57 years ago today, the first boilerplate of the Apollo command and service module, AS-101, was launched atop Saturn I SA-6 from Pad 37B, Cape Kennedy. It was the second orbital launch of the Saturn I, with the S-IV second stage. During first stage flight, one of the H-1 engines failed due to a gear being stripped. Engineers were already working to re-design the gears for future flights, so it did not cause any delays. And with Saturn I's already-established engine-out capability, it still achieved orbit, with the other seven H-1 engines burning for an additional 2.7 seconds to compensate. It achieved an intentionally-low 182x227km orbit, and re-entered four days later between Fiji and Hawaii.
ESA astronaut @AstroSamantha Cristoforetti is named to serve as @Space_Station commander on Expedition 68, following an in-principle agreement by international partners on 19 May. As part of #Crew4, Samantha will fly on a @SpaceX #CrewDragon in 2022 👉https://t.co/XWin3BnInK pic.twitter.com/kMtXswUvUD— European Space Agency (@esa) May 28, 2021 The next European commander of the International Space Station has been named. Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti will join the currently-named crew of commander Kjell Lindgren and pilot Robert Hines on SpaceX Crew-4 in the spring of 2022. She will take command of Expedition 68. The mission currently has a planned launch date of April 5, 2022. There's still a chance that a Russian cosmonaut could round out the crew.
NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter “muscled through” its sixth automated flight at Mars, safely landing after a navigation glitch caused it to wobble more than 30 feet above the planet.Read more: https://t.co/0cfo1tzTOf pic.twitter.com/bx9h7VWF1Z— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) May 28, 2021 Things got interesting with Ingenuity's first operational demonstration flight yesterday. It did a series of maneuvers, going a good distance largely without previous scouting. As it neared its intended landing point, there was a wobble in its flight at 10m altitude. It settled down, and safely landed 5m short of its originally intended target, noted as "Airfield C". Any landing you can walk away from, I guess. During the wobble, spikes in power consumption were noted, and were connected to the navigation system. JPL will examine the data and see what happened before the next flight. It took a bunch of stereo images that are being relayed back to Earth.
55 years ago today, Surveyor 1 was launched atop an Atlas-Centaur rocket from Pad 36A, Cape Kennedy. Three days later it made the first American soft-landing on the Moon, landing about 50 km NNE of Flamsteed crater in Oceanus Procellarum. The probe immediately began taking photographs with a vidicon tube TV camera. The probe would survive several lunar nights, though the camera would only be used in the first two lunar days of the mission. 11,237 photos were taken in total. The only other experiment on the probe was a strain gauge to confirm soil mechanics of the lunar surface. The camera was only configured for monochrome video, though the probe was still configured similarly to future probes; the color wheel is visible in this photo. Final contact was seven months after landing, on January 7, 1967. Surveyor 3 would land three months later.
My wife stumbled on this live feed last night - and I said - hey, Macsen was just talking about B1063
ESA's cute mission cartoons have gotten darker and edgier. Sort of. Okay, not really. Da da da... introducing 'The Incredible Adventures of the #Hera mission' 👏👉 https://t.co/zPRlevAfcl #HeraMission #PlanetaryDefense pic.twitter.com/ispYDrJXmF— European Space Agency (@esa) June 1, 2021 This morning, they released a cartoon for Hera, their follow-on to NASA's DART asteroid impactor mission. Apparently, Hera has two cubesat landers for Dimorphos: Juventas and Milani. Honestly, I was not expecting this kind of crossover in this thread today. ******** Due to the move of Falcon 9 booster B1063 to Cape Canaveral, DART has been delayed to November 24. Or maybe, DART's delay is unrelated, and enabled B1063 to be moved instead? Anyway, Cargo Dragon CRS-22 is still a go for Thursday at 1:29pm EDT. The 45th Weather Squadron gives it an 80% chance of launch favorability, and 70% tomorrow. SXM-8 has been locked in for late Saturday night at 12:25am EDT. It will be launched with B1061.3.
55 years ago today, the Augmented Target Docking Adapter was launched atop an Atlas SLV-3 rocket from Pad 14, Cape Kennedy. Because of the much lower mass of the ATDA compared to the Gemini Agena Target Vehicle, there were concerns that it might throw off the Atlas rocket's aerodynamics. It did make it into orbit successfully, achieving a roughly 295km circular orbit. Of course, the odd thing about this launch is that it took place two days prior to the launch of Gemini 9A. The whole thing was scuffed, really. The shroud was incorrectly fastened with adhesive tape. That's why it failed to jettison properly once on orbit, preventing Gemini 9A from being able to dock with it.
It seems the time has come. Maybe. Still not holding my breath for Roscosmos to make a deadline. Nauka is currently on track for a July 15 launch, as the Pirs module has been decommissioned. Progress MS-16 will pull Pirs away from the station next month.Read more about the EVA here: https://t.co/W4gDZq4qbS https://t.co/RdemPx91RF— Ian Atkinson (@IanPineapple) June 2, 2021 An EVA this morning finished disconnecting equipment that was previously attached to Pirs. One of the main things was moving a Strela cargo crane from Pirs to Poisk. It also disconnected handrails attached between Pirs and Zvezda. The module is now considered decommissioned. If I'm reading things correctly, Pirs will be detached with Progress MS-16 in early July for a destructive re-entry. Nauka is still on schedule to be launched to the International Space Station on July 15.
I had a feeling this might happen. NEW MISSIONS AHEAD!🥳@NASA has selected the VERITAS & DAVINCI+ Discovery Program proposals as missions. Both will focus on the hottest planet in our solar system, Venus. VERITAS will study the planet’s inner workings and DAVINCI+ will study its atmosphere. https://t.co/OIA66eG0tG pic.twitter.com/VviKmQ508R— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) June 2, 2021 During the State of NASA address yesterday, it was announced that NASA had selected the DAVINCI+ and VERITAS missions to Venus for their next round of the Discovery Program. I haven't figured out what the added plus means for DAVINCI. But as I noted last September, the discovery of phosphines in the Venusian atmosphere raised the stakes for returning to our sister world. For DAVINCI+, NASA is hoping to get high-res photos of the surface. Actual pictures haven't been taken of the surface of Venus since Venera 13 in 1982. VERITAS is planned for launch in 2028, and DAVINCI+ is aimed for 2029. Given the timeframes, I'm guessing DAVINCI+ will likely use VERITAS to relay data from the surface.
The launch of Cargo Dragon CRS-22 went very well. It's the first time in a while that a new Dragon capsule and a new first stage (B1067.1) were used in the same mission. CRS-22 is planned to dock at Harmony zenith around 5am EDT tomorrow morning. SXM-8's launch time has been refined to 12:26am EDT late tomorrow night. The 45th Weather Squadron is giving a 60% chance of weather favorability, and 80% for the next night. ******** Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system, bigger even than the planet Mercury. We'll get the closest look at Ganymede we’ve had in more than 20 years when our #JunoMission makes a close flyby on June 7. Learn more: https://t.co/zMru5iSvCk pic.twitter.com/ZXXl13lXv3— NASA Solar System (@NASASolarSystem) June 3, 2021 NASA is preparing for Juno's flyby of Ganymede on Monday night. During the fly-by, they will use the probe's navigational camera to gauge the radiation environment in the vicinity of Ganymede. As I've noted previously, the radiation background around Ganymede is only slightly elevated relative to Earth, as opposed to the intense radiation around Io and Europa. It will be moving so fast, JunoCam will only have enough time for five good up-close images. It will then conduct its 33rd perijove the next evening. The fly-by of Ganymede will shorten Juno's orbital period from 53 days to 43 days.
They say the first cut is the deepest. 53 years ago today, the Apollo Applications Program was sliced and diced. Officially, any missions beyond LEO were canceled, though a possible manned Venus fly-by was kept on the backburner for future consideration depending on how the lunar program shook out. AAP was limited to eleven Saturn IB rockets, and one Saturn V. The plan was for a total of three Orbital Workshops, with one launched by the Saturn V. I'm guessing that the two launched by Saturn IB would be wet workshops, while the Saturn V would launch a dry workshop. They also only had one Apollo Telescope Mount, so that was likely for the Saturn V workshop as well. This would leave up to three crewed missions for each of the Orbital Workshops.
83 years ago today, the Soviet Union's secret police arrested several members of their engineering establishment, including Sergei Korolev, as part of the Great Purge. At that point, one of his associates, Valentin Glushko, had already been in prison for about three months. They had been accused of purposefully throttling their work to harm the fatherland. Both were tortured mercilessly to try to extract confessions. As it turned out, Glushko betrayed Korolev in a failed attempt to save his own skin. But both had been betrayed by Andrei Kostikov as a ploy to take control of the Soviet Union's Jet Propulsion Research Institute (RNII). He was arrested a few years later for budgetary improprieties. Although both were sentenced to death, Korolev's sentence was commuted, and he was sent to the labor camps in Siberia instead. A change in leadership at the NKVD led to a new trial for Korolev. He returned to Moscow in late 1939, having lost most of his teeth due to scurvy and the aforementioned torture. He was re-sentenced to eight years in a less-confining labor camp in Moscow for intellectuals. Korolev, Glushko, and noted aviation engineer Andrei Tupolev (once one of both their mentors), were among many prominent engineers released from imprisonment in September 1944. But they would technically remain felons until their records were expunged in 1957 as part of Soviet De-Stalinization. Korolev would learn of Glushko's betrayal following the Great Patriotic War, and would never forgive him. This, combined with the physical damage that would complicate Korolev's health for the remainder of his life (and, eventually, cause its premature end), would sow the seeds that would ultimately cost the Soviet Union the race to the Moon.
Work continues to build the mission that will bring the samples that the Perseverance rover is collecting back to Earth. Last Friday, NASA awarded Northrop Grumman a contract to build the rocket that will lift the samples off Mars and into orbit for retrieval. Concepts in the 1990s had the entire mission built into one spacecraft: lander and return vehicle. But this is going to be a multifaceted mission between NASA and ESA. The plan is to launch a large lander in 2026 which will carry a "fetch rover" and the retrieval rocket. It will land in Jezero crater, hopefully near Perseverance, in 2028. The "fetch rover" is actually there as a Plan B; if it's still active at that point, Perseverance could also deliver the samples to the lander itself. The retrieval rocket is currently planned to be a small two-stage solid-fueled rocket. The two stages are both based on the Thiokol Star solid motor family. Once the samples are fetched and loaded into the rocket, the rocket will be thrown into the air, then launched into orbit around Mars. The Earth return vehicle will be launched later in 2026, and arrive in 2027. It will use ion propulsion to lower its orbit over the course of a year toward the retrieval rocket, then take the samples. The return vehicle would be sent back to Earth in 2031.
50 years ago today, the Soviet Union began daily status reports for the Soyuz 11 mission to the Salyut 1 space station. Each day, ground controllers at TsUP would go over the condition of the station, spacecraft, and crew; the status of consumables; and the status of landing forces in case the crew is called back to Earth early for whatever reason. The station had enough oxygen, water, and food to sustain a three-cosmonaut crew continuously for a total of 75 days. Soyuz 11 was planned to leave and return to Earth on June 30, with Soyuz 12 bring a second crew to the station on July 20.
Yesterday, @NASA's Juno mission flew by the giant Jovian moon of Ganymede, passing closer than any spacecraft has been in a generation >> https://t.co/oYviq1f2Xz @NASASolarSystem pic.twitter.com/p5kjBuDPj1— NASA Marshall (@NASA_Marshall) June 8, 2021
29 years ago today, the Intelsat K comsat was launched atop the first Atlas IIA rocket from Pad 36B, Cape Canaveral. The comsat was originally constructed by GE Americom, and was named Satcom-K4. During production, it was bought by Intelsat to relieve growing congestion in trans-Atlantic satellite transmission. It was stationed over the Atlantic at 21.5ºW. In 1998, it was one of the satellites transferred to New Skies, and renamed NSS-K. It was boosted to a graveyard orbit in 2002. Four years later, New Skies was purchased by SES, who had previously purchased GE Americom. Atlas IIA was designed with commercial launches in mind. The Centaur upper stage was updated to the RL10A-4 engine, which increased its thrust by nearly 50%.
Some rotation of the SpaceX recovery fleet is taking place. Of Course I Still Love You droneship is being loaded onto heavy lift ship Mighty Servant 1 at Freeport this morning.You can see how MS1 has partially submerged itself so that OCISLY can sail on top.My endless thanks to Kent & Heather (Dr. & Mrs Vacation) for sending me these! pic.twitter.com/fEKnTlbprv— Gav Cornwell (@SpaceOffshore) June 12, 2021 Of Course I Still Love You is being shipped to the west coast. It was tugged to Freeport, where it was loaded on Mighty Carrier 1, the shipping vessel that delivered the core stage of the Artemis 1 Space Launch System to Kennedy Space Center. It will traverse the Panama Canal on its way to the Port of Long Beach. There are rumors that A Shortfall of Gravitas is almost complete. Finally. GO Searcher and GO Navigator have had their fairing recovery equipment removed.An interesting ship named Hos Briarwood is due to arrive at Port Canaveral tomorrow. It looks like SpaceX may have chartered another temporary fairing recovery ship for a while. pic.twitter.com/xT1IkP0CRW— Gav Cornwell (@SpaceOffshore) June 11, 2021 In addition, the fairing recovery equipment has been removed from GO Searcher and GO Navigator. Instead, they will be joined by Hos Briarwood. Leased from Hornbeck Offshore Services, it is a vessel nominally used for positioning deepwater rigs.
46 years ago today, Venera 10 was launched atop a Proton-K rocket from Site 81/24, Baikonur Cosmodrome. 4 1/2 months later, it arrived at Venus. Like Venera 9, which was launched five days before, it was an orbiter-and-lander combo. The orbiter entered a 1,000x70,000-mile orbit around Venus on October 23, and dropped its lander two days later. The lander touched down in a border area between Hyndla Regio and Beta Regio. Like Venera 9, it had two hemispheric cameras, with hopes of getting a full panorama of the landing site. And like Venera 9, one of the lens caps didn't jettison, limiting it to a 180° view. Much of the science was pretty much confirming things previous missions had already learned. Despite the constant cloud cover of Venus, the light level at the landing sites was around 14 kilolux, similar to a sunny day on Earth but not in direct sunlight. The lander lasted for 65 minutes on the surface. The orbiter stayed in contact with Earth through June 1976.
A great view of @Thom_astro and the folded ISS Roll-Out Solar Arrays, one of which will soon be extracted for installation and deployment later today. #AskNASA | https://t.co/cBNqC5JGaz pic.twitter.com/jxVLdDshcF— International Space Station (@Space_Station) June 16, 2021 The installation of the iROSA solar arrays at the International Space Station has begun. Scott Kimbrough and Thomas Pesquet exited the Quest airlock around 8:15am EDT, and have extracted one of the solar arrays from the trunk of Cargo Dragon CRS-22. It will be attached, physically and electrically, to the P6 solar array, and will unroll mechanically once triggered. Each of the iROSA arrays will supply 20 kW of power. They are more than twice as efficient at conversion of solar energy to electricity as the original ISS solar arrays. With the unshadowed portions of the solar arrays where the iROSAs are deployed still functioning, total electrical power at the ISS should increase 30% once all the new arrays are installed. Total available electrical power would increase to 215 kW. The other iROSA brought up by Cargo Dragon CRS-22 is currently planned to be installed on Sunday. It will be installed next to the one being installed today. The second EVA is also planning on installing a Wi-Fi router on the station truss.
Jackie Ridley was born on June 16, 1915, in Garvin, Oklahoma. After completing Army ROTC at Oklahoma, earning a bachelor's in mechanical engineering in 1939, he went into field artillery. Right before Pearl Harbor, Jack transferred to the Army Air Corps. Recognizing his engineering training, they trained him as a test pilot instead of sending him into combat. He was a liaison officer connected to bomber development, assisting with the Consolidated B-24 Liberator, Consolidated B-32 Dominator, and the Convair B-36 Peacemaker, which was the first planned intercontinental bomber. He would spend the last year of World War II in postgrad research, earning his master's in aeronautical engineering from CalTech in 1945. After that, he went to what became the Air Force Test Pilot School, graduating in one of its first selection classes. One of his classmates was Chuck Yeager, and the two would become close confidantes. Ridley was the one who rigged the broomstick solution to permit Yeager to close the hatch on his Bell XS-1 for his first supersonic flight despite suffering a shoulder injury the previous night. Ridley himself would fly the XS-1 five times, going supersonic at least twice in that plane. By that time, he had also assisted Boeing with the XB-47, the eventual B-47 Stratojet bomber. In the 1950s, he would help check out such planes as the Republic F-84 Thunderstreak and the North American F-86 Sabre. In 1952, he would be appointed to a standing group to advise NATO on flight testing, essentially a liaison to assist other NATO member nations on military aviation research. In 1956, he took a similar position assisting Japan. On March 12, 1957, Ridley died when a Douglas C-47 transport plane he was co-pilot on crashed into Mt. Shirouma, northwest of Tokyo. He was 41. He left a wife and one son. His final rank in the Air Force was colonel, and he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
56 years ago today, the first Titan IIIC rocket was launched from Pad 40, Cape Kennedy. The launch represented the introduction of a heavy lift capability for the Air Force's Space Systems. It carried about 10 tons of lead ballast to a 110-mile circular orbit with perfect performance from the Transtage upper stage. From performance, it was estimated it could place 3,200 lbs directly into geostationary orbit. The ballast remained in orbit for 11 days. At that point, the ballast was the heaviest object yet put into orbit.
The Wednesday EVA to deploy the first iROSA got a bit complicated when the personal telemetry displays on Shane Kimbrough's EMU crashed. He had to go back to Quest to reboot it. This ate up valuable time to work through getting everything aligned between the P6 truss and the solar array, so they had to finish that work during Sunday's EVA. #ICYMI: This time-lapse video shows the new roll out solar arrays deploying from start to finish. @Astro_Kimbrough and @Thom_Astro completed the installation work today then readied a second set of solar arrays for an upcoming spacewalk. pic.twitter.com/hCx1A5PoVc— International Space Station (@Space_Station) June 21, 2021 After that, they did the setup to deploy the second solar array. NASA has added a spacewalk for Friday to get that taken care of. ******** The next flight of LauncherOne is penned in for Wednesday, targeting a 1:30pm EDT drop. I'd imagine Virgin Galactic would like to get their launch timing exact for their flights. Meanwhile, the next Falcon 9 launch is scheduled for Friday afternoon at 2:56pm EDT. It will be launched atop B1060.8. I currently count at least 84 distinct smallsats and cubesats. One of the satellites on that mission is Tanker-001 Tenzing, an orbital propellant depot created by Orbit Fab. They have designed an on-orbit fueling system they call the Rapidly Attachable Fluid Transfer Interface (RAFTI). They tested technology connected to the satellite at the International Space Station two years ago. RAFTI is being tested to transfer hydrazine, hydrogen peroxide, LMP-103S green propellant, and even water. Tenzing will be able to support active docking with satellites that have RAFTI attachments, or secondary docking like the Northrop Grumman Mission Extension Vehicle. Benchmark Space Systems, who supplied Tenzing's own RCS, is providing the option of RAFTI connectors to all their satellite customers. ******** Lastly, B1049.10 has been transported to Vandenberg AFB. It will support the second Starlink launch to polar orbit as SpaceX expands from the base shell of the network. The launch is penciled in for July. I'm guessing Of Course I Still Love You will try to catch it, as those first stages typically don't go back to the launch site.