper atmosphere, before entering a permanent orbit around the Moon. It was crashed into the Moon deliberately in 1993.

 

30 years ago today, the Infrared Astronomy Satellite, or IRAS, was launched atop a Delta 3910 rocket from Pad 2W, Vandenberg AFB.

It was essentially a high-resolution telescope with a large liquid helium tank. Launched into a sun-synchronous polar orbit and facing away from the Sun, it used evaporative cooling to keep its infrared sensors at a mere 2 K (-271 °C). Using that, it did an infrared survey of the entire night sky.

It discovered three asteroids and six comets, and discovered some things in the distant universe that confused scientists to the point they thought they found a giant rogue planet near our solar system. (It turned out to be a newly-discovered distant phenomenon.)

The mission lasted 10 months, until it ran out of helium to keep it cool.

 

51 years ago today, Ranger 3 was launched. It was the first attempt to crash-land an impactor probe on the Moon.

Ranger was designed to crash on the Moon, but would eject a soft-lander probe that would carry a seismograph. That was eventually abandoned in later missions.

Commands got mixed, Ranger was launched too fast, and it missed the Moon by 36,000 miles. It would be another two years (and another four attempts) before they would fully succeed just at this.

 

NASA's septimana horribilis begins. It's not often all three remembrances fall in the same week. Yet, here we are.



A lot of the blame for the fire that killed the crew of Apollo 204, which happened 46 years ago today, ultimately fell on the manufacturer, North American Aviation (later Rockwell, now part of Boeing).

The above photograph, taken after an August 19, 1966, crew tour of the facilities where the Apollo Block I CSM (command and service module) was being constructed, was intended to be a partial parody. Astronauts Ed White, Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee (as pictured) are praying to God before a model of the Apollo command module.

They had concerns over the amount of flammable materials that would be in a high-pressure pure oxygen atmosphere of the command module. They were proposing launch in pure oxygen with an atmosphere pressure of 16 psi (about 1,100 hPa). Not only was it higher than normal atmospheric pressure, but it was over 5 times the normal partial pressure of oxygen at sea level. The flight profile saw the capsule's atmosphere being bled off during launch until it reached 5 psi (340 hPa) on orbit.

The "Joe" they were referring to was Joseph Shea, manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Project Office. Shea ordered North American to remove any flammable material from the spacecraft, bringing it in-line with planned changes for the Block II command module. North American either ignored him, or complied, only to reverse the removal before spacecraft delivery a week later. Either way, Shea did not personally oversee it.

Sure enough, on January 27, 1967, during their on-pad "plugs-out" operational test, a short circuit caused an intense fire in the command module. It took 5 minutes just to get back into the command module. By then, the astronauts were long since dead, burns over 25-50% of their bodies, and suffocated when the fire consumed all the oxygen in the spacecraft.

The fire melted their spacesuits to the seats. It took over 90 minutes just to remove their bodies. But at least after this disaster, they had entire remains to return to their families. The Challenger and Columbia astronauts would not be so lucky.

People in charge at NA were fired, and Apollo was redesigned. The most important change: replace the original pure oxygen atmosphere with a more natural N/O atmosphere during liftoff, only switching to lower-pressure pure oxygen once on orbit. Joseph Shea was distraught that such a tragedy occurred under his watch, and he was ultimately re-assigned within NASA.

The sad part is that a similar test in 1961 in the Soviet Union killed a cosmonaut, but it wasn't revealed until 1986 as part of glasnost. Some believe if it were disclosed when it happened, this could've been avoided. But the Soviet Union was not interested in disclosing any of its failures at the time.

Grissom and Chaffee were buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Although he was also eligible for Arlington, Ed White's family chose to inter him at West Point. In addition to their names on the Space Mirror Memorial at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, there is a monument of three granite benches assembled at Launch Complex 34 (it was built by a classmate of one of theirs, and assembled in 2005), which can be reached through a tour out of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Space and Missile Museum.

The command module, CM-012, is in a secured location at Langley Research Center in Virginia, and has never been exhibited publicly. Grissom's family has suggested it be permanently entombed at Launch Complex 34. The Saturn IB rocket it was on was ultimately used for Apollo 5, an unmanned test of the lunar module.

Pad 34 would be used for the launch of Apollo 7 before being retired. Apollo 7 would the last manned flight launched from Cape Canaveral AFS until Starliner begins operation from Pad 41 in the 2020s.

 

27 years ago today, Space Shuttle Challenger was blown apart 73 seconds into launch, killing seven astronauts.



This time, NASA had nobody to blame but themselves. They ignored a red-line issue and launched despite there having been a hard freeze that morning, with ice covering the launch pad. The low that morning on the coast was 26 °F, still a record for that day at Merritt Island. It loosened one of the segment joints in one of the solid rocket boosters, causing it to cut into the external tank like a blowtorch.

It eventually opened the liquid hydrogen tank and ignited it. This breached the bulkhead of the liquid oxygen tank above, and the external tank exploded. The orbiter itself survived the explosion of the external tank, but was immediately pulled out of its normal attitude at high speed, causing it to break apart under aerodynamic pressure.

The SRBs themselves remained intact, and had to be blown up by range safety officers. There is evidence the astronauts actually survived the breakup itself, but they had no pressure suits, so they would've rapidly lost consciousness if the crew compartment lost pressurization. Some believe there's a chance they could've survived until the impact of the crew compartment in the Atlantic.

Anybody who was born in the 1970s through 1980 was traumatized by this. Virtually every school in America was watching live since the mission was launching a teacher, S. Christa McAuliffe, as part of NASA's Teacher in Space Project. Although the program was ended in 1990, her backup, Barbara Morgan, would eventually fly to the International Space Station in 2007.

Occasionally wreckage from the shuttle still washes ashore on the Space Coast. Possession of it is illegal, and if found, NASA should be called immediately. What was recovered of Challenger is entombed at Launch Complex 31, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Identified remains of the astronauts were returned to their families. What they couldn't identify was buried under the memorial for them at Arlington National Cemetery. Three of the astronauts—commander Dick Scobee, pilot Michael Smith, and mission specialist Judy Resnik—were buried there in individual graves as well. Ellison Onizuka was buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

The Shuttle program was shelved for 32 months. Modifications were made to the SRBs to make them more resistant to this kind of issue, and future Shuttle astronauts were required to wear pressure suits during launch and re-entry from that moment on.

The accident occurred on the day President Ronald Reagan was supposed to give the State of the Union address. Although initially the plan was to go ahead with it, he decided to postpone it a week and instead address the country himself that evening. The resulting address is widely considered among the greatest American speeches of the 20th century.