The Week in Space History #3
January 14-20, 2023- Exploring Titan, Pluto, and our home. Remembering the crew of STS-107.
News-
Happy 93rd birthday to Apollo 11 and Gemini 12 astronaut Buzz Aldrin! Buzz was born on January 20, 1930. He’s pictured below in a selfie he took during the Gemini 12 EVA.
I’d love to hear if you’ve got questions or comments, so please hit me up, john@thespaceshot.com. Thanks :)
Coast to Coast with SpaceX-
SpaceX launched a Falcon Heavy on January 15, 2023, supporting the classified USSF-67 mission for the United States Space Force. Falcon Heavy may not be as powerful as SLS, but it’s got some impressive specs. Per SpaceX- “Falcon Heavy is composed of three reusable Falcon 9 nine-engine cores whose 27 Merlin engines together generate more than 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, equal to approximately eighteen 747 aircraft. As one of the world’s most powerful operational rockets, Falcon Heavy can lift nearly 64 metric tons (141,000 lbs) to orbit.”
You can watch the webcast here in case you missed it. The side boosters performed the 163rd and 164th landings of an “orbital class rocket” as SpaceX notes to differentiate the difference between the massive Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy compared to the suborbital single stage New Shepard rocket from Blue Origin.
SpaceX launched two more missions this week. A Falcon 9 carrying the GPS III Space Vehicle 06 mission lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Base Wednesday morning. SpaceX notes that the booster for this mission previously supported NASA’s Crew-5 mission to the International Space Station. The booster landed on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas, marking the 165th successful landing of a Falcon 9 core.
The latest batch of 51 Starlink satellites launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Thursday, January 19, 2023. The Falcon 9 booster landed on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You, which was down range in the Pacific Ocean, the 166th successful landing of a Falcon 9.
Congrats to SpaceX on a heck of a start to 2023. SpaceX has landed 4 rockets in the past week, which is astonishing when compared to the total number of rocket launches in the entire world so far in 2023.
There’s a good chance SpaceX could hit 100 launches this year if they keep up this pace. Fingers crossed, I can catch one if we can make it to Florida later this year for a family event.
Before you dive into these historical missions and events, please take a moment to check out my shop- Starlight and Gleam. Valentine’s Day is around the corner, and nothing says love like a piece of space-inspired jewelry. ;) There’s FREE shipping on all orders with the code SUBSTACK, so check out the site and snag something nice for yourself or someone special. Also, check out this glow-in-the-dark Lunar Module and Command Module, plus a holographic Space Shuttle sticker- available in this 3-pack!
58 Years Ago-
On January 19, 1965, the uncrewed Gemini 2 test mission lifted off on a suborbital test flight to examine the spacecraft’s reentry capabilities. After months of delays that included an instance where the rocket had to be dismantled due to threats from hurricanes, liftoff finally took place just after 9 a.m. Eastern.
Onboard computers automatically controlled the Gemini spacecraft and initiated the retrofire sequence that brought the capsule back to Earth. Gemini 2 splashed down 18 minutes and 16 seconds after launch, successfully completing the mission, even though there were some issues with the systems onboard the spacecraft. Testing the heatshield was an important part of this mission which helped pave the way for the first human Gemini flights in the Spring of 1965.
49 Years Ago-
On January 18, 1974, the British Military Satellite Skynet 2A launched from Cape Canaveral.
Don’t worry, the satellite wasn’t part of Skynet, the fictional evil AI system that nearly wipes out humanity. Plus, Skynet 2A didn’t reach a stable orbit and burned up just days after launch.
48 Years Ago-
On January 15, 1975, Space Mountain opened in Tomorrowland, part of the Magic Kingdom at Disney World in Florida. This rollercoaster has a retro space theme and is almost entirely in the dark. I remember riding it as a kid when I was at Disneyworld, but it's been ages since I’ve been.
28 Years Ago-
On January 16, 1995, Star Trek: Voyager premiered on the UPN network. The series spanned 7 seasons with 168 episodes, and more lines of technobabble than you could throw a hydrospanner at.
Author’s note- I read "Bringing Columbia Home: The Final Mission of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew" by Michael Leinbach and Jonathan Ward, and I highly recommend it. I know this is a difficult memory for many in the space community. I remember being in my mom’s car and hearing the news on the radio as we were driving in the mountains in Colorado. Godspeed to the crew.
20 Years Ago-
At 10:39 a.m. EDT on January 16, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia and a crew of seven lifted off under a picturesque Florida sky on the STS-107 mission. Onboard were seven astronauts: Commander- Rick Husband, Pilot William McCool, Payload Commander Michael Anderson, Mission Specialists Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, Laurel Clark, and payload specialist Ilan Ramon. This was the last time Columbia and her crew would leave Earth.
81.7 seconds into the flight, a piece of foam insulation broke off and struck the leading edge of Columbia’s left wing. When the foam impacted the orbiter’s wing, it punched through the reinforced carbon-carbon material designed to protect the orbiter from the extreme heat of reentry. The hole that was created from the foam allowed the superheated gases experienced during reentry to enter the left wing. On February 1st, 2003, Columbia and her crew were lost.
In the Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report, it's noted that the Orbiter “ran into” the foam. The report continues:
“Just prior to separating from the External Tank, the foam was traveling with the Shuttle stack at about 1,568 mph (2,300 feet per second). Visual evidence shows that the foam debris impacted the wing approximately 0.161 seconds after separating from the External Tank. In that time, the velocity of the foam debris slowed from 1,568 mph to about 1,022 mph (1,500 feet per second). Therefore, the Orbiter hit the foam with a relative velocity of about 545 mph (800 feet per second). In essence, the foam debris slowed down, and the Orbiter did not, so the Orbiter ran into the foam. The foam slowed down rapidly because such low-density objects have low ballistic coefficients, which means their speed rapidly decreases when they lose their means of propulsion.”
As tragic as this flight is, the astronauts died in pursuit of something bigger than themselves. Working to push the boundaries of what we can achieve in space is a great way to honor their memory.
17 Years Ago-
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft launched on January 19, 2006, its destination, Pluto, then beyond through the Kuiper Belt.
After a gravity assist at Jupiter in 2007, New Horizons entered the extended cruise portion of its mission. Almost a decade passed from the launch to the Pluto flyby. After launching on an Atlas V rocket, New Horizons was traveling just over 36,000 mph, the fastest speed that a spacecraft has traveled away from Earth.
New Horizons was moving so fast that the trip to the orbit of the moon took about 8 and a half hours, which coincidentally is just a little bit longer than the time it takes me to road trip from home in Wichita, Kansas, to Colorado’s Front Range to see family. Too bad the speed limit on I-70 is only 75 mph.
After waiting nearly a decade, it was time to image Pluto. The approach was tantalizing, each day, a new image showed Pluto in greater detail than ever before. During the flyby, New Horizons went radio silent so its instruments could be pointed at Pluto for the duration of the brief encounter. New Horizons sent back images and data that were beyond the wildest dreams of scientists and the public. I interviewed Kelsi Singer and Joel Parker, two project scientists on the New Horizons mission, back in 2018 for the Cosmosphere Podcast. Check out Part 1 and Part 2!
Stardust was a NASA Discovery-class mission that encountered the comet Wild 2 which was named after Paul Wild its discoverer. Stardust collected samples from the comet and interstellar dust for return and analysis on Earth.
On January 15, 2006, a sample return capsule that had been jettisoned from the Stardust probe entered Earth’s atmosphere, landing just outside of Salt Lake City, Utah, at the Utah Test and Training Range. The sample return part of the Stardust mission was the first time any particles from a comet were returned to Earth.
Stardust launched on February 7, 1999, atop a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 17. One of Stardust’s unique features was an aerogel collector that was moved into position when the probe moved behind comet Wild 2’s tail. The aerogel acted as a sort of ballistics gel, which allowed the dust to impact into something that wouldn’t completely destroy the sample.
After the Stardust probe had captured the cometary and interstellar particles, it conducted a series of flybys of the comets Wild 2, and Tempel 1. These flybys captured high-resolution images of both comets, and in the case of Tempel 1, provided another set of images that complemented the earlier Deep Impact mission.
The sample return capsule provided valuable information about the composition of the comet as well as the interstellar dust that was captured during the mission. Particles embedded in the aerogel ranged from the microscopic level to almost 1mm in diameter.
Various particles were collected, from organic compounds to crystalline silicates to, most interestingly, Glycine. Glycine is an amino acid and its detection on a comet “supports the idea that the fundamental building blocks of life are prevalent in space and strengthens the argument that life in the Universe may be common rather than rare,” according to Dr. Carl Pilcher, former Director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute.
18 Years Ago-
On January 14th, 2005, the Huygens lander touched down on the surface of Titan, giving us an unprecedented look at this captivating moon. This was the first, and so far, the only time a spacecraft has touched down on a world in the outer solar system. Even though Huygens's mission was just a brief part of the overall Cassini mission, it marked an incredible milestone for the mission. I remember talking about the landing in my high school astronomy class, and being in awe of the video of the landing sequence.
Titan is massive for a moon, it is larger than Mercury, making it the second-largest moon in the solar system. According to NASA, “Titan is the only moon in our solar system that has clouds and a dense atmosphere, mostly nitrogen and methane. It is also the only other place in the solar system to have an Earth-like cycle of liquids flowing across its surface.” Much of what we now know about Titan is thanks to the Cassini spacecraft and the Huygens probe.
Huygens performed a 2.5-hour descent, during which it experienced winds in excess of 260 mph. Huygens gave us the first images of Titan’s surface as it passed through the dense upper clouds. Spacecraft can’t see through this dense layer in the visible spectrum, so Huygens was essential in giving us a look at the moon's surface. The lander was traveling at just over 11 mph when it touched down on a freezing plain littered with what looked like icy tumbled stones. Speaking of the surface, the temperatures on Titan are frigid, in the neighborhood of -290 degrees Fahrenheit or -179 Celsius.
The lander imaged its entire descent and gathered information on the atmosphere of Titan. It found complex organic compounds, which are the building blocks of the amino acids necessary for life as we know it. Huygens studied the surface as well, finding that the landing site surface was similar to wet sand and that the rocks or pebbles around the lander were made up of water ice.
The Huygens lander was developed by the European Space Agency and was part of the overall Cassini Huygens mission between NASA and ESA. While the scientific knowledge we gained from the lander is incredible, I think the international collaboration and cooperation needed to pull off an interplanetary landing is just as important.
“There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again.” President John F. Kennedy- speech at Rice University.
The Cassini Huygens mission represents the best of what we can achieve. Peaceful cooperation between sovereign nations working towards a common goal of expanding scientific knowledge. As much as science will be part of Cassini’s legacy, the partnership between nations for this mission will be just as important fifty or one hundred years from now. The policy of cooperation on massive scientific undertakings like Cassini bodes well for future missions to other worlds.
7 Years Ago-
SpaceX launched NASA’s Jason-3 satellite on January 17, 2016, from Vandenberg Air Force Base (now Space Force Base). The Jason-3 satellite uses a radar altimeter to monitor sea levels worldwide. NASA notes that “These measurements provide scientists with critical information about circulation patterns in the ocean and about both global and regional changes in sea level and the climate implications of a warming world.”
Expanding our knowledge of Earth science is the mission of NASA’s Earth Science Division. This division coordinates airborne and satellite observations to help us understand our home planet. Working towards bettering our knowledge of the weather here on Earth isn’t done strictly for scientific reasons, there’s an economic imperative as well.
Think about how many industries are affected by the weather. Farming, ranching, fishing, air travel, anyone that has to drive in inclement weather, tourism, and countless others are all affected by the weather on our planet.
Studying Earth is both economically and scientifically prudent, and we should not shy away from finding out as much as we can about our home planet.
That’s it for this week. Please message me if you’re enjoying this series or have a comment. I’d love to hear from you, so please hit me up- john@thespaceshot.com. I’ll catch you on the flip side!