A Day in Astronomy: Loss of the Apollo 1 Astronauts

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Apollo 1 astronauts Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, left, Edward H. White, and Roger B. Chaffee. (NASA)

On this day in 1967, the Apollo 1 capsule caught fire on the launchpad, killing the three astronauts in the capsule – Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee.

A frustrated Gene Kranz, NASA flight director, had this to say shortly after the fire and tragic loss of three astronauts:

Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung-ho about the schedule, and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily. Nothing we did had any shelf life. Not one of us stood up and said, “Dammit, stop!” I don’t know what Thompson’s committee will find as the cause, but I know what I find. We are the cause! We were not ready! We did not do our job. We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day, when in our hearts we knew it would take a miracle. We were pushing the schedule and betting that the Cape would slip before we did.

Did the Apollo space program recover? Absolutely. Did NASA avoid deaths on future space missions. Not at all. Do we give up on human space missions or keep moving forward? I think you know the answer to that one.

Credit: NASA

A Day in Astronomy: Birth of Steven Spielberg

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Scene from the film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. (Universal Studios)

On this day in 1946, Steven Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. The American film director is best known for his many science fiction films, such as Jaws as well as the Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park series. However, he has a special place in the hearts of space fans for his other films, including:

  • Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977);
  • E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982); and
  • War of the Worlds (2005).

You may wonder what he plans to work on next. So does he. In a Deadline interview earlier this year, Mr. Spielberg stated this when asked about his next project:

It’s kind of a nice feeling. And it’s also a horrible feeling. It’s nice that I can actually have control of my life again and makes my own choices in my real life. But I need to work and I love to work and that’s the biggest question I’m going to have with the rest of the year trying to figure this out.

Let’s hope he considers something space-related again.

A Day in Astronomy: First Operation of the International Space Station

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The ISS’s Zarya module (in the image bottom to center). (NASA)

On this day in 1998, two modules, the Russian Zarya and American Unity, were joined in Earth orbit to create the International Space Station (ISS).

The ISS was built by five space agencies involving 15 nations. NASA notes that 273 people from 21 countries have visited the ISS over the years to assist with more than 3,300 research and educational investigations. The station has been busy, and pretty expensive at more than $150 billion to design and build.

Back in 2012, Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson stated:

If the United States commits to the goal of reaching Mars, it will almost certainly do so in reaction to the progress of other nations – as was the case with NASA, the Apollo program, and the project that became the International Space Station.

Eleven years later, the ISS continues to orbit the Earth while plans are still being made to return to the Moon and visit Mars. Maybe Dr. Tyson was right given our current race with China to the Moon. We sometimes need that extra push to move towards the stars (as least in terms of crewed flights).

A Day in Astronomy: Pioneer 10 Approaches Jupiter

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Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of the Pioneer 10 spacecraft. (Don Davis for NASA)

We may have missed the date of the story in this piece (the anniversary was November 6), but this is an opportunity to share another site that brings astronomical history to life. The American Astronomical Society, which brings together professional astronomers, astronomy educators, and amateur astronomers, has its own blog on astronomical anniversaries that I wanted to highlight. It is called This Month in Astronomical History.

The November article is about the 50th anniversary of NASA’s Pioneer 10 mission as it came in contact with Jupiter. The article notes that the spacecraft first started imaging Jupiter on November 6, 1973 when it was still 16 million miles away from the planet. Overall, it sent back about 500 images of Jupiter and its moons.

You can read the article itself for information on the success of the mission. The author also noted the fate of the spacecraft:

Originally slated for 21 months of operation — sufficient to complete the Jupiter observations — its official science mission was ended on 31 March 1997. Its last signal was sent on 23 January 2003; from a distance of about 12.2 billion km (7.6 billion miles) from home, Pioneer’s swansong took over 11 hours to reach us.

The spacecraft was still communicating with us about 50 years after its Jupiter mission. That is impressive.

A Day in Astronomy: Flyby of Asteroid Gaspra

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Asteroid Gaspra as photographed by the Galileo spacecraft. (NASA)

On this day in 1991, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft conducted a flyby of asteroid Gaspra, an asteroid that orbits in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The asteroid is about 10.5 miles long. Gaspra was discovered in 1916 by Russian astronomer G. N. Neujmin, who named it after a famous Russian spa retreat in Crimea.

The Galileo spacecraft’s primary mission was to visit Jupiter and its moons, but it also conducted other observations along the way, including flybys of asteroids Gaspra and Ida.

Here are a few facts about the Galileo mission from NASA:

  • Galileo was the first spacecraft to orbit an outer planet.
  • It was the first spacecraft to deploy an entry probe into an outer planet’s atmosphere.
  • It completed the first flyby and imaging of an asteroid (Gaspra, and later, Ida).
  • It made the first, and so far only, direct observation of a comet colliding with a planet’s atmosphere (Shoemaker-Levy 9).
  • It was the first spacecraft to operate in a giant planet magnetosphere long enough to identify its global structure and to investigate its dynamics.