This day in Space History

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Yeah, Y-U-R-I is censored. I get around it by calling him Yury.

Anyway...



50 years ago today, Voskhod 2 was launched by the Soviet Union from Pad 1/5, Baikonur Cosmodrome. On the second orbit, pilot Alexei Leonov exited the capsule for the world's first extravehicular activity (EVA, or spacewalk).

It would prove to be a chore, at the very least. Moving around proved difficult with the bulky spacesuit. Leonov's spacesuit was not tough enough to avoid ballooning in the vacuum of space. As a result, he couldn't reach the shutter button on his chest-mounted camera, or detach the camera mounted to the detachable airlock. He lost nearly 10 pounds from sweating.

Voskhod 2 would only stay in space for a day. They wouldn't launch another manned spacecraft for over two years as infighting in the wake of Sergei Korolev's illnesses put the brakes on the Soviet space program.

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Yesterday would've been the 103rd birthday of Wernher Maximilian Magnus, Baron von Braun, the progenitor of the American space program.

The middle of three sons in a noble Prussian family, Wernher was given a telescope by his mother at his Lutheran confirmation. His attention turned to rocketry at age 16 when he got his hands on the studies of the German "father of rocketry", Hermann Oberth. By 1934, he had a Ph.D. in connection to his rocketry studies.

This, of course, drew the attention of the ascendant Nazi Party. Von Braun stated in later memoirs that he only joined the Nazi Party and the SS out of necessity. It is also known that slave labor was used to build the A-4 rocket he developed. Although work slowed ca. 1940, when Hitler thought he didn't even need missiles to conquer Europe, it ramped back up in 1942 as the Americans became involved in World War II.

Unsatisfied by the progression of the program, Hitler had von Braun and his senior officers arrested in 1943. Von Braun turned it on Hitler, saying work wouldn't be so slow had he not stopped funding early on in the war. He and his associates were released.

In the end, von Braun launched over 3,000 V-2 rockets, including 1,600 at Antwerp and 1,350 at London. But without advances in warhead design (they used conventional bombs that were limited by the V-2's low payload capacity), the average casualty rate was fewer than two deaths per missile.

By the end of the war, von Braun moved to preserve his work and his crew. On May 2, he had his younger brother, Magnus, sought out the Americans to surrender to them; they didn't want to end up in Russian hands, fearing brutal treatment if they did. They surrendered to the U.S. Army 44th Infantry Division in present-day Austria. Already on the Department of War's Black List, Wernher and his scientists were sequestered. Von Braun himself was interrogated by some of America's top scientists at the time, including Chinese rocket scientist Qian Xuesen, at the time a Colonel in the Army WAC and the head of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Eventually, von Braun and his crew were de-Nazified, and permitted to come to America to continue their rocketry work. Their work with the Nazis was greatly de-emphasized, though a couple of his underlings would eventually be returned to Germany for specific WWII-era crimes. Von Braun himself escaped that fate.

The A-4 and its derivatives would be tested out of New Mexico and Cape Canaveral into the mid-1950s, when von Braun had developed his next rocket, the Redstone missile. He became the director of the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. As the Space Race ramped up, he had an even bigger vision: the rockets that would become the Saturn rockets. He transferred to NASA when they were given the Redstone Arsenal, and became Director of the newly-renamed Marshall Spaceflight Center.

His rockets would eventually take Americans to the Moon. Following the moon landing, he transferred to Washington for an executive role at NASA Headquarters. He retired in 1972, demoralized by budget cuts; he was convinced the Saturn V could take men to Mars if they would just give him the power and funding to do so. He worked for Fairchild Industries as a consultant from then on, and was also on the board of directors at Daimler-Benz. He would be involved in the early development of Spacelab, connected with the Space Shuttle, giving him hands-on experience in NASA's first five manned spaceflight programs (Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Space Shuttle).

He died of pancreatic cancer in DC in 1977, aged 65, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. His wife Maria, 17 years his junior and also a former Prussian noble, is still alive, and a major philanthropist in the Huntsville area (she lives in DC, though). His older brother, Sigismund, was also de-Nazified after WWII and worked for the prosecution at the Nuremburg Trials. He would continue to work in foreign affairs for West Germany, and died in 1998 at age 87. Magnus eventually became an executive at General Motors, and died in 2003 in Phoenix at the age of 84.

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50 years ago today, the Martin HGM-25A Titan I ICBM was taken out of service as U.S. missile defense migrated to the use of storable and solid fuels (like its successor, the LGM-25C Titan II). A total of 67 were test-launched (46 from Cape Canaveral, 21 from Vandenberg) with only five failures. (That doesn't include an early missile that got released from his holddown bolts before launch and fell on the launch pad.)

With Atlas and Thor already having been migrated into orbital rocketry, and Titan II already being used for the same by this time, Titan I was completely obsolete. Most were destroyed through 1972 as part of the SALT-1 arms reduction treaty, though 33 were metered out as museum pieces.

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52 years ago today, NASA launched the fourth Saturn I rocket from Pad 34, Cape Canaveral. It would be the rocket's final single-stage test.

A timer was placed on one of the eight first-stage engines to shut it down 100 seconds after liftoff. Once it cut off, the other seven engines were throttled up as planned. This successfully tested the rocket's "engine out" capability, the first of its kind.

In addition, the boilerplate rocket fairing was redesigned to more closely resemble the actual S-IV upper stage aerodynamically, in preparation for the next launch.

It reached an apogee of 129 km, and impacted in the Atlantic as planned 400 km downrange.

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28 years ago today, the first expansion module to the Mir space station, Kvant ("Quantum"), was launched on a Proton-K rocket from Pad 200/39, Baikonur Cosmodrome. It was docked to the core module's aft port, and would become the station's primary docking point for arriving Soyuz spacecraft and Progress cargo carriers.

The module contained materials science and astrophysics experiments. Its addition had fortuitous timing, as it enabled the Soviets to make detailed studies of SN 1987A, the closest supernova observed from Earth in nearly 400 years.

Originally launched without solar panels, it would eventually receive its own, initially from Kristall, and later from a new docking module. It would also host experiments for constructing station superstructure that would eventually be applied to the International Space Station.

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52 years ago today, NASA and the Air Force started to analyze an interesting phenomenon called pogo.

No, I'm not joking.

Pogo is a vertical oscillation that results from varying pressures within a rocket engine's chambers. If it happens to match the resonant frequency of the rocket, that could naturally amplify the pogo, and potentially destroy the rocket.

These first became an observed problem in connection with the manned space program with the Titan II rocket. The most serious issues with pogo, however, began with the Saturn V itself. The Apollo 6 unmanned test launch had severe pogo oscillations in its first stage. Apollo 13 suffered pogo oscillations in its second stage that resulted in premature cut-off of one of its five second-stage engines. (It's not believed to be connected to the accident that happened later.) Pogo is believed to have contributed to at least one of the launch failures in the Soviet Union's N1 moon rocket program as well.

Today's rockets are designed to prevent pogo as much as possible, either by deadening vibrations or at least keeping them away from a rocket's resonant frequencies. The RS-25A Space Shuttle Main Engine featured energy-absorbing dampers in its LO2 lines.

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56 years ago today, NASA announced their first selection of astronauts, the Mercury Seven.

Front row: Walter "Wally" Schirra, Donald K. "Deke" Slayton, John Glenn, and Malcolm Scott Carpenter. Back row: Alan Shepard, Virgil Ivan "Gus" Grissom, and Leroy Gordon "Gordo" Cooper.

Grissom, Cooper and Slayton all came out of the Air Force. Shepard, Schirra and Carpenter were Naval aviators. Glenn came from the Marine Corps.

From thousands of applications, 110 candidates were identified, though only 69 actually entered the first phase of testing. Of those 69:

• Six were rejected as too tall to fit in the planned Mercury capsule. You had to be no more than 6' exactly.
• 33 failed or dropped out during the first phase of testing.
• Four refused to undergo the second phase of testing.
• Eight failed during the second phase of testing.

Only 18 made it to the final phase of qualification, from which the seven above were chosen.

Despite the rigorous medical testing, Shepard and Slayton were ultimately grounded for health issues (Shepard after his first flight), though both would fly (again) eventually.

Only Carpenter and Slayton would fly once, though Glenn left not long after his first flight, and would come back to NASA in the 1990s as a guest astronaut for biomedical testing in advanced age, becoming the only Mercury astronaut to fly on the Space Shuttle (Discovery, STS-95). Shepard, Schirra and Slayton would all fly in Apollo, with Shepard ultimately walking on the Moon (Apollo 14).

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Today would've been the 89th birthday of astronaut Virgil Ivan "Gus" Grissom.

Gus enlisted right out of high school, taking his entrance exam to be an aviation cadet in the Army during his senior year. But World War II was too close to its end for him to be sent overseas. He was discharged in September 1945, married, and used the G.I. Bill of Rights to get an engineering degree from Purdue.

As a college graduate, Gus re-enlisted in the Air Force, where he became an interceptor pilot. He spent 1952 flying F-86's in Korea, serving mostly as a wingman. After 100 sorties, he was rotated home; he wanted to fly more, but was refused. Following Korea, he served as a flight instructor, then as a test pilot out of the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton, Ohio.

He was selected with the Mercury Seven, and suffered the blown hatch that led to the loss of Liberty Bell 7. Although there were suspicions it wasn't an accident, it was proven to be so. His handling of the issue increased his value in the Astronaut Corps.

With the departure of John Glenn and the medical grounding of Alan Shepard, Gus became NASA's top astronaut. He was selected to command the first manned Gemini mission, Gemini 3, with John Young as his pilot. Following that, he was moved to the Apollo program, where he trained for its first manned mission, with junior pilot Roger Chaffee and senior pilot Edward White.

Sadly, the crew was lost when their capsule, AS-204, suffered a short circuit during a "plugs-out" test, setting the interior—with its pure oxygen atmosphere—ablaze.

It was stated by the head of the Astronaut Corps, fellow Mercury Seven selectee Deke Slayton, that if Gus were still alive, he would've been the first man to walk on the Moon. Some of the more extremist proponents of the "moon hoax" idiocy claim Grissom was murdered as part of the cover-up.

Gus was almost finished writing a book, Gemini!: A Personal Account of Man's Venture Into Space, while training for what would be named Apollo 1. The publishers finished it with approval from his widow, Betty.

Betty died in 2012. They had two sons.

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40 years ago today, what was supposed to be Soyuz 18 (it's now alternatively referred to as either "18a" or "18-1") suffered some sort of failure during launch at the T+4:48 mark, about 90 miles altitude. The core stage failed to separate when it was spent, and the third stage ignited anyway, causing it to break off course.

You know how capsule-based spacecraft typically have escape systems up top in case of rocket issues? That had already jettisoned as planned. So in order to escape, Soyuz had to use its own service module engines to get away. (Interesting aside: the Dragon V2 spacecraft will use the same principle.)

The spacecraft was tilted down when it escaped, subjecting the cosmonauts to nearly 22 g of acceleration. One of the cosmonauts on-board, Vasily Lazarev, suffered internal injuries and would never fly again. His crewmate, Oleg Makarov, was not as hurt. Both were recovered the next day, but burned all their on-board documentation out of fears they may have landed in China, with whom the Soviets were at odds with at the time. (They actually landed in Russia, in Aleysk.)

The Soviets were surprisingly open about the "April 5th anomaly" with the United States due to the lead-up to the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. They said the Soyuz rocket used was an older model, and a newer model would be used for the ASTP mission.

Their backup crew would launch on Soyuz 18 in May, and be on-board the Salyut 4 space station during Apollo-Soyuz.

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50 years ago today, the world's first commercial communications satellite, Intelsat 101 "Early Bird", was launched on a Thor-Delta D rocket from Pad 17A, Cape Kennedy.

Based on the Syncom 1 prototype Hughes built for NASA, it went into commercial service for COMSAT, whose satellite business was later spun off into the company Intelsat, to relay TV, phone and fax signals between the U.S. and Europe. It would be used for four years, being deactivated after it covered Apollo 11.

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14 years ago today, 2001 Mars Odyssey was launched to Mars on a Delta II 7925 rocket from Pad 17A, Cape Canaveral.

Mars Odyssey was supposed to be a follow-up to the Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander of 1998. After both of those probes failed, they canceled the 2001 lander and focused on the orbiter instead.

Mars Odyssey would arrive that October, and spend roughly three months aerobraking to circularize its orbit. Its primary mission was to try to determine if life ever existed on Mars. That's a question that is still yet to be answered.

Today, it is the longest current mission at any given planet other than Earth, and the longest-lived mission at Mars so far. Second would be the Opportunity rover, followed by Cassini. It needs to make it to September 12, 2015, to bypass the Pioneer Venus Orbiter as the longest ever mission at any given planet other than Earth.

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31 years ago today, the first attempt to capture and repair a satellite in orbit was made on an EVA from Challenger in STS-41-C.

George "Pinky" Nelson and James van Hoften underwent the EVA, with Nelson going out on the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), to try to capture the Solar Maximum Mission (Solar Max) satellite.

A tool created to grasp the satellite failed to grab it. Nelson accidentally sent to satellite tumbling during his attempts, and had to abort. Controllers on the ground were able to stabilize the satellite with its on-board gyroscopes.

They would make a second attempt three days later, this time using the Canadarm remote manipulator to grasp it and place it in Challenger's payload bay, where Nelson and van Hoften made the necessary repairs.

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The previous day, the mission had deployed the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF), a dumb probe with a couple dozen science experiments to show the effects of long-term vacuum exposure on various materials.

It was originally to be recovered in March 1985 by Discovery on STS-51-D. But the recovery was canceled, and 51-D was re-manifested. Most of the crew shifted to STS-51-G. The only astronaut that flew on the re-manifested 51-D that was originally scheduled for it was Charlie Walker.

It was then re-scheduled for STS-61-I on Challenger in September 1986. But we all know how that ended.



Its recovery ultimately slipped to the first mission of the 1990s, STS-32, where it was recovered by Columbia, and finally made it back to terra firma on January 20, 1990.

One of the revolutionary discoveries of LDEF was that some of the bacteria in a German exposure experiment survived in space for nearly six years. This has driven the concept of panspermia, where it was technically possible for biological materials to survive transfer through space.

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50 years ago today, NASA officially transferred in-flight manned spaceflight operations from Cape Kennedy to the Manned Spacecraft Center, what is now Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Texas.

The facility opened in 1963 on the southeast side of the Houston area, on land previously owned by Rice University (now adjacent to the Clear Lake campus of the University of Houston), not far from Galveston Bay. It was manned by people originally based out of Langley Research Center in Virginia, and would become the training home of the Astronaut Corps.

The first mission it would oversee would be Gemini 4, two months later.

Today, the Mission Control Center consists of two control rooms, White and Blue. They are currently being heavily upgraded to support Orion. The upgraded White room will begin operations later this year so the Blue room can be upgraded as well. Once both are finished, Blue will control the ISS, while White will control Orion missions.

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36 years ago today, Soyuz 33 was launched from Pad 1/5, Baikonur Cosmodrome, with Soviet cosmonaut Nikolai Rukavishnikov and Bulgarian Intercosmos guest Georgi Ivanov.

The mission was to replace Soyuz 32 for Salyut 6 Expedition 3. However, the main propulsion failed during approach to the station It was the first failure of its kind in the history of the Soyuz program.

The mission was aborted, and two days later Soyuz 33 de-orbited with its backup engines. The backup engines burned 25 seconds too long, subjecting the crew to an aggressive ballistic re-entry.

Concerned that Soyuz 32 might have a similar issue, the Soyuz spacecraft received an update to its propulsion system. A month later, Soyuz 34 was launched to Salyut 6 unmanned with the fixed propulsion system. Soyuz 32 was loaded with trash and outdated equipment, enough to ballast for the weight of two suited cosmonauts, and was sent back to Earth.

Soyuz 32 did return nominally, landing 110 miles SE of Jezkazgan, Kazakhstan.

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45 years ago today, Apollo 13 was launched from Pad 39A, Kennedy Space Center.

There's some serious drama involving the crew. This would've been the first rotation in from Apollo 7, but the shenanigans during that mission led to the retirement of commander Wally Schirra and grounding of Walt Cunningham. They were replaced in the rotation by Gordo Cooper and Edgar Mitchell, respectively.

Gordo Cooper took a laissez-faire attitude toward training. He always did. As a result, they looked to push Gordo out of the Astronaut Corps at the first available excuse. That excuse came when Alan Shepard got surgery to relieve his Muniere's disease, allowing him to return to flight status.

In addition, the final chip fell when Donn Eisele was kicked out of the Astronaut Corps for an extramarital affair. He was replaced by Stuart Roosa.

However, the head of the Astronaut Corps, Deke Slayton, felt he needed to buy Shepard some training time. So he swapped the prime crews of Apollo 13 and Apollo 14. This brought Jim Lovell to the command. With both Frank Borman and Bill Anders having retired (Borman after Apollo 8, Anders after backing up Apollo 11), he was joined on the mission by CM pilot Ken Mattingly, and LM pilot Fred Haise.



Wait, no. That's not right.

A week before the flight, backup LM pilot Charlie Duke contracted rubella (German measles) from one of his children. At the time, there was no vaccine. This exposed both the prime and backup crews to the disease.

Only Mattingly had never had rubella before, therefore he was not immune. So he was forced to swap places on the crews.

In the end, Mattingly never did come down with rubella.



He was replaced by backup CM pilot Jack Swigert (center) on the prime crew.

During the S-II second-stage firing, the center of its five J-2 engines suffered severe pogo oscillations, resulting in its shutdown. The remaining four engines fired a little longer, and the S-IVB orbital burn occurred nominally.

Following TLI, CSM Odyssey extracted LM Aquarius from the S-IVB stage. The S-IVB was fired to place it on a trajectory to impact the Moon, which would be detected by the seismograph left by Apollo 12.

The crew was targeting Fra Mauro, a highlands region on the edge of Oceanus Procellarum.

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Some of you may be wondering about the new icon. It is the global icon for Yur!'s Night, the celebration of the beginning of manned space exploration.

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54 years ago today, Vostok 1 was launched from Pad 1/5 (now "Gagarin's Start"), Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, at 9:07am Moscow time (0607 UTC). On-board was cosmonaut Yur! Gagarin.

It was launched by an R-7 Semyorka ICBM with an upper stage to orbit the heavy spacecraft. It completed a single orbit, then re-entered, landing just south of Saratov, along the Volga River in Russia.

The spacecraft was automated, with manual control locked out in a fashion similar to a nuclear missile launcher. (In other words, he needed a sealed password to operate it.) The equipment module didn't completely separate after retrofire, and fell off after the wires burned through during re-entry.

Gagarin ejected as planned shortly before landing. This was kept secret, as the FAI would not have recognized the flight if he didn't land in the craft.

Ultimately, Gagarin never flew again. He was too big a propaganda boon for the Party for them to risk him on another flight.

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34 years ago, Columbia was launched on STS-1, the first Space Shuttle mission, from Pad 39A, Kennedy Space Center.



The crew on board was commander John Young and pilot Robert Crippen.

Young had flown four times by then, and was the ninth man to walk on the Moon as commander of Apollo 16. Crippen was a refugee of the U.S. Air Force's Manned Orbiting Laboratory program, having transferred to NASA in 1969 when that program was canceled. The pilots of the first six missions would all be MOL recruits, and all six would become Shuttle commanders later on.

The mission was the culmination of 12 years of development and nine years of construction. The mission itself was delayed two years due to issues with finishing Columbia, including the fact that half its dorsal thermal tiles fell off in final transit from its assembly facility in Palmdale, California, to Kennedy Space Center. This resulted in NASA having to figure out a better way to bond the tiles to the fuselage. This would be rendered moot on future orbiters which, as I noted before, would use Nomex insulation sheets instead.

This is the first time an American spacecraft has carried a human crew on its first voyage. The first idea for this mission was to execute a Return to Launch Site abort test. Young, who was Chief Astronaut at the time, overruled it, determining such a flight profile too risky to even test. It was modified to a 54-hour shakedown mission.

When the Shuttle was originally planned to begin flights in 1979, Columbia was to make the first 16 flights through 1981. In that time, it was seen re-boosting Skylab, deploying a variety of satellites (including two GOES weather satellites, something the Shuttle would ultimately never deploy), carrying Spacelab three times, and deploying the entire initial Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS), a geostationary constellation of relay comsats to enable NASA to maintain contact with Shuttles and all low-Earth orbit satellites for their entire flights, instead of relying on contact with limited-coverage ground stations. This was before Enterprise (later Challenger) was predicted to be ready for its first flight.

Four weeks before launch, three ground crew workers were killed when a nitrogen leak in the aft fuel compartment created a dead zone in a portion of the clean rooms on Pad 39A, flushing out the oxygen in the area and asphyxiating the three workers.

Once on orbit, about seven insulation tiles were discovered missing, apparently overlooked in the re-bonding process. They were determined to be in non-critical areas, and the mission continued as planned. Some other anomalies:
[*]Crippen described the windows being spattered with "white stuff" throughout launch. This was because of the white paint that the External Tank (ET) was painted with. The ET would not be painted beginning with STS-3, giving it its iconic rusty orange color.
[*]Shock waves from the ignition of the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) caused visible distortion to Columbia's tailfin. While it was not actually damaged, the sound suppression system was beefed up after this mission to prevent it in future missions.
[*]An overpressure wave, also from SRB ignition, caused damaged to Columbia's reaction control system, and hyperextended the underbelly body flap that guarded the RS-25 main engines. This was not discovered until after landing. Young would later say that if he was aware of the damage, he would've initiated a launch abort, which for the first four missions would've involved ejecting from Columbia.
[*]A strike plate on Columbia's underbelly, on the fore portion where the ET attaches, partially melted, and plasma during re-entry also breached the wheel wells, though they did not damage the wheels themselves. The former was the result of an improperly installed insulation tile. The latter would be rectified after the mission.

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Figures this would happen on the 13th day of April on a mission labeled 13.

45 years ago today, 56 hours into Apollo 13, at about 10pm EST, about 7 minutes after a live TV broadcast, the #2 oxygen tank in the Odyssey service module (SM) exploded. It is believed that a short circuit caused by damaged Teflon wire sheathing ignited the tank's insulation, heating the oxygen to the point that the tank burst.

The explosion knocked the S-band antenna out of alignment, though it did not fail. Contact with Earth was lost for less than 2 seconds before the computer switched the antenna from narrow-band to wide-band.

The explosion forced the valves on the remaining two SM oxygen tanks that connect to its fuel cells to shut, giving the CSM's fuel cells only three minutes to live. Even worse, other valves on the #1 tank were damaged; that tank vented over the period of two hours, depleting the supply of oxygen to the CSM.

Fortunately, there was the lunar module (LM), Aquarius. In terms of oxygen, the LM had more than enough oxygen for the entire crew; under normal circumstances, it had to entirely vent its cabin before each moonwalk, and resupply the crew's A7L spacesuits after each moonwalk. So it had more than enough to act as a lifeboat.

The specific scenario had been brought up in training, but was not considered likely. The Odyssey command module (CM) was shut down, so that its on-board batteries could be preserved for re-entry. Aquarius was powered up fully, and the crew moved in.

More on the logistics of the rescue tomorrow.

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45 years ago today, things had just gotten real for Apollo 13.

With the SM now dead, and 2/3 the CSM's oxygen gone (along with all but enough battery power for re-entry, and the ability to produce or even access any water), a lunar landing at Fra Mauro was now completely out of the question.

4 1/2 hours after the explosion in the SM, a burn of the LM descent propulsion system (DPS) took the spacecraft out of its normal flight path and restored a free-return cislunar flight path. Aquarius and Odyssey would fly behind the far side of the Moon, and just return to Earth.

At about 7:27pm EST, Apollo 13 passed perilune, 157 miles above its surface. At 248,655 miles from Earth, it is the furthest any human has ever been from their home planet.

Kinda fitting, considering the circumstances.

Two hours later, the DPS was fired again to expedite return to Earth. It was essentially an analogue for a normal trans-Earth injection (TEI) burn. The return would be sped up, and timed to ensure that Odyssey splashed down in the Pacific. Left in the regular cislunar free return, it would've splashed down in the Indian Ocean, which could've run afoul of the Soviets. (India was within their sphere of influence.)

The big question now wasn't too little oxygen (or even too little water, as the LM had enough in storage, or food, which wasn't affected at all), but rather too much carbon dioxide. The LM and CM used completely different filters to scrub CO2 from the cabin atmosphere. It was literally trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.



No, seriously. The CM filters were square, and the LM filters were cylindrical.

You'd think North American (the CSM manufacturers) and Grumman (the LM manufacturers) would've collaborated better in that respect.

They were able to rig an adapter so they could use the CM filters in the LM's life support system. They used parts from a camera that was to be used on the Moon. This is where having prime CM pilot Ken Mattingly on the ground really came in handy.

An even more aggressive return could've been accomplished by jettisoning the SM and firing the DPS even longer at TEI. But the ground crew, led by flight director Gene Kranz, determined they had sufficient supplies.

BTW: Gene Kranz never said "Failure is not an option." That was an invention of the film Apollo 13. But he liked it, and appropriated it for his autobiography, which he published in 2000.

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45 years ago today, crews were still working out exactly how to finish the rescue of Apollo 13.

The big deal was going to be figuring out how to properly boot up Odyssey from being shut down before re-entry. This was not a scenario considered before. Ken Mattingly was working with the rest of the backup crew, John Young and Charlie Duke, on how to get it done.

To ensure Aquarius had enough power to get the crew to re-entry, the on-board air conditioning was not run. The temperature on the LM sunk to 40 °F (4.5 °C). Water was starting to condense on solid surfaces of the interior, concerning crews that the CM might short out when it was powered back on.

As an oddity, prior to TEI, ground support told the crew to temporarily stop dumping urine overboard, to ensure it doesn't inadvertently cause a course change. Although this was temporary, the crew ended up storing all their urine.

LM pilot Fred Haise took it a step further by reducing his intake of water. This led to him suffering a UTI by the end of the mission.

[Macsen]

While Apollo 13 continues to brew 45 years ago today...



43 years ago today, Apollo 16 was launched to the Moon from Pad 39A, Kennedy Space Center.



Ken Mattingly (left) finally got his flight as CM Pilot (a.k.a. "the other guy") with the 9th and 10th moonwalkers, Commander John Young and LM Pilot Charlie Duke.

But we have another familiar face here.



Apollo 16 was the rotation in for Apollo 13 to come around and back it up. And Fred Haise (center) was the backup Commander.

Originally, before Apollo 19 was canceled, he was joined by CM pilot Bill Pogue and LM pilot Gerald Carr. After that was canceled, Pogue and Carr were transferred to Skylab, with Carr switching to commander. Both would fly Skylab 4.

But they're not in this picture. For the eventual backup crew, Haise was instead joined by the Apollo 14 crew of LM Pilot Edgar Mitchell (right) and CM Pilot Stuart Roosa (left).

Why didn't they at least switch their positions so Roosa had at least an infinitesimal shot to walk on the Moon, too? I cannot tell you.



Fred Haise is the only Apollo 13 crewmember whose career at NASA lasted much beyond that mission.

A decorated test pilot who worked for NASA from the very beginning, even long before his selection as an astronaut in 1966, Haise overcame an apprehension against flying when he joined a Naval aviator school after high school, eventually serving two years as a Marine Corps aviator (though his service ended up beginning after Korea). He also served in the Air National Guard while getting his aeronautical engineering degree from Oklahoma.

Following Apollo 13, Haise became heavily involved in the Space Shuttle program, and commanded one of the two crews that piloted Enterprise in the Approach and Landing Tests. He was scheduled to command the original STS-2 with pilot Jack Lousma. It would've delivered the Teleoperator Retrieval System to Skylab, which would've enabled a re-boost for future use.

When the program was delayed (Skylab probably wouldn't have made it to STS-2 anyway), Haise retired from NASA and became a test pilot for Grumman. He rose to executive ranks by the time it merged to form Northrop Grumman, and retired in 1996. He currently lives in his native Mississippi. He and his wife, Patt, had four children; she was pregnant with their fourth child during Apollo 13.

His life is on heavy display at Infinity Science Center, the visitor center for Stennis Space Center.

I'll tell you about Lovell and Swigert tomorrow.

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D-Day for Apollo 13, 45 years ago today.

At about 8am EST, the crew was able finally able to jettison Odyssey's SM. Normally, the SM's reaction control system (RCS) would fire to pull it away. In this case, they had to use Aquarius's RCS instead.



They turned the remaining stack around to photograph the SM for later investigation. They were shocked by just how much damage the SM sustained, seeing the antenna damage and a breach in the bulkhead against one of the fuel cells.

Indeed, they were very lucky to be alive. But the extent of the damage caused by the O2 tank explosion raised concerns that Odyssey's heat shield might've sustained damage as well.

Once Odyssey was fully powered up, they jettisoned Aquarius at long last. It would be one of only three LM's to meet its fate at atmospheric interface instead of the Moon.

The radio blackout caused by re-entry ionization lasted 87 seconds longer than normal, but they emerged okay. They splashed down roughly 610 miles SE of American Samoa, only 4 miles away from its recovery ship, the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima.



The Odyssey CM is now resting at Kansas Cosmosphere after being sent to several places for display. The SNAP RTG from the ALSEP experiment package on Aquarius is resting at the bottom of the Tonga Trench. No leak of its plutonium has been detected, so it should be safe.

********

An investigative panel was raised, led by Langley Research Center Director Edgar Cortright. The only astronaut on the actual panel was Neil Armstrong, though Bill Anders served as an observer in his position as the Executive Secretary of the National Space Council.

As a summary, changes required for the Block II CSM were not implemented. For example, the power for the O2 tanks was not changed to handle the Block II's more potent power supply. They also found that the temperature gauge on the tank's heater was not designed to register higher than 80 °F, but it rose to over 1,000 °F. This melted the Teflon on the electrical wires, causing the short circuit and the fire.

In addition to re-designs to the CSM to catch components up to the general system changes originally implemented, new procedures were put in place to deal with tanks that were over-pressurized.

The astronauts themselves were never suspected of any wrong-doing, either accidental or intentional.

********



Jim Lovell retired from NASA and the Navy in 1973. He was one of the few to fly four missions before the Space Shuttle program, including John Young, Tom Stafford and Pete Conrad. He went into the private sector, working various executive jobs until retiring for good in 1991.

An Eagle Scout, he's been honored many times by the Boy Scouts of America, and served as President of the National Eagle Scout Association in the mid-1990s. I think he was the President when I got my own Eagle in 1995.

What brought Lovell permanently into the American lexicon was writing a memoir of the Apollo 13 mission, Lost Moon. It was turned into the film Apollo 13 in 1995. Although Tom Hanks ultimately got cast to portray him, when he was first approached about a film, Lovell thought Kevin Costner would be a better fit.

Kathleen Quinlan was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, portraying Lovell's wife, Marilyn. Ed Harris was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, for portraying flight director Gene Kranz. He's the one the first said "Failure is not an option."

Jim and Marilyn also had four children. His second, James III or "Jay", is a chef who owned his own restaurant in Illinois for a while. It was opened by his father (with Jay as executive chef) with memorabilia from his astronaut career. It was being sold in 2014.

********



About the same time Lovell retired, Jack Swigert took leave from NASA to take an advisory role to the U.S. House of Representatives with the Committee on Science and Technology. This gave him a taste for politics, and he officially retired from NASA in 1977 to pursue his own office. In the interim, he took various executive positions as well, including one in a mining company.

A Republican, he ran for the then-newly-created 6th congressional district in Colorado in 1982. It covered the Eastern suburbs of his native Denver. Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with nasal cancer during the campaign, and it quickly spread to his lungs and bone marrow.

Swigert was elected with 64% of the vote. He didn't make it to his swearing-in, dying at George Washington University Hospital on December 27, 1982. He was 51. He never married or had children. Daniel Schaefer was elected to complete his term in a special election.

The above statue is located at Denver International Airport. It is a duplicate of a statue of him placed in the United States Capitol in 1997.

********

Oh, and one last thing...



Grumman jokingly billed Rockwell (who had acquired North American Aviation the previous year; they also cited CSM subcontractors Pratt & Whitney and Beechcraft) for the rescue. They charged $1/mile for towing with $4 for the first mile (400,001 miles), 5¢/kW-h for power, $10/lb for oxygen, and $8/night for Jack Swigert being an extra occupant. They also applied commercial and cash discounts.

In their "official" refusal to pay, Rockwell noted they never charged Grumman for "towing" their LM's to the Moon in the previous three missions.

[Macsen]

Since the American space program played out mostly in the public eye, it wasn't difficult for the Soviet Union to get information on what we were doing. Apollo 13 was hardly an exception.

45 years ago today, the Soviet Union was going over the circumstances of Apollo 13. The head of cosmonaut training, Nikolai Kamanin, said the final outcome of the salvaged mission highlighted everything that was right with the American space program--and everything that was wrong with the Soviet space program.

He felt certain that if a similar issue happened to a manned N1-L3 mission, it would be fatal.

[Macsen]

44 years ago today, the first space station, Salyut 1, was launched by the Soviet Union atop a Proton-K rocket from Pad 81/24, Baikonur Cosmodrome.

The space station consisted of three pressurized compartments and an engine block, and had two sets of solar panels attached. After launch, one of the equipment bay covers failed to jettison, meaning some of the experiments on-board could not be completed. Mission controllers decided it would not be a hindrance, and went ahead with planned manned missions to the station.

[Macsen]

18 years ago today, a technology satellite was launched by a Pegasus XL rocket from the L-1011 N140SC Stargazer. Taking off from Gando Air Base in the Canary Islands, it was technically the first space launch from Spain.

The primary payload was Minisat-01, whose instrumentation was used to detect gamma ray bursts. The secondary payload was the first Celestis space burial probe. It contained the ashes of five people, including Gene Roddenberry and Timothy Leary. It re-entered as planned in 2002.

The Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL rocket is the second generation of an air-launch rocket. It utilizes three solid-fuel stages, with an option fourth stage powered by hypergolic fuels. It can get up to 977 pounds to LEO.

It has been launched 42 times, with 3 total failures, and two partial successes (left in a too-low but usable orbit). Six of those launches, including the first five, were dropped from B-52's before its intended carrier aircraft, Stargazer, was ready.

Stargazer, originally built in 1974, was purchased from Air Canada in 1992. It was re-painted this year to reflect Orbital Sciences' merger to become Orbital ATK.

[Macsen]

44 years ago today, Soyuz 10 was launched from Site 1/5, Baikonur Cosmodrome. The first mission for Salyut 1, it carried commander Vladimir Shatalov, and engineers Aleksei Yeliseyev and Nikolai Rukavishnikov. Only the last was a rookie.

It would dock with the station the next day. However, it was unable to make a sealed hard dock, preventing them from entering the space station.

They remained in a soft dock with the station for about six hours, during which the docking drogue got stuck. They were able to safely pull it free, and ultimately landed two days after launch.

Gotta be honest, I don't know how they got this picture. If they could invest in a camera that could effectively take a selfie, I'm sure they could get the docking mechanism right. Probably explains a lot about the Soviet space program at the time.

[Macsen]

48 years ago today, the first actual in-flight spaceflight fatality occured.

Soyuz 1, which was to be the basis of the Soviet space program, was launched early in the morning from Baikonur Cosmodrome with Vladimir Komarov on-board. The mission was plagued from the start, showing just how badly the space program had lost its focus since the death of Sergei Korolev.

The original plan was to launch Soyuz 2 the next day with three more cosmonauts, and have two of them transfer by EVA to Soyuz 1. The design of the spacecraft allowed for this to take place without depressurizing the entire spacecraft.



This is that design. The physical shape is still used today.

Anyway, many knew there were problems, but the Politburo pressured the space program to launch something to celebrate the October Revolution's 50th anniversary. Even Yur! Gagarin considered using his pull to replace Komarov with himself, figuring they would not risk their hero's life on this mission.

Oh, the laundry list of defects: A solar panel broke, the automatic navigation completely failed, and the manual system partially failed, among other things (allegedly, a total of 203 design faults). The last failure was the fatal one: the main parachute. They enlarged it when they reinforced the heat shield of the reentry module, but did not enlarge its compartment, and damaged it during packing. The backup chute tangled with it. There are reports, including alleged recordings from NATO assets in Turkey, that claim he started cussing out the controllers in the final moments.

The capsule crashed and exploded 25 miles due east of Novoorsk, Russia (roughly 430 miles NW of Baikonur). Komarov died on impact, and was buried in the Kremlin Wall.

Ironically, Gagarin's ashes would be buried by Komarov's in the Kremlin Wall in 1968 after a training accident. The program's refusal to sacrifice Gagarin in Soyuz 1 only prolonged his life by 11 months.

The Soyuz spacecraft was re-worked at the same scale as the re-working of the Apollo CSM following the Apollo 1 fire. It would not fly again until October 1968.

[Macsen]

25 years ago today, Discovery was launched on STS-31 from Pad 39B, Kennedy Space Center. The primary purpose of the mission was deploying the first of the Great Observatories, the Hubble Space Telescope.



The telescope is based on the KH-11 KENNAN reconnaissance satellite originally developed in 1976. Obviously, it was re-tooled to be turned not toward Earth, but toward the skies. Originally called the "Very Large Telescope", it eventually took the name of Edwin Hubble, the father of cosmology and the progenitor of extragalactic astronomy.

Hubble was placed in a roughly 345-mile orbit. However, upon its initial checkout, it was discovered the main mirror was ground wrong. The media grabbed onto the issue, with the film The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear placing it in a museum alongside the Titanic and the Hindenburg among the greatest disasters in the history of humanity.

Despite the mirror issue, however, good scientific data was obtained from the telescope. And scientists were quickly able to determine work-arounds for the mirror flaw. Initially, an add-on named COSTAR would provide corrective optics for all instrumentation. Later instrumentation replaced over the course of six refurbishment missions would permit the return of COSTAR on STS-125.

Hubble has been on the forefront of astronomy for the past 25 years, though more powerful surface telescopes have de-emphasized its importance somewhat. But space telescopes still have distinct advantages that can never be overcome by telescopes based on Earth. Its designated replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope, will have a reflector about seven times the size of Hubble's mirror, and will primarly observe the night sky in infrared wavelengths.

Hubble is currently believed to be able to remain useful until at least 2020, and will remain in orbit until at least 2030.

[Macsen]

14 years ago today, the first visiting expedition to the International Space Station, EP-1, was launched on Soyuz TM-32 from Pad 1/5, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. On-board (center, right, left) were commander and Kazakh cosmonaut Talgat Musabayev, Russian engineer Yur! Baturin, and the first space tourist, American cosmonaut Dennis Tito.

The primary mission was replacing Soyuz TM-31 as a lifeboat for the ISS expedition crews. TM-31 had been left there by the Expedition 1 crew, who returned to Earth aboard Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-102 a month before. This crew would be the second crew to visit Expedition 2; the first visiting mission, STS-100, left the station the day Soyuz TM-32 launched after leaving the Canadarm2 remote manipulator.

EP-1 would return on May 6, landing 90 km NE of Arkalyk.

********



Dennis Tito holds a bachelors in Astronautics from NYU, and a masters in Engineering Science from Rensselaer, and was a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory before he decided to get into finance. He founded Wilshire in 1972. Today, it is one of the largest investment firms in the world, and manages one of the major fund indices, the Wilshire 4500. Personally, he manages $71 billion in assets in his portfolio.

In 1998, Tito hooked up with MirCorp to begin training to become the first space tourist. NASA refused to provide training, so he could only be trained in the Russian side of the ISS. Today, orbital space tourism is managed by Space Adventures, a company with an advisory board largely consisting of former NASA astronauts.

Tito occasionally pops back up in space news, having tried out other ventures offered, or at least attempted, by Space Adventures. In 2013, he outlined an overly-ambitious plan to send humans to fly by Mars on a privately-funded mission by 2018. He abandoned it by the end of the year, recognizing it was impossible without a lot of help from NASA. They have also contacted SpaceX about their mission, but SpaceX has said they are not prepared to provide the required research.

[Macsen]

Quiet news day besides yesterday's end of the MESSENGER mission to Mercury. The probe crashed at about 3:30pm EDT as expected.



The last image sent was of a 1 square kilometre field.

Anyway...



The R-7 Semyorka intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) (also known as the SS-6 "Sapwood" to NATO, or the A-2 to the U.S.) is one of the earliest cases of total overkill in the history of rocketry.

The R-7 was designed in the mid-1950s by OKB-1 long before the Soviets thought to miniaturize the thermonuclear bomb. The first test flight was conducted on May 15, 1957, and they quickly figured out that, if directed to do so, it could make orbit easily. That was probably chief designer Sergei Korolev's private intent.

They did just that on October 4, 1957, when a plain R-7 launched Sputnik 1 into orbit. This base rocket was used a total of six times for orbital launches, and only failed once.

Then, OKB-1 decided to experiment with upper stages. At this point, the variant rockets took the name of the most common early payload. The earliest ones sent the first Luna probes to fly by the Moon. Then came the Vostok rocket, which launched the first manned missions.

The first long-used variant of the R-7 would come with the Molniya variant. It was designed for the Molniya comsat, designed to be over the northern hemisphere semi-stationary twice a day. The orbit it used—a highly-elliptical, highly-inclined orbit—is also called the Molniya orbit. Molniya would also be used for later advanced Luna missions and the first flights to Venus and Mars.

Then came Voskhod, a beefier version of the Vostok rocket. In reality, later Voskhod rockets were actually Soyuz rockets for unmanned missions.

The first actual Soyuz rocket had a low-Earth orbit capacity of 6,450 kg. The modern Soyuz-U has a payload of 6,900 kg, while the Soyuz-FG (newer version used exclusively for modern Soyuz spacecraft) is 7,100 kg. The Soyuz-U is the most oft-used launcher in history, and shows no signs of slowing down.

In recent years, the Soyuz-2 rocket has been developed, which can launch 7,800 kg into LEO from Baikonur, and even more if launched from Guiana Space Centre. Either Soyuz-U, Soyuz-FG or Soyuz-2 can use the Fregat upper stage for higher payloads: a Soyuz-FG launched Europe's Mars Express mission from Baikonur with the Fregat upper stage, technically making it Russia's only successful Mars mission.



Even more recently, Russia finally figured out that the R-7 didn't even need its huge boosters to make it to orbit. This variant, sometimes referred to as "Soyuz-1", can lift 2,800kg to LEO, just a tad less than the Tsyklon rocket. While the first Soyuz-1 used an upper stage called "Volga", later versions will use the "Blok I".

[Macsen]

26 years ago today, Atlantis was launched on STS-30 from Pad 39B, Kennedy Space Center.



The primary payload of the mission was Magellan, the Space Shuttle's first interplanetary launch. Magellan was a mission to map Venus. Originally, it was planned to launch in 1988 with a Centaur upper stage like Galileo originally was. But to make certain the two spacecraft didn't collide (it wasn't likely, but still...), they sent Magellan on a more leisurely approach which would loop around the Sun 1 1/2 times before entering Venus's orbit.

It was placed in a polar orbit around Venus on August 7, 1990. For the next four years, over six mapping cycles, it would use high-resolution radar to pierce the thick cloud cover around Venus and map out its surface. It would ultimately get 3D maps of about 98% of the planet, and gravimetric maps of 94% of the planet.

Toward the end of its mission in 1994, NASA used Magellan to experiment with aerobraking, using the tenuous upper atmosphere of Venus to circularize its orbit. The results of this experiment would lead to future probes to Mars using aerobraking to circularize their orbits.

It was finally de-orbited on October 13, 1994.

[Macsen]

56 years ago today, NASA completed its first spaceflight with the launch of Mercury-Redstone 3 from Pad 5, Cape Canaveral. On-board was America's first astronaut, Alan Shepard.



That story about him having to urinate in his flight suit? 100% true. He boarded the capsule at 5:15am anticipating a 7:20am launch, but cloud cover resulted in a launch hold. As the wait time dragged long past when the launch was originally scheduled, Shepard soon needed to urinate. They never thought to put a urine collection device in the suit; they simply didn't think he was going to be in the suit long enough to need it.

But they didn't let him go willy-nilly. What they really did to facilitate it was turned off the biomedical equipment so the urine would not cause a short circuit on the electrode sensors. With the oxygen flowing through the suit, he quickly dried out, the equipment was turned back on, and by then the rules were again green and they were able to resume the launch countdown.

Freedom 7 finally launched at 9:34am EDT. It reached an apogee of 116.5 miles. During the free portion of the flight, Shepard tested the manual controls, and found them very close to the simulators. He reached a maximum acceleration of 11.6 g during re-entry. Descent was faster than anticipated, but the parachutes deployed at the correct altitudes.

Freedom 7 splashed down about 300 miles downrange. Shepard compared the impact to a fighter jet landing on an aircraft carrier. The capsule was recovered by the carrier USS Lake Champlain.

Engineers determined that the relative lack of heating on the suborbital re-entry left Freedom 7 in excellent condition, such that it could be launched again if they wanted to. They never seriously considered doing so. It's currently on display at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.

[Macsen]

42 years ago today, America's first space station, Skylab, was launched atop a Saturn V rocket from Pad 39A, Kennedy Space Center.

63 seconds into launch, the micrometeoroid shield prematurely deployed and was stripped off by aerodynamic pressure, exposing the bare metal of the workshop to the Sun. Shrapnel ripped off one of the solar panel wings, and would jam the other into its stowed position. Once on-orbit, the workshop's temperature soared, and only the solar panels on the Apollo Telescope Mount (the iconic windmill-shape panels) could power the station.

NASA would spend the next ten days working on solutions for the overheating, and eventually came up with two: the Parasol, and the Twin-Pole Sunshade. The Parasol would be deployed through the experiment airlock on the first manned mission, Skylab 2. The Sunshade would be assembled during Skylab 3. The solar panel issue would have to wait for when Skylab 2 was in orbit, so they could determine the exact nature of the issue.

The workshop had an initial orbit of about 270 x 275 miles. The launch was the last use of the Saturn V. (Some erroneously refer to it as the "Saturn INT-21", which was a code for a two-stage Saturn V rocket that was never used.) LC-39A was promptly safed to begin conversion for the Space Shuttle program.

[Macsen]

52 years ago today, Mercury-Atlas 9, callsign Faith 7, was launched from Pad 14, Cape Canaveral, with L. Gordon Cooper on-board. It was the final manned mission of Project Mercury.

The flight lasted 34 hours, or 22 orbits. He would attempt to sleep during orbits 9 through 13, but didn't feel sleepy enough to sleep the entire time, and took some incredible photos during that time.



It would splashdown 70 km SW of Midway Island in the Pacific Ocean, the second splashdown aimed for the Pacific.

[Macsen]

42 years ago today, Skylab 2 launched from a "milk stool" stand at Pad 39B, Kennedy Space Center. It was the first Saturn IB launch in five years.



Pictured, L-R: scientist astronaut Dr. Joseph Kerwin, commander Pete Conrad, CM pilot Paul Weitz.

They reached Skylab that day, and quickly surveyed the damage to the orbital workshop. They soft-docked, and did an EVA to try to free the stuck remaining solar panel wing with no success.



They would remain in the CM until the next day, when they would deploy the Parasol sunshade from inside. They would also bring the Twin-Pole Snshade, which would be deployed by the next mission.

[Macsen]

16 years ago today, Discovery was launched on STS-96 from Pad 39B, Kennedy Space Center.

The mission was the second assembly mission for the International Space Station, and was officially the first to dock with it. STS-88 was a special case where the Unity module was pre-docked before it was attached to Zarya.

In addition to carrying experiments for the interior, it also carried the Russian STRELA and American OTD cargo cranes. The cargo cranes were both installed in a single EVA on Flight Day 4 by Tammy Jernigan and Daniel Barry. The orbiter also deployed the STARSHINE technology satellite, a student experiment for laser ranging. STARSHINE would remain in orbit for nine months.

The pilot for the mission was STS-107 commander Rick Husband on his first mission.

[Macsen]

44 years ago today, the Soviet Union launched Mars 3 on a Proton-K rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Mars 3 and its twin, Mars 2, were the only Russian missions to Mars that saw any level of success. They both succeeded at orbiting Mars, though they were beaten by two weeks by the Americans with Mariner 9.

The two probes did have a potential game-breaker app: landers. Similar in design to the landers on the Venera missions to Venus (though without the pressure resistance, not necessary in the rarefied Martian atmosphere), they hoped to be the first to put equipment on the surface of Mars.

Mars 2 ended up crashing on the surface. Mars 3, however, succeeded at touching down safely on December 2, 1971.

It returned one picture...



...then shut off 15 seconds after landing.

Soviet officials stated that nothing identifiable was visible in the image. If it's of the horizon as some sources have suggested, it may suggest it rolled onto its side after landing, as the camera was cycloramic, its images intended to be turned 90 degrees clockwise for proper viewing.

The orbiters lasted a few months, and returned a total of 60 TV-based photos between them. The location of the Mars 3 lander was found in 2013 by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

[Macsen]

49 years ago today, Surveyor 1 was launched on an Atlas-Centaur rocket from Pad 36A, Cape Kennedy.

Three days later, on June 2, 1966, it became the first American probe to soft-land on another celestial body, using solid-fuel retrorockets to land safely on the Moon at Oceanus Procellarum. It returned over 10,000 TV images over its first lunar day, then woke up after its first lunar night and returned another 1,000 images before the camera failed. Its other instruments would survive another five lunar nights before failing in January 1967.

All the images returned by Surveyor 1 were black-and-white. It wouldn't be until Surveyor 3 that the landers would get color TV cameras.

[Macsen]

50 years ago today, Gemini 4 was launched from Pad 19, Cape Kennedy. It was the first multi-day mission of Project Gemini.



On-board were pilot Edward White and commander Jim McDivitt.

On the third orbit, the two astronauts locked up their suits and opened the spacecraft, with White leaving the capsule on the first American EVA. Without having to deal with the ad hoc airlock used by the Russians, the trip was a lot easier for White. He used a small jet pack to maneuver himself around, though it turned out he didn't have as much fuel (it was a simple gas jet with its own small oxygen tank, not unlike a bottle of compressed air) as he would've liked.

White spent 20 minutes outside the craft, leaving over Hawaii and returning over the U.S. east coast. He was supposed to stay in contact with Mission Control through a VOX switch, but it didn't work. While the excursion was recorded, it could not be heard live. Afterward, McDivitt had to rebuild the hatch lock to get it to lock properly, something he luckily learned on the ground.

Their on-board computer failed during the 4th day, forcing them to use a ballistic re-entry instead of a guided aerodynamic re-entry. They landed 43 km short of their original target, but near where the landing support fleet had moved to, about 250 miles NE of Nassau, the Bahamas. They were picked up by the aircraft carrier USS Wasp.

[Macsen]

19 years ago today, the European Space Agency launched the first Ariane 5 rocket from ELA-3, Guiana Space Centre.

The payload was a set of four satellites called "Cluster". The satellites were to be put in highly-elliptical orbits (roughly 15,000 x 120,000 km) to study Earth's magnetosphere.

However, for whatever reason, Arianespace decided to recycle the software used for the Ariane 4 rocket on the newer Ariane 5, which used far more sophisticated computer equipment. 30 seconds into the launch, the older programming decided the rocket was off-course by 90 degrees, and pitched the rocket over suddenly. The fairing gave out and dropped the satellites before the rocket exploded.



Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp_D8r-2hwk

Out of 79 launch attempts to date, Ariane 5 has only had two complete failures. The second one was the first Ariane 5 ECA rocket in 2002. They're currently on a 65-launch winning streak.

As for Cluster, a replacement set of satellites, Cluster II, was launched over two launches of Soyuz-Fregat rockets in 2000.

[Macsen]

44 years ago today, Soyuz 11 launched to the Salyut 1 space station with commander Georgi Dobrovolski, flight engineer Vladislav Volkov and test engineer Viktor Patsayev. After Soyuz 10 failed to dock with the station, Soyuz 11 docked on June 7, and would stay on-board for three weeks, becoming the first official space station crew.