The Week in Space History #9
February 24- March 2- Apollo 9, Balloons, Venus, Espionage, Shuttle, and More
2/29/1936- Happy birthday to Skylab and Shuttle astronaut Jack Lousma! Next year Jack’s birthday will fall on a leap year day, which is pretty cool. Here’s a fun NASA post about leap years and the math behind why we have leap years/days.
Worth your time…
Even though you’ve probably already seen this picture a few hundred times in the past 72 hours.
This has got to be one of the coolest selfies ever. When I first saw the grainy picture of this earlier this week I wasn’t sure it was real. Well, I’m glad I was wrong!
64 Years Ago-
We’ll stay with the espionage theme for today’s email. On February 28, 1959, Discoverer 1 launched to support the top secret Corona program.
A NASA article notes that “The Discoverer program was managed by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense and the U.S. Air Force.” Developing reconnaissance satellites was a crucial part of the US intelligence efforts during the Cold War. Unlike the U2 which was susceptible to surface to air missiles, satellites could pass over an adversarial country without violating their airspace. The U2 however has some superlative capabilities that find it a place in active service nearly 70 years after its first flight.
Pioneer 4-
On March 3, 1959, Pioneer 4 lifted off on a mission to perform a lunar imaging flyby. NASA notes that “Although it did not achieve its primary objective to photograph the Moon during a close flyby, Pioneer 4 became the first U.S. spacecraft to reach Earth escape velocity.” Check out more about this mission here.
57 Years Ago-
Apollo-Saturn 201-
On February 26, 1966 Apollo Saturn Mission 201 launched from Cape Canaveral. This was the first test of the Block 1 Apollo Command and Service Module. After the CSM separated from the S-IVB second stage, the Service Propulsion System, the main engine of the spacecraft, was fired to increase the speed of the spacecraft, in order to simulate the higher speeds of a lunar mission reentry that the command module would experience in later Apollo flights.
Venera 3-
A failed landing attempt made Venera 3 the first spacecraft to impact another planet on March 1, 1966.
Details on missions like Venera 3, Pioneer 4, and others can be found in the wonderful (and free) book “Beyond Earth: A Chronicle of Deep Space Exploration” by prolific space history author Asif Siddiqi. The PDF is available to download from NASA for free, check out the PDF here.
54 Years Ago-
Heading to Mars-
Mariner 6 launched to Mars on February 25, 1969, just a few days before Apollo 9 lifted off. Mariner 6 and its sister spacecraft, Mariner 7, performed flybys of Mars, sending back incredible images of the red planet. A NASA spacecraft resource notes that, “Mariner 6 took 24 near-encounter photos during a period of 17 minutes which were stored on a tape recorder and later transmitted back to Earth some 20 hours after the flyby at a rate of one frame every 5 minutes.”
Apollo 9-
On March 3, 1969, a Saturn V rocket carried astronauts James McDivitt (Commander), David Scott (Command Module Pilot), and Russell Schweickart (Lunar Module Pilot) into Earth orbit. The 10-day mission of Apollo 9 tested, for the first time, the combined Command and Service Module and Lunar Module in Earth orbit. This mission was also the first time the Lunar Module was piloted by a crew.
One of the Lunar Module tests involved firing the descent engine while Gumdrop (CSM) and Spider (LM) were docked. NASA history has a great writeup on the entire mission, which you can read here. Here's an interesting passage from that post.
"McDivitt then operated the small thrusters to get the docked vehicles into the correct position for firing the lunar module's throttleable descent propulsion system. Seconds after starting the large descent engine, McDivitt shouted, "Look at that [attitude] ball; my God, we hardly have any errors." Twenty-six seconds later, at full thrust, he reported that errors were still practically nonexistent."
"In fact, things were going so smoothly that halfway through the 371.5-second exercise, the commander felt hungry - not an uncommon sensation with him. So he ate before crawling back into the command module. Schweickart stayed behind to shut everything down and straighten up the cabin before joining the others in Gumdrop. The lander appeared to be a dependable machine."
Pictured first is the Saturn V AS-504 as it lifted off at 11 a.m. EST from LC-39A. Second, the crew is shown standing near AS-504 during a countdown test. You may notice liquid oxygen venting from the Saturn V. Third, a picture of Command Module pilot David R. Scott, as he stood in the open Command Module hatch. Astronaut Russell Schweickart took this stunning photograph. The fourth and final picture shows the Lunar Module "Gumdrop" as it orbited Earth.
Apollo 9 may not have the historical glamor of Apollo 8 or 11, but it was a crucial step towards proving the entire concept of the lunar orbit rendezvous that was chosen for the program.
Please take a moment to check out my shop- Starlight and Gleam. 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. Celebrate Apollo 9 with stickers! Snag the glow-in-the-dark Lunar Module and Command Module, plus a holographic Space Shuttle sticker- 3-pack!
51 Years Ago-
Pioneer 10 set many firsts for a spacecraft after it’s launch on March 2, 1972.
It was the first spacecraft to pass through the asteroid belt later flying by Jupiter in December of 1973, coincidentally it was also the first spacecraft to encounter the gas giant.
Pioneer 10 was also the first spacecraft to be sent on an escape trajectory, that is one that takes it outside of our solar system. The spacecraft also carries a gold plaque that describes where it came from and who built it. It has simple figures representing humanoids, a pattern showing relative position of our sun to pulsars and the center of our galaxy, and a simple map of our solar system.
The last communication with this venerable spacecraft took place in 2003, after its RTGs or radioisotope thermoelectric generators decayed to a point where they no longer generated enough power to operate the spacecrafts transmitter.
41 Years Ago-
The Soviet Union launched a series of spacecraft to Venus, two of which encountered the planet on March 1, just in different years. As previously mentioned, Venera 3 impacted the Venusian surface. Venera 13 was a bit luckier.
The descent craft for Venera 13 entered the Venusian atmosphere on March 1, 1982. A parachute and airbraking were used to slow the descent through the atmosphere, a process which took about 1 hour. The craft touched down and captured a panorama of the Venusian surface. The harsh environment of the planet’s surface caused the spacecraft to fail after 127 minutes of operation, it had a design life of about a half hour. Venera 13 is notable because it returned the first color pictures of that planet’s surface, pictured below. The Planetary Society has an entire post covering pictures from the Venusian surface that’s worth checking out.
Picture credit- Image: Russian Academy of Sciences / Ted Stryk via the Planetary Society.
33 Years Ago-
Continuing the national security focus of the history for today’s email, STS-36 launched on February 28, 1990. The Shuttle Atlantis and a crew of five astronauts lifted off into one of the most unusual orbits that a Shuttle was ever launched into. The payload for Atlantis remains classified, but there are some ideas floating around about the nature of this payload. Here’s a link to part one in a fantastic two-part series by Ben Evans that details this Shuttle flight in more detail.
28 Years Ago-
The Shuttle Endeavour launched on March 2, 1995 on a 16 day, 15 hour long mission, the third longest flight of the Shuttle program. Seven astronauts were onboard Endeavour for STS-67 along with instruments to study the ultraviolet spectrum of astronomical targets.
Astro-2 was a Spacelab mission specifically designed to conduct astronomical observations in the Ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Astronauts selected from a list of different astronomical objects which “ranging from some inside the solar system to individual stars, nebulae, supernova remnants, galaxies and active extragalactic objects.”
As with numerous other Shuttle flights there were Protein Crystal Growth experiments that were conducted on the middeck. If you’ve listened to the podcast, you may have heard me mention protein crystal growth before and its not some arcane technobabble from Star Trek.
Here’s a quick primer on protein crystal growth:
“Space is an excellent environment to study complex, three-dimensional proteins, because gravity and convective forces do not get in the way of crystal formation, which allows creation of larger and more perfect crystals. With large crystals, scientists on the ground can use X-ray crystallography to determine how the protein is organized. Determining protein structures helps researchers design new drugs.”
So, the next time we talk about a Shuttle mission that involved protein crystal growth, you’ll know what’s up.
21 Years Ago-
The Shuttle Columbia lifted off on its last successful mission on March 1, 2002. STS-109 was a Hubble servicing mission with five EVAs that lasted from 6 hours 48 minutes to 7 hours 32 minutes. You can read more about this Hubble servicing mission here.
12 Years Ago-
On February 24, 2011, the Shuttle Discovery lifted off one last time. Its mission, deliver the Permanent Multipurpose Module Leonardo and supplies to the International Space Station.
The Leonardo module started its life out as the Multipurpose Logistics Module and had been to the station a number of times. With the retirement of the Shuttle it was decided that the module would be converted into a permanent multipurpose module and left at the station by a shuttle.
Discovery’s final mission was a capstone on an incredible service life. It flew more times than any other Shuttle, on missions from deploying the Hubble Space Telescope, to rendezvousing with the Mir station, to being piloted and later commanded by the first female commander.
The astronauts that flew on Discovery for the last time were Commander Steven Lindsey, Pilot Eric Boe, and Mission Specialists Nicole Stott, Alvin Drew, Michael Barratt, and Stephen Bowen.
During the mission, astronauts performed two EVAs while docked with the International Space Station. The preparation for the EVAs included “camping out” in the airlock, a procedure I talked about back in episode 270 of the podcast. Sleeping in a reduced pressure environment with less nitrogen helps astronauts avoid decompression sickness that can be a side effect of a spacewalk.
I could imagine how bittersweet this flight was for the crew, knowing that you’re taking a spacecraft out for one final mission would be an emotional experience.
10 Years Ago-
On March 1, 2013, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 v1.0 rocket on an International Space Station resupply mission. CRS-2 carried experiments and supplies to the station, and returned to Earth with experiments and other miscellaneous cargo. Ten years later, we’re waiting on the launch of CRS-27, which is slated to launch in Early March. SpaceX’s Crew 6 mission is also due to launch in the coming days, so keep an eye out on NASA’s YouTube channel for webcast details. The number of crewed and uncrewed missions launched by SpaceX for NASA over the past decade is impressive.
9 Years Ago-
February 27, 2014 The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) satellite launched on a Japanese H-IIA rocket. This spacecraft studies rain and snow (hence the precipitation in the name) at global level. NASA notes that: “The GPM mission will help advance our understanding of Earth's water and energy cycles, improve the forecasting of extreme events that cause natural disasters, and extend current capabilities of using satellite precipitation information to directly benefit society.”
7 Years Ago-
2016- Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko return to earth after 340 days in space. Kelly held the record until last year when Mark Vande Hei surpassed this record with a 355 day stay on the ISS. Astronaut Scott Kelly returned to Earth on March 1, 2016 after spending 340 days in space. This historic long-duration mission to examine the effects of microgravity on the human body is essential for future missions to the Moon and beyond to Mars. I’ve talked about Kelly’s mission before, back in Episode 226, so check out that episode for my thoughts on Kelly’s book, “Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery.”