Tuesday, May 29, 2012
5/29 news
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1. Register for the OB1 Informal Mentoring Mixer on May 30
2. SATERN Unavailable This Week
3. Watch ISS Update This Week
4. This Week at Starport
5. AIAA Houston Section 50th Anniversary Dinner
6. Last Week, Last Chances to WIN During Health and Fitness Month
7. Recent JSC Announcement
8. Project Asset and Lifecycle Management System (PALMS) Training Available
________________________________________ QUOTE OF THE DAY
“ Part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles, but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory. ”
-- Norman Vincent Peale
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1. Register for the OB1 Informal Mentoring Mixer on May 30
Have you registered yet for the OB1 informal mentoring event tomorrow, May 30? We still have some spots open, so register today!
At this event, you will talk with several great mentors from the JSC community, including Mike Coats, Ellen Ochoa and others from JSC's senior staff, as well as senior managers from several JSC contractor organizations. This is a speed mentoring event where you are randomly assigned rotations among various tables that are anchored by one of the mentors.
The event is tomorrow, May 30. Check-in begins at 3:30 p.m., with the event from 4 to 6 p.m. in the Gilruth Alamo Ballroom. We will serve light refreshments and give away door prizes.
This event is open to contractors and civil servants. Register now by sending an email to: jsc-informal-mentoring@mail.nasa.gov
Include your name, organization code, email address and phone number.
Jeanne Newman 281-433-9731 http://jlt.jsc.nasa.gov/
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2. SATERN Unavailable This Week
SATERN will be unavailable this week while the new upgrade is implemented. All users will be able to resume normal activities in the new, updated system on Monday morning, June 4. If you need to register for a class during the down time, contact your directorate training coordinator.
After the go-live on June 4, check the SATERN information website for updated Quick Reference Guides and tutorials.
Jennifer Ahmed-Alonso 281-792-7851 https://saterninfo.nasa.gov/
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3. Watch ISS Update This Week
Tune in this week to the International Space Station Update on NASA TV. ??
Tuesday
ISS Update: 10 to 11 a.m.
Paul Brower, Lead ISE, will discuss Dragon
Wednesday
ISS Update: 10 to 11 a.m.
Dr. Scott Smith, the principal investigator for Pro K, will discuss nutrition experiments
Thursday
ISS Update is scheduled to air earlier in the morning, from 8 to 9 a.m., before the unberthing of Dragon
Check the latest ISS Update programming at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/update/index.html ?
If you missed the ISS Updates from last week, tune in to REEL NASA at: http://www.youtube.com/user/ReelNASA to get the full videos. Or, view the videos at NASA's video gallery: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html ??For the latest NASA TV scheduling info, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/MM_NTV_Breaking.html ??
JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111
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4. This Week at Starport
Plan your summer STAYCATION with discount tickets to local venues, available at the Starport Gift Shops. Attractions include: Kemah Boardwalk, Main Event, AMC Theaters, Schlitterbahn Galveston, SeaWorld and Fiesta Texas. Visit http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Giftshop/DiscountTickets/index.cfm for details.
Starport also has Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus tickets, on sale now through June 20. Multiple show times and dates are available. Stop by Buildings 3 or 11 to make your selection. Seats are limited.
Go to the Starport website today after 11 a.m. to see the selected $69 cruise! Visit http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/EmployeeDiscount/LeisureAndTravel/ and then select "Dreamtrips." For more information, contact Jim at: email@jimhalford.com
Lorie Shewell x30308 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/
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5. AIAA Houston Section 50th Anniversary Dinner
You are cordially invited to the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Houston Section's 50th Anniversary Dinner to celebrate this golden milestone with guest speaker JSC Director Michael Coats and panelists (AIAA Houston Section leaders from the last 50 years): Guy Thibodaux, Jim McLane, Norman Chaffee, Zafar Taqvi and Ellen Gillespie.
Where: Gilruth Center Discovery Room (formerly the San Jacinto Room) and Alamo Ballroom
When: Wednesday, June 6
5:30 p.m. - Cocktail/Social Hour - Discovery Room
6 p.m. - NASA displays - Alamo Ballroom
6:30 p.m. - Dinner - Alamo Ballroom
7:30 p.m. - Program
Make dinner reservations online: http://www.aiaa-houston.org/Events.aspx#68
Members: $15; Non-members: $20
This event is open to the public.
For more information, please contact Alan Sisson at: programs@aiaa-houston.org
Irene Chan 713-933-6892 http://www.aiaa-houston.org/Events.aspx#68
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6. Last Week, Last Chances to WIN During Health and Fitness Month
There are THREE days left in Health and Fitness Month (HFM)! There are two opportunities this week to learn about nutrition: the "Dining Out with the Dietician" class with Glenda Blaskey, RD (TODAY, Gilruth, 5 p.m.); and then an agencywide ViTS titled "Dining Out - Can it be Part of a Healthy Lifestyle?" on Thursday (May 31, 11 a.m., Building 17, Room 2026).
Speaking of nutrition, TODAY at the cafés, purchase any "Your Health, Your Way" item and earn a ticket to WIN. Tomorrow in the Building 3 Collaboration Center, attend the 30-minute wellness class with the JSC Employee Assistance Program's Takis Bogdanos and earn another ticket. And don't forget, you can still earn tickets for biking to work, attending Starport GroupX classes and completing your health assessment online. Come join us in the Building 3 café for the grand prize drawing at 3 p.m. on Thursday, May 31! Check out the interactive HFM calendar for event and prize details at: http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/documents/MAY2012-NEW.pdf
Jessica Vos x41383 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/documents/MAY2012-NEW.pdf
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7. Recent JSC Announcement
Please visit the JSC Announcements Web page to view the newly posted announcement:
JSCA 12-013: Agency-sponsored Development Programs
Archived announcements are also available on the JSCA Web page.
Linda Turnbough x36246 http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/DocumentManagement/announcements/default.aspx
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8. Project Asset and Lifecycle Management System (PALMS) Training Available
PALMS training registration is now available in SATERN for EA employees.
PALMS is the Engineering Directorate's new project management tool for online project planning, scheduling and tracking. Closely integrated with Oasis, PALMS enables Web-based project collaboration, management and publishing of project schedules, resources and associated data products. To register for one of the monthly PALMS classroom training sessions, simply access SATERN and select one of these available courses:
PALMS Project Server Training for Team Members
SATERN Course ID: PALMS-02
PALMS Project Server Training for Project Managers
SATERN Course ID: PALMS-01
The courses are also listed under the "Featured Items" section of SATERN at: https://satern.nasa.gov
Stacey Zapatka x34749
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________________________________________
JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. To see an archive of previous JSC Today announcements, go to http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/pao/news/jsctoday/archives.
NASA TV: 10:55 am Central (11:55 EDT) – Expedition 31 Event for an ESA “Social” (Twitter)
Human Spaceflight News
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
HEADLINES AND LEADS
Congressional and other reaction to the SpaceX Dragon berthing
SpacePolitics.com
Perhaps it was the fact that the berthing took place on a Friday of a holiday weekend, with Congress in recess. Or, perhaps, members thought they said enough with the successful launch of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 in the early morning hours last Tuesday. In any case, the reaction from members of Congress to Friday morning’s successful grappling and berthing of the Dragon by the International Space Station got less of an official reaction from members of Congress than the launch itself.
Astronauts say crews would be comfortable in Dragon
Stephen Clark – SpaceflightNow.com
Two astronauts who helped capture and berth the Dragon supply ship said Saturday they would be comfortable flying a human-rated version of the craft on commercial flights to the International Space Station. NASA flight engineer Don Pettit guided the space station's Canadian robotic arm to grapple the private cargo freighter Friday, three days after it blasted off from Florida on a test flight long-awaited by NASA and SpaceX, the craft's builder, owner and operator.
SpaceX's No. 1 Rule for Naming Private Spaceship Parts: Be Cool
Clara Moskowitz - Space.com
A fire-breathing "Dragon" flew atop a "Falcon" that was granted its powers by "Merlin." Though the scene could be out of a fantasy novel, it is also literally true. On Friday, a robotic spacecraft called Dragon docked at the International Space Station three days after launching on a Falcon 9 rocket driven by nine Merlin engines. The mission is a test flight for commercial company SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corp.), which became the first company ever to send a private spaceship to the space station. Though many pieces of SpaceX hardware have fantastical monikers, company spokeswoman Kirstin Brost Grantham said they weren't all planned to fit a theme. "They are named independently, the rule is names must be cool," Grantham told SPACE.com.
SpaceX moves to the head of the class with Dragon docking
Lee Roop - Huntsville Times
American spacecraft is docked at the International Space Station today for the first time since the space shuttle quit flying in 2011, and the ripples from the fact that it's a private company's capsule are spreading fast and wide. For Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), the week's milestone at the most basic level means the start of its $1.6 billion contract with NASA to deliver supplies to the space station. The company needed to prove it could do it, and it has. Now it can begin deliveries twice a year for the next six years.
SpaceX's Successful Mission Boosts Commercial Credibility
Warren Ferster & Dan Leone – Space News
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is poised to begin full-fledged commercial operations following the successful launch and berthing of its cargo-carrying Dragon capsule to the international space station May 25. The mission lends a strong dose of credibility to U.S. President Barack Obama’s controversial plan to commercialize astronaut crew transportation to and from low Earth orbit, as congressional critics of the strategy joined supporters in praising the company’s historic achievement. SpaceX is among several companies vying for NASA funding assistance to develop astronaut taxi services.
As Atlantis heads for museum, NASA prepares for Orion mission
Dave Kraut - News Channel 8 (Tampa)
At Kennedy Space Center, the space shuttle Atlantis is being prepared to go on public display. The most complicated machine ever built will soon be a museum artifact. Buddy McKenzie has been in charge of making the shuttle fleet safe for astronauts to fly in space for the last 24 years. Now he is making sure they are safe for the public to see up close.
Excalibur Almaz details plans for capsule and space station
Zach Rosenberg - FlightInternational.com
Excalibur Almaz has detailed its plans to launch spacecraft to space stations in orbit around the moon, the first time the secretive company has done so publically. The British company will use legacy Russian hardware, capsules from the Soviet Soyuz space programme and space stations from Salyut, to launch people into orbit around the moon. Both capsules and stations will undergo upgrades, but the basic hardware has flown in space up to nine times, and is described by Excalibur CEO Art Dula as have a technical readiness level of nine, the highest possible. The capsules will initially be launched by Russian Soyuz FG launch vehicles from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Once in low Earth orbit (LEO), the capsules will dock with a Salyut station, which will use electric Hall thrusters to propel itself into orbit around the moon.
Medical treatments from 200 miles up
International Space Station experiments are tackling major illnesses
Katharine Gammon - Inside Science News Service
In the hunt for cancer treatments, researchers have had some help from higher authorities -- way higher. The International Space Station, orbiting the Earth at more than 200 miles in the sky, houses scientific experiments that have led to advances in several medical fields. Many things don't react the same way in the microgravity environment of space as they do on the ground. Back in 1998, during the shuttle program, now-retired NASA scientist Dennis Morrison began experimenting on microencapsulation, a process that forms tiny liquid-filled, biodegradable micro-balloons containing various drug solutions. It can provide better drug delivery and new medical treatments for solid tumors and resistant infections. Those encapsulated drugs could be directly injected into a tumor and would go to work destroying the cancer from the inside out.
The Historic Flight of the Dragon
Steve Ember - Voice of America
A rocket designed and built by a privately owned company has made history by bringing a supply capsule to the International Space Station. It was the first private spacecraft to carry out such a mission. The company SpaceX launched its Dragon space capsule last week on the company's Falcon 9 rocket. It launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. SpaceX mission controllers celebrated when the rocket had reached orbit and its solar panels had deployed. Three days earlier, a launch attempt was cancelled at the last second when a computer found a problem with the engine.
Space X, ‘Star Wars’ and the end of our imaginative space domination
Alexandra Petri - Washington Post
Watching the Dragon dock with the International Space Station, just in time for “Star Wars Day,” I couldn’t help but wonder: Whatever happened to the days when humans were the aggressors in space? I don’t mean in the actual world. I mean in the world that matters — our imaginative universe.
NASA is ready for its shuttle replica
John DeLapp – Galveston County Daily News
A space shuttle will be coming to Houston after all. Actually, it’s a replica of an orbiter. The reproduction has been on display at the Kennedy Space Center since 1994, and when the decision was made to send the now-retired space shuttles to other areas, it also was decided that the replica would be put on display at Space Center Houston. The reproduction was loaded onto a barge Thursday and is making its way across the Gulf of Mexico. Friday afternoon, it will navigate through the Clear Creek channel at Kemah, move across Clear Lake, then berth at the Johnson Space Center dock next to the Hilton hotel, 3000 NASA Parkway, in Nassau Bay.
Hawks and Falcons:
Covering the SpaceX COTS-2 Launch with the 920th Rescue Wing
Mike Killian - AmericaSpace.org
If you have ever watched a rocket or space shuttle launch in person from Kennedy Space Center or Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, then you have probably noticed one or two Pave Hawk helicopters flying overhead from time-to-time before and after the launch (or the scrub). Maybe you knew what they were doing, or perhaps you didn’t and just thought it was cool to watch military aircraft patrol the launch site. Whatever your thoughts, their role in the skies above Cape Canaveral is critical to the safety in and around a launch site for every mission. Based out of Patrick Air Force Base, the 920th Rescue Wing serves as an Air Force Reserve Command combat-search-and-rescue unit – responsible for a variety of demanding missions and ready to deploy at a moment’s notice, trained to perform some of the most highly-specialized operations in the Air Force. Their elite team of Pararescuemen, better known as PJ’s, are among the most highly trained emergency trauma specialists in the U.S. military. Elite graduates of the so-called “Superman School”, they are capable of performing life-saving missions anywhere in the world, at any time.
“Tired of Apologizing:” The Flight of Aurora 7
Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.org
Fifty years ago, this week, America launched its second man into orbit. That man should have been Deke Slayton, but a heart murmur had grounded him, not in favour of his backup, Wally Schirra, but in favour of John Glenn’s backup, Scott Carpenter. The theory was that the second orbital voyage would essentially repeat Glenn’s achievement (five hours and three orbits) and it made sense to fly Carpenter and keep Schirra for a subsequent mission. Schirra learned of the change in assignment during an impromptu gathering at the Carpenters’ home…and what should have been the most exhilarating moment of Scott Carpenter’s life turned instead into an ordeal. Slayton was angry at having lost his mission and Schirra was indignant at having been skipped in the pecking order, to such an extent that Carpenter felt he was spending more time apologising than training. One evening, Carpenter told his wife, Rene: “Damn it! I’m tired of apologizing. This is my flight now!” The flight would prove highly successful in many ways, highly controversial in others, and, it is said, would deny Carpenter the chance of ever flying into space again.
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COMPLETE STORIES
Congressional and other reaction to the SpaceX Dragon berthing
SpacePolitics.com
Perhaps it was the fact that the berthing took place on a Friday of a holiday weekend, with Congress in recess. Or, perhaps, members thought they said enough with the successful launch of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 in the early morning hours last Tuesday. In any case, the reaction from members of Congress to Friday morning’s successful grappling and berthing of the Dragon by the International Space Station got less of an official reaction from members of Congress than the launch itself.
“I congratulate SpaceX and its employees for accomplishing another historic feat today when its Dragon capsule successfully berthed with the International Space Station,” said Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL), whose district includes Cape Canaveral, in a statement Friday. “The completion of today’s space mission further underscores what’s possible when American scientists and engineers accept tough challenges and take another important step in U.S. space leadership.”
Posey was the only member to comment on both the launch and berthing, but a couple new voices expressed congratulations on the achievement. “This is a historic milestone for space exploration and an important achievement for the commercial space industry. We no longer live in a world where space is only explored by government agencies, and we should all take pride that an American company is the first to accomplish this mission,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (F-FL) in a statement Friday.
“If the promise of the International Space Station (ISS) is to be achieved, it is essential that a reliable and cost-effective means to transport cargo to the ISS be available. Today’s successful berthing of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule to the ISS is an important step on the path to demonstrating operational commercial cargo transport support for the ISS,” said Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), ranking member of House Science Committee, in a statement by the committee’s Democratic leadership that also included comments from Rep. Jerry Costello (D-IL), ranking member of the committee’s space subcommittee.
Not everyone was in a congratulatory mood, though. “The reality remains that SpaceX has spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to launch a rocket nearly three years later than planned,” Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) told the Huntsville Times. “The ‘private’ space race is off to a dilatory start at best, and the commercial space flight market has yet to materialize.”
The White House, as one might expect, was in far more effusive in its praise for the successful berthing, seeing it as validation of the administration’s emphasis on commercial spaceflight. “That is exactly what the President had in mind when he laid out a fresh course for NASA to explore new scientific frontiers and take Americans ever deeper into our Solar System while relying on private-sector innovators—working in the competitive free market—to ferry astronauts and cargo to Low Earth Orbit and the International Space Station,” Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) director John Holdren said in a statement. “It’s essential we maintain such competition and fully support this burgeoning and capable industry to get U.S. astronauts back on American launch vehicles as soon as possible.” OSTP also issued a selection of quotes from “space community leaders”, ranging from Norm Augustine to Sir Richard Branson to Steve Sqyures.
Also included in that statement were quotes from two former astronauts, Buzz Aldrin and Rusty Schweickart. While they expressed congratulations for the berthing, other retired astronauts have been more skeptical of commercial ventures. Their criticism—and their recent silence—did not escape the notice of journalist Miles O’Brien during a commercial space panel Saturday at the International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Washington. “I haven’t heard any of the ‘national heroes’ congratulating Elon Musk,” he said. “It would be kind of nice and gentlemenly if they would.”
Astronauts say crews would be comfortable in Dragon
Stephen Clark – SpaceflightNow.com
Two astronauts who helped capture and berth the Dragon supply ship said Saturday they would be comfortable flying a human-rated version of the craft on commercial flights to the International Space Station.
NASA flight engineer Don Pettit guided the space station's Canadian robotic arm to grapple the private cargo freighter Friday, three days after it blasted off from Florida on a test flight long-awaited by NASA and SpaceX, the craft's builder, owner and operator.
Joe Acaba, a former school teacher and environmental scientist, helped configure the space station's berthing system to receive the Dragon spacecraft as Pettit moved the capsule in position with the robot arm.
The research outpost's crew opened the hatch to Dragon on Saturday, and Pettit, Acaba and Andre Kuipers, a European Space Agency astronaut, spoke with reporters from inside the ship's cabin a few hours later.
"I spent quite a bit of time poking around in here this morning just looking at the engineering and the layout, and I'm very pleased," Pettit said Saturday. "It looks like it carries about as much cargo as I could put in my pickup truck."
Dragon became the first commercial vehicle to visit the space station when it arrived Friday. The craft is on a NASA-sponsored test flight to demonstrate transportation of cargo to the space station and back to Earth.
Dragon's cone-shaped pressurized compartment measures 12 feet in diameter at its base with a height of 14.4 feet. It has a volume of 350 cubic feet, about the size of a large walk-in closet.
SpaceX plans to outfit the Dragon spacecraft with seats, cockpit displays, controls, and an abort system to launch and land with up to seven astronauts. The company is competing for funding from NASA's commercial crew program, which intends to award at least two private firms in August with government financing to help cover the design and testing of rockets and spacecraft for astronaut transportation to and from the space station.
Until a commercial craft is certified for astronaut crews, U.S. fliers must ride to the station on Russian Soyuz capsules. NASA expects a commercial crew craft to be ready for operational missions by 2017.
Pettit, who launched to the station on a Soyuz in December, said Dragon is bigger than Russia's venerable capsule.
"It's roomier than a Soyuz, so flying up in a human-rated Dragon is not going to be an issue," Pettit said.
SpaceX developed the Dragon and its Falcon 9 booster with a mix of public and private investment. SpaceX has spent $1.2 billion since its founding in 2002, including development of Falcon 9, Dragon and other projects. About $680 million has been spent on SpaceX's space station cargo development efforts, according to Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president.
"I have a lot of confidence in our future, and this is a great first step to move us forward with the commercialization of [spaceflight]," Acaba said. "I think we would feel very comfortable in a human-rated vehicle just like this one."
NASA has ongoing funded Space Act Agreements with SpaceX, Boeing Co., Sierra Nevada Corp., and Blue Origin. Each company is designing crewed spacecraft capable of reaching the space station.
Andre Kuipers, who hails from the Netherlands, called Dragon "beautiful, spacious [and] modern" on his Flickr photo page. With blue interior lighting, Kuipers said Dragon "feels a bit like a sci-fi film set."
Pettit said Dragon was plenty spacious for quick trips to the complex, which orbits 250 miles above Earth. It would take between just a few hours to a couple of days for astronauts to arrive at the space station after launch.
"There's not enough room in here to hold a barn dance, but for transportation for crew up and down through Earth's atmosphere and into space, which is a rather short period of time, there's plenty of room in here for the envisioned crews," Pettit said.
SpaceX's No. 1 Rule for Naming Private Spaceship Parts: Be Cool
Clara Moskowitz - Space.com
A fire-breathing "Dragon" flew atop a "Falcon" that was granted its powers by "Merlin." Though the scene could be out of a fantasy novel, it is also literally true.
On Friday, a robotic spacecraft called Dragon docked at the International Space Station three days after launching on a Falcon 9 rocket driven by nine Merlin engines. The mission is a test flight for commercial company SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corp.), which became the first company ever to send a private spaceship to the space station.
Though many pieces of SpaceX hardware have fantastical monikers, company spokeswoman Kirstin Brost Grantham said they weren't all planned to fit a theme.
"They are named independently, the rule is names must be cool," Grantham told SPACE.com.
SpaceX's billionaire founder and chief designer Elon Musk has said that he named his spacecraft Dragon after the fictional creature "Puff the Magic Dragon" in the song by Peter, Paul and Mary. According to Musk, he chose the name because at the time he started the company in 2002, some critics considered his space goals fantastical.
Falcon 9 and its smaller sibling booster Falcon 1 are named in honor of the Millennium Falcon spacecraft flown by Han Solo in the sci-fi classic film "Star Wars," Musk has said.
The rocket's Merlin engines may be allusions to the wizard Merlin of Arthurian legend.
And those aren't the only whimsical names in SpaceX lore.
A navigation sensor called DragonEye was tested in 2009 on the space shuttle Endeavour's STS-127 mission, when the shuttle used it while approaching the International Space Station.
The Dragon capsule currently in orbit has 18 thrusters called Draco (after the constellation for Dragon) for maneuvering in space — a name that happens to be shared by one of the antagonists in J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" novel series. The spacecraft also uses a communications system called CUCU (pronounced "cuckoo") that stands for COTS Ultra High Frequency Communication Unit (COTS, or Commercial Orbital Transportation Services, is the name of the NASA program sponsoring Dragon's test flight).
An engine used to power the upper stage of Falcon 1 rockets is called Kestrel, which is the name of several species of birds in the falcon genus.
The spirit of SpaceX names so far appears to differ significantly from the monikers bestowed to spacecraft by NASA. While SpaceX is flying Falcons and Dragons, the U.S. space agency is working on a new rocket called the Space Launch System(SLS) and a capsule called the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), though this spacecraft is also known by the more user-friendly name of Orion.
The giant government-built space station goes by the straightforward name International Space Station, while our country's last spacecraft bore the only slightly more creative title space shuttle.
These naming trends may be just one more difference on the long list of ways that commercial spaceflight differs from the modus operandi of government space agencies.
SpaceX has grand aims to eventually build more rockets and spacecraft to explore the solar system beyond Earth orbit. Who knows what they'll be called?
SpaceX moves to the head of the class with Dragon docking
Lee Roop - Huntsville Times
American spacecraft is docked at the International Space Station today for the first time since the space shuttle quit flying in 2011, and the ripples from the fact that it's a private company's capsule are spreading fast and wide.
For Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), the week's milestone at the most basic level means the start of its $1.6 billion contract with NASA to deliver supplies to the space station. The company needed to prove it could do it, and it has. Now it can begin deliveries twice a year for the next six years.
"It obviously shows technical ability," NASA spokesman Allard Beutel aid last week in Washington.
The accomplishment also puts SpaceX at the front of the line of companies vying to be NASA's space taxi for cargo and astronauts to the station.
That's a good place to be with the U.S. House of Representatives pushing NASA this year to "down-select" the number of private companies it is helping financially to just one lead contractor and one backup.
Delivering humans is far different from delivering cargo, but it's hard today to imagine a down-select that doesn't include SpaceX near the top.
In a presidential election year, Falcon 9 had barely cleared the launch tower before the political tug-of-war began over credit for the accomplishment.
Supporting commercial rocketeers like SpaceX's CEO Elon Musk is a cornerstone of President Barack Obama's space program. The White House has fought with Congress since the president's first budget in 2010 over how much money to spend on commercial space with Obama wanting more and Congress less. But the commercial cargo program that brought SpaceX this far was actually started under former President George W. Bush.
"The program was began under the last administration as a means of delivering cargo to the space station less expensively, and after some delays, that goal may be coming within reach," said Dr. Scott Pace last week. Pace is director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Pace was one of the voices last week praising SpaceX while trying to put the launch into perspective.
"I will be very impressed if they berth successfully, and it looks like they have a good shot at it," he said in an email before the docking. "That said, I think it premature to say what it means beyond the technical milestones being demonstrated.
"While there is a lot of speculation about what this mission means for commercial space," Pace said, "it's still a test flight; albeit a very visible and symbolic one."
U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, is a powerful Senate supporter of NASA's human spaceflight program and critic of the Obama space policy, which did not include a new heavy-lift rocket for NASA until Congress basically forced the White House to build one.
"The reality remains that SpaceX has spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to launch a rocket nearly three years later than planned," Shelby said last week. "The 'private' space race is off to a dilatory start at best, and the commercial space flight market has yet to materialize."
Beyond the fight over money and political credit and the question of who's winning America's new space race, there is the question of public opinion. Musk and SpaceX emerged as huge winners in that arena last week.
Videos of Musk being cheered by hundreds of his young engineers, programmers and technicians after Falcon's successful launch were seen on TV news broadcast and watched by nearly 14,000 people so far on YouTube.
University of Alabama in Huntsville aerospace engineering department professor Dr. Brian Landrum said last week that, when SpaceX talks, young scientists and engineers listen.
"We were at a student conference ... back in the first week of April," Landrum said Friday. "It was in Cape Canaveral, actually, and a SpaceX guy spoke. ... You could see the students all excited."
Landrum echoed another point being made about SpaceX last week.
"They've got a vehicle that actually can fly," he said. "I think that's what's happened with NASA to some extent. You have to have a national scale entity doing big stuff like going to Mars. A private company's just not going to do that in the near term, for sure.
"Those are big scale organizations," Landrum said, "and you've got to have those. But these smaller commercials offer a lot of opportunity to see something fly in the near term."
Landrum said that when he was working on his doctorate at North Carolina State University in the 1990s, the university had a Mars mission research facility funded by NASA. We were going to be on Mars by 2015," he said, "and that was the previous President Bush."
Smaller missions are being completed and nearing completion by companies like SpaceX now, Landrum said. That's what motivates students is an opportunity to see something actually designed, built and flown in their lifetime," he said.
SpaceX's Successful Mission Boosts Commercial Credibility
Warren Ferster & Dan Leone – Space News
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is poised to begin full-fledged commercial operations following the successful launch and berthing of its cargo-carrying Dragon capsule to the international space station May 25.
The mission lends a strong dose of credibility to U.S. President Barack Obama’s controversial plan to commercialize astronaut crew transportation to and from low Earth orbit, as congressional critics of the strategy joined supporters in praising the company’s historic achievement. SpaceX is among several companies vying for NASA funding assistance to develop astronaut taxi services.
“After today, there are many more believers in commercial spaceflight than just an hour ago,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said while giving a speech at the International Space Development Conference here while the Dragon capture operation was under way.
Of more immediate importance, Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX should soon be cleared to begin making regular cargo deliveries to the space station under a fixed-price NASA contract valued at $1.6 billion. The company has already been advanced $336.7 million of that award.
SpaceX also is in position to receive the final $15 million installment of its $396 million Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) agreement with NASA, which lays out a payment schedule based on completion of development and demonstration milestones.
NASA has invested about $800 million in SpaceX to date. The vast majority of that is for cargo work.
Not all has gone as planned on the SpaceX COTS program. For one thing, SpaceX achieved the berthing milestone 32 months later than originally planned, even after it was able to persuade NASA to combine the objectives of the second and third COTS demonstrations into a single flight.
Moreover, the COTS program has cost NASA more than originally expected. SpaceX’s original COTS agreement, signed in 2006, called for $278 million in payments for a three-flight demonstration program culminating in the berthing at station; NASA ultimately wound up contributing an additional $118 million for a two-flight program.
But cost growth and delays are typical of space development programs, and there was no indication of dissatisfaction from SpaceX’s biggest customer: the U.S. government.
In a statement issued after the berthing May 25, the president’s top science adviser, John P. Holdren, called the event “an achievement of historical and scientific and technological significance” that will help maintain U.S. leadership in space.
“That is exactly what the President had in mind when he laid out a fresh course for NASA to explore new scientific frontiers and take Americans even deeper into our solar system while relying on private-sector innovators — working in the competitive free market — to ferry astronauts and cargo to low Earth orbit and the International Space Station,” Holdren said. “It’s essential we maintain such competition and fully support this burgeoning and capable industry to get U.S. astronauts back on American launch vehicles as soon as possible.”
Dragon Put Through Paces
In the space of about three days — three days, six hours and 11 minutes, to be exact — SpaceX launched Dragon to orbit aboard its Falcon 9 rocket and sent the capsule on a series of automated flight maneuvers beneath and around the international space station. Dragon then crept to within 10 meters of the orbital complex to be captured by the station’s robotic arm, which was controlled by astronaut Don Pettit.
“There’s reason to doubt we would succeed because there is not a lot of precedents for what we’ve done,” Elon Musk, founder and chief executive of SpaceX, said during a press briefing held about an hour after Dragon’s berthing. “I think those reasons no longer remain, having done today what we have done. I’m hoping that a lot of people’s doubts have been put to rest.”
The Dragon’s capture by the space station’s robotic arm was delayed almost two hours because of difficulties with the capsule’s laser imaging detection and ranging, or LIDAR, system. The LIDAR, which SpaceX calls Dragon Eye, picked up stray reflections from the station’s Japanese-built Kibo module, which interfered with positioning calculations required for proximity operations. SpaceX engineers narrowed the LIDAR system’s field of view and tried the rendezvous again, this time successfully. Pettit grappled the craft at 9:56 a.m. Eastern time and berthed it to the station shortly thereafter.
At press time, Dragon, which launched full of food and water, was scheduled to depart from the station May 31 with a load of return cargo. SpaceX will have to recover the spacecraft, which is to splash down in the Pacific Ocean later that day, and complete post-mission reviews with NASA before it can begin regular cargo runs.
Michael Suffredini, NASA’s international space station program manager, said at the May 25 press briefing that SpaceX’s first commercial cargo delivery is now scheduled for September.
The final COTS mission marked the third time Falcon 9 has flown to space. Its maiden flight in June 2010 was followed that December by Dragon’s first trip to orbit. The Dragon flown on that mission lacked much of the hardware demonstrated on the latest flight, including:
· Two eight-panel, folding solar arrays mounted on Dragon’s unpressurized cargo “trunk.”
· The Dragon Eye LIDAR, which enables the capsule to gauge distances and is crucial to autonomous rendezvous with the space station.
· A thermal imager, which helps the capsule locate the space station based on the heat it throws off. Those data are cross-checked with optical data gathered by Dragon Eye to aid in spacecraft positioning during station approach.
· An “Absolute GPS” system, which uses the U.S. GPS satellite navigation constellation to determine the capsule’s location relative to the Earth.
· A two-way UHF communications package built with off-the-shelf components that astronauts aboard the space station use to send commands to Dragon during capture and berthing.
· An S-band antenna to relay data back to Earth via NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite system.
As Atlantis heads for museum, NASA prepares for Orion mission
Dave Kraut - News Channel 8 (Tampa)
At Kennedy Space Center, the space shuttle Atlantis is being prepared to go on public display. The most complicated machine ever built will soon be a museum artifact.
Buddy McKenzie has been in charge of making the shuttle fleet safe for astronauts to fly in space for the last 24 years. Now he is making sure they are safe for the public to see up close.
"Essentially what we do is get rid of all of the nasty stuff that's on the vehicle, the fuels that are toxic," McKenzie said.
Fuel tanks and lines have been removed from the forward reaction control system that was used to maneuver the orbiter in space. Freon for cooling has also been drained and power has permanently been disabled.
"It's sad in a way because the space shuttle is going away," McKenzie said. "A lot of us put a lot of years into the space shuttle."
Bill Powers has worked on the shuttle program for 28 years. He is a spacecraft operator and it was his job to test the vehicle between missions.
The docking system would take three days, he said. "We would test every malfunction that could happen."
For 30 years, NASA sent American astronauts into space aboard the space shuttle. Now that the fleet has been retired, the next chapter of human spaceflight is beginning just a few miles from where Atlantis is being serviced.
A new spacecraft is taking shape that will travel farther than any manned spaceship before: the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle. Jim Kemp is the director of assembly, test and launch operations. He described the difference between what the shuttle was doing and Orion's mission: "We're going to go explore the universe."
The space shuttle was limited to operating in low earth orbit due to its thermal protection system. Orion will be traveling to the moon, asteroids and even Mars. Instead of being a winged spacecraft like the shuttle, Orion takes the shape of the Apollo command module, capable of withstanding 5,000 degrees during re-entry.
In order to reach the moon, Orion will use the most powerful rocket ever built.
The space launch system, or SLS, will use solid rocket boosters from the shuttle program and a multi-stage center rocket like the Saturn V. The first test flight into space will take place in 2014 from Cape Canaveral on a delta four rocket.
McKenzie says he is not sure what he will be doing after Atlantis is turned over to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex later this year. But he is confident in the Orion program and what it will do for America.
"Our nation should continue exploring space, and we will, and we will go places where no one has gone and because that's in our heart."
Excalibur Almaz details plans for capsule and space station
Zach Rosenberg - FlightInternational.com
Excalibur Almaz has detailed its plans to launch spacecraft to space stations in orbit around the moon, the first time the secretive company has done so publically.
The British company will use legacy Russian hardware, capsules from the Soviet Soyuz space programme and space stations from Salyut, to launch people into orbit around the moon. Both capsules and stations will undergo upgrades, but the basic hardware has flown in space up to nine times, and is described by Excalibur CEO Art Dula as have a technical readiness level of nine, the highest possible.
The capsules will initially be launched by Russian Soyuz FG launch vehicles from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Once in low Earth orbit (LEO), the capsules will dock with a Salyut station, which will use electric Hall thrusters to propel itself into orbit around the moon.
Four capsules, left over from the Soviet Union's secret military Soyuz programme, which ran in parallel to the better-known civilian programme, have been purchased and shipped to Excalibur's facilities on the Isle of Man in the United Kingdom, as have two Salyut stations in various phases of construction.
"Our company is positioned now to seek partners, customers and investors for our first flight," says Dula. "That's why we're making it public now."
Extensive testing on the 30-year-old capsules indicates that "we could fly these reusable vehicles to orbit at least up to 15 times, on 15 missions, without refurbishment of the thermal protection system. This is an extremely robust system," says Dula.
The company signed an unfunded Space Act Agreement (SAA) with NASA to exchange technical expertise. SAAs have generally been signed with companies hoping to gain NASA contracts, which Excalibur CEO Dula says the company is not currently interested in doing.
Studies conducted on the company's behalf by Futron, a space economics consultancy, showed that the business case for cislunar activities was significantly better than LEO-only flights if conducted without government funding.
"We are going to create a transportation system that can transport products, payloadsand can carry crew between the Earth and LEO, and earth orbit and the moon. So we have a cislunar space system. Our business objectives follow directly from that."
Medical treatments from 200 miles up
International Space Station experiments are tackling major illnesses
Katharine Gammon - Inside Science News Service
In the hunt for cancer treatments, researchers have had some help from higher authorities -- way higher. The International Space Station, orbiting the Earth at more than 200 miles in the sky, houses scientific experiments that have led to advances in several medical fields.
Many things don't react the same way in the microgravity environment of space as they do on the ground. Back in 1998, during the shuttle program, now-retired NASA scientist Dennis Morrison began experimenting on microencapsulation, a process that forms tiny liquid-filled, biodegradable micro-balloons containing various drug solutions. It can provide better drug delivery and new medical treatments for solid tumors and resistant infections. Those encapsulated drugs could be directly injected into a tumor and would go to work destroying the cancer from the inside out.
"The idea is that fluids don't behave in space the way they do here on Earth," explained Tara Ruttley, an associate International Space Station program scientist.
Harnessing space's unique environment of low fluid shear -- the motion of fluid around a living cell in space mimics that inside the body -- Morrison's first experiments showed it was possible to force two drugs together that would not combine in normal gravity.
The initial investigations were successful, so Morrison sent samples back for another eight experiments in encapsulation on the International Space Station in 2002 -- this time adding a coating of electrical charges that make these capsules invisible to the immune system.
He was also able to create larger microballoons that could carry drugs and position themselves to cut off blood flow to the tumor and stop its growth. The space-produced microcapsules as a cancer-treatment delivery system inspired the development of an Earth-based system that can replicate the quality of the microcapsules created in space.
The station research led directly to five U.S. patents that have been licensed by NASA and two more that are pending. Some of the technologies and methods have been licensed by commercial companies to develop new delivery methods, including better ultrasound-enhanced needles and catheters that could be used to deliver the microcapsules of anti-tumor drugs directly to tumor sites.
"What we see from space is really preliminary, but it has enormous potential," said Ruttley, who reported that a company has been approved for clinical trials to test the microcapsules.
Microencapsulation is a very powerful technique, but not quite ready for outer-space mass-production, said Margaret Wheatley, a professor of biomedical engineering at Drexel University.
"Smart microcapsules are now being developed to hone in on tumors and also to respond to triggers for controlling release," said Wheatley. "Certainly NASA's effort in microgravity contributes valuable insight, but regular use of microgravity manufacturing for health care is a long way off due to the extraordinarily high costs."
Ruttley said that in some cases the cost of development in space is actually economical compared with some Earth-bound trials.
"With more research being processed through the pipeline, it is faster and cheaper to get something on orbit than ever before," Ruttley said. "Biotech and biology are now turnkey operations. NASA can load your experiment up, plug it in and go."
Many experiments need very little input from astronauts on the space station, while others need some maintenance, Ruttley explained.
Microencapsulation isn't the only medical technology developed in space's strange environment. NASA discovered early on in its space missions that certain microbes become more virulent in microgravity. For example, Salmonella bacteria change their gene expression and become three to seven times more virulent in low-gravity environments. A company was able to use the data from space to create a Salmonella vaccine, which is currently being tested by the FDA.
Other companies are sending microbes to the station, developing a pneumonia vaccine and a MRSA vaccine for staph infections. Japanese scientists are studying protein-crystal growth in space. If protein is crystallized in space, it grows freely because of the microgravity environment. Those perfect crystals are will hopefully make better treatments for a particular kind of muscular dystrophy called Duchenne's. One treatment is now being tested in animals.
"We're excited and we work hard to make sure that station is used the way it was intended for science," said Ruttley.
The Historic Flight of the Dragon
Steve Ember - Voice of America
A rocket designed and built by a privately owned company has made history by bringing a supply capsule to the International Space Station. It was the first private spacecraft to carry out such a mission.
The company SpaceX launched its Dragon space capsule last week on the company's Falcon 9 rocket. It launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
SpaceX mission controllers celebrated when the rocket had reached orbit and its solar panels had deployed. Three days earlier, a launch attempt was cancelled at the last second when a computer found a problem with the engine.
Charlie Bolden is the head of the American space agency, NASA. He spoke to reporters at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida after the rocket was launched.
CHARLIE BOLDEN: "The significance of this day cannot be overstated. A private company has launched a spacecraft to the International Space Station that will attempt to dock there for the first time. And, while there is a lot of work ahead to successfully complete this mission, we are certainly off to a good start."
The head of SpaceX watched the launch from company headquarters. Elon Musk told reporters:
ELON MUSK: "There is so much hope riding on that rocket, so when it worked, and Dragon worked and the solar arrays deployed, and people saw their handiwork in space and operating as it should -- I mean it was tremendous elation. I mean, it is like, I guess, for us, it is like winning the Super Bowl."
The rocket successfully linked with the International Space Station on Friday. Astronauts on board the Space Station used its robotic arm to secure the capsule.
SPACE STATION: "Capture is confirmed."
MISSION CONTROL: "Station, Houston, congratulations on a wonderful capture. You've made a lot of folk happy down here and over in Hawthorne and right here in Houston. Great job, guys."
NASA has invested about four hundred million dollars in SpaceX to help it develop space flight technology. And the agency also has a contract with SpaceX for twelve flights to resupply the space station.
NASA wants private companies to carry out operations in low-Earth orbit. The agency wants to center its attention on developing the next generation of spacecraft that can travel to asteroids or Mars.
The Falcon 9 rocket brought more than five hundred kilograms of supplies to the space station. But it also carried the remains, or ashes, of three hundred people. Among the remains were those of astronaut Gordon Cooper and actor James Doohan. Doohan played Chief Engineer Scotty in the popular television and movie series "Star Trek. "
The remains will orbit the Earth for about a year until burning up in the atmosphere.
Space X, ‘Star Wars’ and the end of our imaginative space domination
Alexandra Petri - Washington Post
Watching the Dragon dock with the International Space Station, just in time for “Star Wars Day,” I couldn’t help but wonder: Whatever happened to the days when humans were the aggressors in space?
I don’t mean in the actual world.
I mean in the world that matters — our imaginative universe.
From “Flash Gordon” to “Star Trek” to the original “Star Wars,” our popular imagination used to be rife with human beings flying from one end of the galaxy to the other and showing the aliens who was boss. Or at least exploding the occasional planet.
But these days, every time I find myself at the megaplex, the aliens are the aggressors. From “Avengers” to “Battleship” to “Star Trek” to “Thor,” all the way back to “Independence Day,” we can’t catch a break! They have come with their air-swimming ship-fish to destroy Manhattan! They have come with their water-swimming ship-ships to battle our navy in the deep! They are going to drill a hole through the planet and turn us into a black hole! They are going to, er, slightly damage a small underpopulated town, using mythical robot things — but wait for the sequel! They are going to anger Will Smith!
My point is, we’ve spent more than a decade on the defensive.
The few times we do make it off the planet, we are immediately beaten back by aliens who turn out to be bluer, wiser, more cat-like versions of ourselves, with larger stores of unobtainium.
Stephen Hawking said we should be terrified of interacting with our alien brethren.
“If aliens ever visit us,” he said, “I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”
If you see aliens, ignore them. Do not make eye contact. Move along, and let them go about their business.
And Stephen Hawking would generally know.
But that’s in real life.
Movies are supposed to offer an escape. And recently the kind of escape they offer human protagonists is the frantic and scrambling kind, away from massively over-equipped extraterrestrial visitors. Sure, we beat back the monsters in the end. But it’s always close, and we lose large chunks of masonry and major cities.
Even “War of the Worlds,” one of the oldest of the alien invasion genre, was pessimistic about our capacity to fight.
The Earth is a fragile teaspoon of blue color in an immense darkness. They come. They have us outmanned, outarmed (sometimes they literally have a higher number of arms), out-technologied. Not a single one of them has ever heard of Weinergate. They are, in a word, ready to take charge.
But I am not ready to let them.
For a while, we could at least imagine ourselves to be masters of the universe.
If we can’t even win and look outward and ad ven ture on film, then we are pretty much stuck. Space program? Leave that to Newt Gingrich. Forget moving onwards and outwards. The watchword of the hour is hunkering down and hoping the Visitors will pass. Still, if I have to watch one more movie where a tiny, plucky band of earthlings is hunted down by savvier aliens with superior technology — I’m sure I’ll pony up my $13, but I won’t like it.
If we can actually get our space station to capture the Dragon by the tail, we should be able to imagine something better. Imagination is the easy part.
At any rate it used to be.
NASA is ready for its shuttle replica
John DeLapp – Galveston County Daily News
A space shuttle will be coming to Houston after all.
Actually, it’s a replica of an orbiter. The reproduction has been on display at the Kennedy Space Center since 1994, and when the decision was made to send the now-retired space shuttles to other areas, it also was decided that the replica would be put on display at Space Center Houston.
The reproduction was loaded onto a barge Thursday and is making its way across the Gulf of Mexico. Friday afternoon, it will navigate through the Clear Creek channel at Kemah, move across Clear Lake, then berth at the Johnson Space Center dock next to the Hilton hotel, 3000 NASA Parkway, in Nassau Bay.
The arrival of the replica will kick off what Space Center Houston is calling a “Shuttlebration Weekend.”
“We’re expecting it to come in between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.,” Space Center Houston spokesman Jack Moore said. “That all depends on the weather, but we’re hoping it will be 4:30 (p.m.) on the dot.
“After it arrives, we’re going to have a large street party.”
On Saturday, the space shuttle replica will be loaded onto a large trailer to make the 1-mile trip from the dock to Space Center Houston, which will occur early Sunday morning.
It promises to be a stellar sight.
“I think it’s going be pretty spectacular to see a space shuttle going down NASA Parkway,” Moore said.
The spokesman had some tips for those wishing to watch the replica’s arrival.
“The best spot to watch will be at the Hilton,” Moore said. “There will be parking available at Johnson Space Center, and we will have trams running to bring people in.”
He said Clear Lake Park, 5002 E. NASA Parkway, will offer some nice views of the arrival. But, Moore discouraged those who would like to watch from a boat.
“Unfortunately, from the water, you will not be able to see that well because there are limits in place as to how close you can get to the barge.”
___
At A Glance
The arrival of the replica of the Space Shuttle Explorer will result in several road closures.
Friday
The Kemah Bridge will be closed to all vehicle and pedestrian traffic for about 30 minutes between noon and 1 p.m.
The eastbound and westbound right lanes of NASA Parkway from Upper Bay Road to Space Center Boulevard will be closed beginning at 11 a.m. When event traffic subsides, the westbound lane will reopen. The eastbound lane will remain closed from Lagoon Drive to Space Center Boulevard.
Saturday
The eastbound right lane of NASA Parkway will remain closed from Lagoon Drive to Space Center Boulevard.
Sunday
NASA Parkway will be closed from El Camino Real to Space Center Boulevard from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m.
The NASA 1 Bypass will be closed to eastbound traffic from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m.
Hawks and Falcons:
Covering the SpaceX COTS-2 Launch with the 920th Rescue Wing
Mike Killian - AmericaSpace.org
If you have ever watched a rocket or space shuttle launch in person from Kennedy Space Center or Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, then you have probably noticed one or two Pave Hawk helicopters flying overhead from time-to-time before and after the launch (or the scrub). Maybe you knew what they were doing, or perhaps you didn’t and just thought it was cool to watch military aircraft patrol the launch site. Whatever your thoughts, their role in the skies above Cape Canaveral is critical to the safety in and around a launch site for every mission.
Based out of Patrick Air Force Base, the 920th Rescue Wing serves as an Air Force Reserve Command combat-search-and-rescue unit – responsible for a variety of demanding missions and ready to deploy at a moment’s notice, trained to perform some of the most highly-specialized operations in the Air Force. Their elite team of Pararescuemen, better known as PJ’s, are among the most highly trained emergency trauma specialists in the U.S. military. Elite graduates of the so-called “Superman School”, they are capable of performing life-saving missions anywhere in the world, at any time.
In addition to combat search and rescue operations, the 920th also provides search-and-rescue support for civilians at sea who are lost or in distress, as well as providing world-wide humanitarian and disaster-relief operations supporting rescue efforts in the aftermath of disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes. When a covert four-man Navy SEAL team was ambushed and surrounded in a Taliban counter attack high in the Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan in the summer of 2005, the 920th was who Special Ops command called to perform the rescue.
In 1961, the 920th began their relationship with NASA and the U.S. Space Program, providing safety and security surveillance of the Eastern Launch Range during all rocket launches from Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. They were the primary rescue force serving as “guardians of the astronauts” for 50 years, providing contingency response for a variety of emergencies that could potentially come up during a shuttle launch or landing – up until 2011 that is, when NASA retired their space shuttle fleet and left astronauts dependent on Russia to get to and from space.
Recently, I was invited by the 920th to take a flight with them on a range-clearing mission to support the historic launch of the first Space Exploration Technologies’ (SpaceX) Dragon spacecraft to journey to the International Space Station – a mission which would turn out to be the first to see a commercial company dock and deliver supplies to the orbiting outpost. Media have never flown with the 920th for any launch, I was the first photojournalist to do so in the 50 years since the 920th began supporting launch operations on Florida’s Space Coast, and I was humbled to have the opportunity.
Although America’s human spaceflight program is practically non-existent since the end of NASA’s space shuttle program in 2011, the 920th’s role supporting unmanned rocket launches from the Cape is still as active and as important as it has ever been. Rescue Wing Airmen continue to work closely with the 45th Space Wing, NASA, the Naval Ordinance Test Unit, and civilian space companies (such as SpaceX) providing safety and security on the Eastern Range for every launch.
HAWKS AND FALCONS
Crews take to the skies in one of the most sophisticated helicopters in the world, a beefed-up version of the famous Black Hawk – the HH-60G Pave Hawk, a “Black Hawk on steroids” according to Captain Cathleen Snow, 920th Rescue Wing Chief of Public Affairs. With the Pave Hawk’s ability to perform mid-air refueling, pilots can fly non-stop for 14 hours. Each Pave Hawk features an upgraded communications and navigation suite that includes integrated inertial navigation/global positioning/Doppler navigation systems, satellite communications, secure voice, and “Have Quick” communications. The Pave Hawk’s of the 920th also feature an automatic flight control system, night vision, and a forward looking infrared system – known as color radar – that greatly enhances night low-level operations and allows them to fly in virtually any weather, day or night. For the Pave Hawk and its crews, searching in the dead of night for either boaters who have wandered too close to a rocket launch or soldiers trapped behind enemy lines – is not a problem. Many of the Pave Hawks flown by the 920th still have bullet holes in them from their tours in Afghanistan and Iraq - a sobering reminder of the reality of their jobs as combat-search-and-rescue airmen.
Pave Hawk "Jolly 1" preparing to take to the skies to clear the Eastern Range in support of the SpaceX Falcon-9 COTS-2 launch. Photo Credit: Mike Killian / ARES Institute and AmericaSpace
I arrived at Patrick AFB at 12:30 a.m. on May 19 for our flight to clear the Eastern Range for the first launch attempt. Captain Snow, Chief of Public Affairs at the 920th Rescue Wing, met me at the main gate, at which point we proceeded to go meet the crew and conduct the standard pre-flight briefing. The briefing is incredibly thorough, nothing is missed, everything from contingency plans in case of an emergency to fuel loads to radio frequencies to the positions of both Pave Hawks at launch time is covered. Both Pave Hawk crews were also brought up to speed on the launch itself and the details of the COTS-2 (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services) mission, and they were not shy about showing their excitement for a one-second launch window as opposed to a typical two or three hour launch window. Our Pave Hawk would patrol north of the launch site, call sign “Jolly 1?, the other (Jolly 2) would patrol to the south of the launch site.
Once everyone was briefed we headed over to be fitted with our flight gear and life support equipment. The building where we got geared up resembles, at first glance, a locker room at any gym – except instead of football helmets and dirty socks there are night vision goggles, parachutes, flight helmets and headsets as well as inflatable military life preservers… and possibly a few pairs of dirty socks. We geared up and made sure our headsets worked properly, then headed to the flight line, where two of Patrick’s fourteen HH-60G Pave Hawks were being prepared for our flight.
After talking with some of the crew and going over emergency scenarios, such as learning how to safely bail out of a $40 million Pave Hawk, the aircraft’s twin General Electric engines started and the choppers came alive. Our pilot was Colonel Jeffrey “SKINNY” Macrander, who just so happens to be the Commander of the 920th Rescue Wing – responsible for the organization, training and equipping of the wing and providing leadership, management and supervision to the 1,700 citizen airmen under his command. Colonel Macrander is a veteran of Operations Allied Force, Northern Watch, Noble Eagle, Southern Watch and Operation Enduring Freedom, Colonel Macrander is a rated command pilot and has over 4,500 hours of flight time in 5 different military aircraft. He was also on the crew who rescued ambushed Navy SEALS in the mountains of Afghanistan in 2005.
“They usually like us to clear the box about 2 hours prior to launch, but since it is 2:00 a.m. we don’t expect a whole lot of small boats out there but we still get the commercial traffic that cruises back and forth,” said Colonel Macrander minutes before our flight. “The big boats are always up on a maritime frequency, so we have a special radio in the Pave Hawk to call and talk to them. We’ll tell them to either speed up, change their course, or slow down so that they are not in the range for the launch window. We’ll call the coordinates into the control office at the Cape and they will plot it, do some math, and let us know what the boaters need to do to stay out of the range. A lot of times the small boats are just fishing and not monitoring their radios, so sometimes we have to come down there and hover pretty close to get their attention and let them know with hand gestures to get on the radio.”
I would find out later that evening just how close they got to boaters who were not paying attention to the radio, hovering maybe 200 feet over a boater who was sound asleep and not paying attention to radio calls to clear the area for the launch. The crew used the noise from the Pave hawk’s rotors and flashed a bright spotlight on his boat to wake him up and get his attention. I can only imagine his reaction to being woken up by an Air Force Pave Hawk circling overhead within throwing distance in the middle of the night.
As for the launch, it scrubbed 0.5 seconds before liftoff due to a high chamber pressure reading in the number five engine at ignition, and we landed back at Patrick with our job done, awaiting word on a date for the next launch attempt. There was a three-day gap between launch attempts and I had another job to do that weekend. So, I immediately left Patrick and boarded a commercial flight from Orlando to Las Vegas to cover the annular solar eclipse. After covering the eclipse I headed back to Florida for my next Pave Hawk flight to cover the second launch attempt in the early (very early) morning hours of May 22.
DRAGON’S BREATH
I returned to Patrick Air Force Base Monday night at 10:30 p.m. to do it all over again, but this time with Lt. Colonel Rob Haston piloting our Pave Hawk, call sign Jolly 1. Lt. Colonel Haston has been supporting rocket launches for nearly twenty years, piloting Pave Hawks and clearing the range for nearly every launch since 1995 – including space shuttle launches and landings. In the time since he has witnessed three rockets explode – a Delta, an Atlas, and a Titan, so Lt. Colonel Haston understands first hand the importance of the 920th’s role in securing the Eastern Range for a launch.
“I liken supporting rocket launches to fishing. There are a lot of nuances to range clearing that I’ve experienced over the years,” said Lt. Colonel Haston. “You get to know the type of boats and generally where they are going. For instance, tug boats try and get in close to the shore if they are traveling south. A lot of different skills are involved depending on the type of boats you are dealing with. You may be dealing with a 1,000-foot freighter with a non-English speaking captain, or a brand new boat owner in a sailboat.” Haston’s unique experience supporting launches is, as he put it, “not the sort of thing you pick up in AF regulations,” but rather tricks of the trade.
We went through the same as we did for the first launch attempt days earlier; pre-flight briefing, gearing up, and back to the flight line where two Pave Hawk’s were being prepared for our flights. This time around the crew gave me a pair of night-vision goggles so I could see what they see and shoot some photos to give viewers their perspective. The night vision goggles help amplify the available light from the moon and stars by up to 5,000 times onto a green phosphorous screen; the human eye can distinguish more shades of green than any other color. There was no moon this night, and even 60 miles out over the ocean in the darkest black I have ever seen, the goggles illuminated everything, even in the pitch black I could see the ripple of waves on the ocean’s surface.
We took to the skies two hours before launch, heading north from Patrick up the coast of Brevard County, eventually making our way over Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and SpaceX Launch Complex 40 where the Falcon-9 rocket stood fully fueled. We hovered a short distance away from the rocket for a few minutes, allowing me to shoot some exclusive photos from our unique vantage point before heading out to sea to clear boat traffic from the range – our orders were to clear an area about 20 miles wide and 60 miles long around the launch site. “They (range control) want us to clear 8-10 miles away from the azimuth. With a small rocket like this, it’s a small box, but because it’s brand new, we need to keep it pretty clear,” said Haston. The night was fairly quiet, there was not much boat traffic getting in the way, but it was interesting to come within a couple hundred feet of a Carnival cruise ship and tell them to hurry up and get into Port Canaveral before the launch. I can only imagine the surprise people onboard must have felt when they saw, or heard, an Air Force Pave Hawk circling closely overhead.
Lights go off in the Pave Hawk during night-ops – the fluorescent tubes to reference our emergency exits, the controls in the cockpit, and the LCD screens on our cameras and cell phones were the only lights we had. The pitch black view 60 miles out over the Atlantic was the darkest black I have ever seen. The Milky Way shined brightly in the sky, and the sound of our rotors with no visual of anything was very strange, even eerie – at one point I lost all reference of direction and could not even see the camera gear I had strapped to me. Eventually the lights of Florida’s Space Coast began to shine, and the unmistakeable sight of xenon lights at SpaceX Launch Complex 40 came back into view. Even from 30 miles out, in the dark of night, NASA’s massive Vehicle Assembly Building stands out like a sore thumb – many of my friends and colleagues were on the VAB roof to cover the historic launch.
We arrived at the shoreline north of Kennedy Space Center about 20 minutes before launch, at which point we headed south along the beach, over former shuttle launch pads 39B and 39A before hovering one last time next to the Falcon 9 rocket for some last minute photos. We then proceeded to fly over Kennedy Space Center, at which point Lt. Colonel Haston brought us over to the VAB, circling it from the back and bringing us within throwing distance of the rooftop and press site. I could see some of the press corps flashing lights at us, their way of saying hello – we were close enough that I could see the light from the LCD screens on their cameras as they set up to shoot the launch.
With minutes before lift-off, we positioned just north of the VAB and hovered with a great view out the left side of our Pave Hawk. We listened to the launch commentary on our headsets, and then it went. Falcon-9 roared to life under cover of darkness, the power of its nine Merlin engines turned night into day and the entire landscape of Kennedy Space Center lit up. The rocket was incredibly bright, much more so than any other rocket launched with no Solid Rocket Boosters – probably due to the fact that the Falcon-9 burns rocket grade kerosene instead of the more widely used liquid hydrogen. As the Dragon spacecraft accelerated into the atmosphere on the power of the Falcon-9, it quickly went above the Pave Hawk’s rotors and out of view, at which point Lt. Colonel Haston began tilting the helo up so we could get in a few more shots. We then circled to try and position ourselves for another view, but by that time the rocket was already gone, still visible, but already on the edge of space en route to the International Space Station.
With that, our mission was complete, and we headed south back to Patrick – passing the VAB, NASA press site, and NASA Causeway on our approach to Cape Canaveral AFS. As we approached Port Canaveral, the first stage of the Falcon-9 was already re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere, shining as bright as a comet as it plunged back to Earth. Upon reaching the Port, Lt. Colonel Haston decided to show us a little of what the Pave Hawk could do in flight, performing some maneuvers that most would describe as a roller coaster ride over Port Canaveral. I’m sure some of the folks on the ground wondered why a Pave Hawk was going crazy in the sky, but it sure was fun.
“Day launches are my preference as you encounter wildlife from the aircraft. You can see various fish, turtles and dolphins, and the occasional whale while flying over the wide open ocean,” said Haston. “But supporting any landmark launch like this one is always a great thing to be a part of.”
Upon landing, one of the windows on the open door on my side of the Pave Hawk blew out. Fortunately it was found on the flight line near to where we parked, but the reaction from the ground crew was priceless – one of the ground crew kept poking his arm through the empty space where the window should have been with a “what the ….” look of confusion on his face. After lots of handshakes, and a few photos, I returned my flight gear and left Patrick Air Force Base and headed to KSC where I had cameras set up at the launch pad.
Landing at Patrick was the end of my day, or night, depending on how you look at it. But for the crews I flew with, it was just the beginning, as they were getting ready to perform a search-and-rescue operation on a ship 1,200 miles off the coast of Florida in the area of Bermuda. Their motto, “These things we do, that others may live” is a way of life for the men and women of the 920th Rescue Wing, and I am honored to have flown with them, twice, to cover a launch which marked a pivotal turning point for America’s space program.
“Tired of Apologizing:” The Flight of Aurora 7
Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.org
Fifty years ago, this week, America launched its second man into orbit. That man should have been Deke Slayton, but a heart murmur had grounded him, not in favour of his backup, Wally Schirra, but in favour of John Glenn’s backup, Scott Carpenter. The theory was that the second orbital voyage would essentially repeat Glenn’s achievement (five hours and three orbits) and it made sense to fly Carpenter and keep Schirra for a subsequent mission. Schirra learned of the change in assignment during an impromptu gathering at the Carpenters’ home…and what should have been the most exhilarating moment of Scott Carpenter’s life turned instead into an ordeal. Slayton was angry at having lost his mission and Schirra was indignant at having been skipped in the pecking order, to such an extent that Carpenter felt he was spending more time apologising than training. One evening, Carpenter told his wife, Rene: “Damn it! I’m tired of apologizing. This is my flight now!” The flight would prove highly successful in many ways, highly controversial in others, and, it is said, would deny Carpenter the chance of ever flying into space again.
Wally Schirra felt no bitterness towards Carpenter, but in his autobiography, Schirra’s Space, he acknowledged that “the system was rotten”. In Schirra’s mind, Carpenter had been through test pilot school, but was a multi-engine aviator and communications officer…not a fighter pilot. Yet Carpenter had many impressive credentials. In a December 1960 ‘peer vote’ for who they felt should be the first American man in space, John Glenn placed Carpenter at the top of his list. During the selection process for Project Mercury, Carpenter once blew into a tube of mercury for three minutes – far longer than anyone else – and showed himself capable of enduring the centrifuge at 18 G, using explosive ‘grunting’ to breathe.
When he was named as pilot of the seventh Mercury-Atlas mission (MA-7) in March 1962, Carpenter decided to call his craft ‘Aurora 7’. “I think of Project Mercury and the open manner in which we are conducting it for the benefit of all as a light in the sky,” he wrote later. “Aurora also means ‘dawn’ – and, in this case, the dawn of a new age. The Seven, of course, stands for the original seven astronauts.” By now, the suffix had become commonplace and, coincidentally, ‘Aurora’ also happened to be the name of one of two streets bordering Carpenter’s boyhood home in Boulder, Colorado.
Owing to the ‘experimental’ nature of Friendship 7 – “for all its first-time danger,” wrote Carpenter and his daughter Kris Stoever in For Spacious Skies, “MA-6 had been designed to answer the simple question: Could it be done?” – the next mission would encompass more engineering tasks and scientific activities, including observations, photography and extensive manoeuvring. Deke Slayton, when the flight was still his to fly, had expressed consternation at the sheer volume of tests and experiments. “Everybody and his brother came out of the woodwork,” he wrote. “One guy wanted me to release a balloon to measure air drag. Another guy had some ground observations I was supposed to make. I had my hands full trying to resist it.” From 16 March 1962, Carpenter found that the scientific demands of were his to handle: they included combined yaw-roll manoeuvres to study orbital sunrises, use of terrestrial landmarks and stars for navigational reference and flying in an inverted, head-towards-Earth attitude to determine the effect of ‘Earth-up/sky-down’ orientation on the pilot’s abilities.
Delayed from 19 May 1962, the launch was rescheduled for the 24th. Carpenter was awakened at 1:15 am EST and proceeded through the usual pre-flight rituals: breakfast, a medical examination and suiting-up. He was aboard Aurora 7 by 5:00 am, to enjoy one of the smoothest countdowns yet experienced in Project Mercury, with only persistent ground fog and cloud and camera-coverage issues complicating matters. During a 45-minute delay past the original 7:00 am launch time, Carpenter sipped cold tea from his squeeze bottle and chatted to his family over the radio. In fact, his wife Rene and their four children represented the first astronaut family to journey to Cape Canaveral to watch the launch in person. To avoid media attention, a neighbour had provided a private flight to Florida and a non-descript car, which Rene drove to the astronauts’ hideaway near Pad 14, wearing huge sunglasses, a kerchief over her conspicuous blonde coif and her two daughters hidden under a blanket. The media, anticipating the arrival of a blonde mother of four, instead saw only a well-disguised mother of two…
Sixteen seconds after 7:45 am, the Atlas’ engines ignited, prompting all four Carpenter children to abandon the television set and rush out onto the beach to watch their father’s launch. Elsewhere, an estimated 40 million viewers watched as America launched its second man into orbit. Carpenter would later describe “surprisingly little vibration”, although the engines “made a big racket” and the swaying of the rocket during the early stages of ascent was noticeable. In his autobiography, he would express surprise, after so many years of flying aircraft and ‘levelling-out’ after an initial climb, to see the capsule’s altimeter climbing continuously as the Atlas shot straight up.
Already, however, the first glitches of what would become a troubled mission were rearing their heads. Aurora 7’s pitch horizon scanner – meant to monitor the horizon to maintain the pitch attitude of the spacecraft – immediately began feeding incorrect data into the automatic control system. When this ‘wrong’ information was analysed by the autopilot, it responded, as designed, by firing the pitch thruster to correct a perceived error; thereby wasting precious fuel. Forty seconds after the separation of the escape tower, the scanner was 18 degrees in error. It had reached 20 degrees in error by the time Carpenter achieved orbit. As the flight wore on, the error persisted and produced “near-calamitous effects”.
For now, the euphoria of being in space overtook the astronaut. “I am weightless!” he cried. Deciding not to rely on the automatic controls, Carpenter’s use of fly-by-wire smartly turned the capsule around at a fuel expense of just 725 grams, as compared to 2.3 kg on Friendship 7. No sensation of speed was apparent, although he was now travelling at 28,240 km/h and soon received his first “arresting” view of Earth.
Five and a half minutes into the mission, Carpenter received notification that his orbit was good enough for up to seven orbits. He quickly got to work. “With the completion of the turnaround manoeuvre,” he wrote later, “I pitched the capsule nose down, 34 degrees, to retro attitude, and reported what to me was an astounding sight. I had the Moon in the centre of my window, a spent booster tumbling slowly away and looming beneath me the African continent.” He pulled out his flight plan index cards and Velcroed them into place; these would provide him with timing cues for communication with ground stations, when and for how long to use control systems, when to begin and end manoeuvres, what observations to make and when to perform experiments. Minute-by-minute, they mapped out his flight.
Then, 16 minutes after launch, the astronaut noted that his spacecraft’s actual attitude did not seem to be in agreement with what the instruments were telling him. Aware of problems that John Glenn experienced with his gyro reference system, and cognisant of the fact that he had much other work to do, Carpenter dismissed it.
“A thorough [automatic stabilisation and control system] check, early in the flight, could have identified the [horizon pitch scanner] malfunction,” he later wrote. “Ground control could have insisted on it, when the first anomalous readings were reported. Such a check would have required anywhere from two to six minutes of intense and continuous attention on the part of the pilot. A simple enough matter, but a prodigious block of time in a science flight – and in fact the very reason [such] checks weren’t included in the flight plan.” With so much to do, it would not be until his second orbit that Carpenter would again report problems with the capsule’s autopilot.
Passing over the ground station at Kano, in north-central Nigeria, Carpenter successfully photographed the Sun for MIT physicists, then, over the Indian Ocean, acquired initial readings for a study of atmospheric ‘airglow’. However, conditions aboard the spacecraft were becoming uncomfortable, as cabin temperatures increased. Years later, in The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe described Aurora 7 as “a picnic” and noted that its astronaut had “a grand time”; Carpenter, however, countered that his shorter-than-normal preparation for his mission made it anything but a walk in the park. “To the extent that training creates certain comfort levels with high-performance duties like spaceflight,” he wrote, “then, yes, I was prepared for, and at times may have even enjoyed, some of my duties aboard Aurora 7. But I was deadly earnest about the success of the mission, intent on observing as much as humanly possible, and committed to conducting all the experiments entrusted to me. I made strenuous efforts to adhere to a very crowded flight plan.”
Admirably, for the first 90 minutes of his mission, Carpenter focused on his Earth-observation tasks, photographing rapid changes in light levels as the spacecraft crossed the ‘terminator’ and expressing sheer astonishment as the Sun disappeared below the horizon. “It’s now nearly dark,” he remarked in the flight transcript, “and I can’t believe where I am!” Passing over Muchea in Australia, Carpenter discussed possible ways of establishing attitude control, on the dark side of Earth with no moonlight, and relayed what reliable visual references he had through the window or the periscope. Pitch attitude was not a problem, thanks to scribe reference marks on Aurora 7’s window, but accomplishing the correct yaw attitude was more difficult and time-consuming.
“At night, when geographic features are less visible, you can establish a zero-yaw attitude by using the star navigation charts, a simplified form of a slide rule,” Carpenter wrote later. “The charts show exactly what star should be in the centre of the window at any point in the orbit – by keeping that star at the very centre of your window, you know you’re maintaining zero yaw. But there are troubles even here, for the pilot requires good ‘dark adaption’ to see the stars and dark adaption was difficult during the early flights because of the many light leaks in the cabin.” Among the most annoying of these leaks were Aurora 7’s instrument panel lights and, particularly, the glowing rim around the spacecraft’s clock. Carpenter noticed that his space suit temperature was higher than normal, but there was little time to ponder it further, as he passed over Australia’s Great Victoria Desert and prepared to observe four flares of a combined one million candlepower. Unfortunately, the cloud cover was too dense and he saw nothing.
Another aspect of the mission about which no joy was forthcoming was a multi-coloured balloon, which he released 100 minutes after launch. For a few seconds, the expected ‘confetti spray’ signalled a successful deployment, but is soon became clear that the balloon had not inflated properly: due to a ruptured seam in its skin, it deployed to about a third of its expected diameter and only two of its five colours – Day-Glo orange and dull aluminium – were visible. Two small, ear-like appendages, described as “sausages”, emerged on the edges of the partially-inflated sphere. Its movement was erratic and, although Carpenter succeeded in acquiring a few measurements, the tether quickly wrapped itself around Aurora 7’s nose. Consequently, the aerodynamic data was of limited use. Carpenter attempted to release the balloon, but it remained close to the spacecraft. There it stayed until retrofire and eventually burned up during re-entry.
By this time, Mission Control was keeping a close eye on Aurora 7’s fuel usage, which, by two hours into the flight, was at the 69-percent capacity for its manual and automatic supplies. As Carpenter passed over Nigeria early in his second orbital pass, the manual supply had dropped still further to just 51 percent. He felt he had expended additional fuel trying to orient the spacecraft and blamed “conflicting requirements of the flight plan”. During each fly-by-wire manoeuvre, very slight movements of the control stick would activate the small thrusters, whereas bigger movements would initiate larger thrusters. For every flick of his wrist, Carpenter could activate the larger thrusters and would then have to correct them, thus wasting valuable fuel. “The design problem with the three-axis control stick,” he wrote later, “meant the pilot had no way of disabling, or locking-out, these high-power thrusters.” Subsequent Mercury flights had an on-off switch for just that purpose.
The still-unknown glitch with the horizon pitch scanner remained. Two hours into the mission, Carpenter was informed that he should now be transitioning Aurora 7 from automatic to fly-by-wire control. The astronaut opposed this, preferring to remain in automatic mode, which was supposedly more thrifty with fuel consumption. Unfortunately, this was not the case, because the malfunctioning pitch horizon scanner was feeding incorrect information into the autopilot, which, in turn, was guzzling more fuel than it should. A few minutes later, Carpenter reported difficulties with the automatic control mode and switched to fly-by-wire in an effort to diagnose the problem.
Although a malfunctioning automated navigation system was tolerable, it was essential for retrofire to ensure that the spacecraft was properly aligned, along the pitch and yaw axes, to commence its fiery descent through the atmosphere. “Pitch attitude…must be 34 degrees, nose-down,” wrote Carpenter. “Yaw, the left-right attitude, must be steady at zero degrees, or pointing directly back along flight path. The [autopilot] performs this manoeuvre automatically, and better than any pilot, when the on-board navigational instruments are working properly.”
Sadly, on Aurora 7, they were not. Carpenter could align his capsule manually, but with difficulty: by either pointing the nose in a direction that he thought was a zero-degree yaw angle, then watching the terrain pass beneath him or use a certain geographical feature or cloud pattern for reference. However, this was nearly impossible over featureless terrain or stretches of ocean.
Carpenter had other worries, too. His cabin and pressure suit temperatures were climbing to uncomfortable levels; the former, in fact, peaked at 42 degrees Celsius and the latter rose to 23.3 degrees Celsius and a “miserable” 71 degrees of humidity. A query from the ground as to whether the astronaut felt comfortable was greeted with a non-committal “I don’t know”. After the flight, the high cabin temperatures were attributed to the difficulty of achieving high air-flow rates and good circulation, as well the vulnerability of the spacecraft’s heat exchanger to freezing blockage when high rates of water flow were used. Meanwhile, Carpenter was also required to take frequent blood pressure readings, pop pills for post-flight urinalysis and monitor his scientific experiments. He also managed to eat solid food during the mission: the Pillsbury Company had prepared chocolate, figs and dates with high-protein cereals, whilst Nestlé provided bonbons, composed of orange peel with almonds, high-protein cereals with almonds and cereals with raisins. These was processed into particles a couple of centimetres square and were coated with edible glazes. The astronaut sampled them, but found them to crumble badly, leaving pieces floating around the cabin.
Despite the fuel usage problems, Flight Director Chris Kraft commented in his post-flight report that, so far, Aurora 7 had run smoothly. He felt that sufficient fuel remained to achieve the proper retrofire attitude, hold it and successfully re-enter the atmosphere with either the automatic or manual controls. It was from this period onwards that the mission’s fortunes would change markedly and so too, it is said, would many attitudes towards the performance of Scott Carpenter himself.
“Lucky to be Alive:” The Controversy of Aurora 7
Fifty years ago, this week, Scott Carpenter became America’s second man in orbit. He was one of the most accomplished members of the ‘Mercury Seven’. In fact, at a December 1960 peer vote, his contemporary John Glenn had placed Carpenter at the top of his personal list for who he thought should be the first into space. When he finally flew into orbit, Carpenter was tasked with one of the most comprehensive programmes of scientific research ever seen on a manned mission: astronomical observations, Earth observations, studies of visibility and flying abilities and medical checks. Sadly, Carpenter’s voyage aboard Aurora 7 also suffered from more than its fair share of technical problems, including a faulty pitch horizon scanner and a worrisome decline in fuel quantities in both his manual and automatic tanks. The consequence would be a mission that remains controversial to this very day.
In his autobiography, For Spacious Skies, co-authored with his daughter, Kris Stoever, Carpenter noted that Flight Director Chris Kraft became increasingly frustrated with his performance after concluding that the astronaut had deliberately ignored a request to perform an attitude check. Kraft also voiced serious concerns that Carpenter should tightly curb his automatic fuel use prior to retrofire. By this time, Aurora 7 was restricted to long periods of drifting flight, with both automatic and manual fuel quantities now dropping to less than 50 percent. Years later, Assistant Flight Director Gene Kranz would blame ground controllers for waiting too long in addressing Aurora 7’s problematic fuel status and felt that they should have been more forceful in getting on with the checklists. “A thorough attitude check, during the first orbit,” added Carpenter, “would probably have helped to diagnose the persistent, intermittent and constantly varying malfunction of the pitch horizon scanner. By the third orbit, it was all too late.”
During his period of drifting, Carpenter would recall one of the most spectacular views of the entire mission: a sunrise, witnessed four hours and 19 minutes after launch, shortly before retrofire. “Stretching away for hundreds of miles to the north and the south,” he wrote, sunrise presented “a glittering, iridescent arc” of colours, which faded into a purplish-blue and blended into the blackness of space. This blackness, he wrote in his post-flight report, together with brilliant shades of blue and green from the sunlit Earth, were “colours hard to imagine or duplicate because of their wonderful purity. Everywhere the Earth is flecked with white clouds”. The South Atlantic, he recounted, had a cloud coverage of 90 percent, but western Africa was completely clear and Carpenter had a stunning view of Lake Chad. He saw patchy clouds over the Indian Ocean, a fairly clear Pacific and an obscured western half of Baja California.
His long period of drifting flight also meant that he also had the opportunity to witness a phenomenon known as ‘fireflies’, seen previously by John Glenn. By rapping his knuckles on the inside of the spacecraft, he found that he could raise a cloud of them and determined that they came from Aurora 7 itself. “I can rap the hatch and stir off hundreds of them,” he reported. “Rap the side of the capsule: huge streams come out.” To him, they appeared like snowflakes and did not appear to be ‘luminous’, varying in size, brightness and colour. Some were grey, some white and one in particular, he said, looked like a helical shaving from a lathe. Carpenter decided, with only minutes remaining before retrofire, to yaw the spacecraft in order to get a better view with the photometer. Shortly thereafter, he passed over Hawaii and was told to reorient Aurora 7, go to autopilot and begin stowing equipment and running through pre-retrofire checklists.
More problems arose, however. Four hours and 26 minutes after launch, with retrofire barely six minutes away, Carpenter reported that the automatic system did not appear to be working properly. In his autobiography, he later recounted that the autopilot was not holding the spacecraft steady and, indeed, achieving the correct pitch and yaw attitudes were critical to ensuring that he would descend along a pre-determined re-entry flight path and plop into the waters of the Atlantic, just south-east of Florida. Carpenter promptly switched to the fly-by-wire controls, but unfortunately forgot to shut off the manual system, which wasted even more fuel. At around the same time, a pair of fuses overheated and the astronaut noticed smoke drifting through the cabin.
Concerned that the critically timed retrofire would now be delayed by the autopilot malfunction, Carpenter initiated it manually. He fired the rockets three seconds late; a tiny error of timing, but enough at his immense velocity to produce a splashdown point several kilometres ‘long’ in the prime recovery area. Although he radioed that his attitude was good, privately, Carpenter was not sure and added that “the gyros are not quite right”. Years later, he described the difficulty in dividing his attention between two attitude reference systems and attempting to accomplish a perfect retrofire. “It appears I pretty much nailed the pitch,” he wrote, “but the nose of Aurora 7, while pitched close to the desirable negative 34 degrees, was canted about 25 degrees off to the right, in yaw, at the moment of retrofire. By the end of the retrofire event, I had essentially corrected the error in yaw, which limited the overshoot. But the damage was already done.”
The 25-degree cant alone would have caused Aurora 7 to miss its planned splashdown point by around 280 km; however, the three-second delay in firing the retrorockets and a thrust decrement of three percent below normal contributed an additional 120 km to the overshoot. On the other hand, if Carpenter had not bypassed the autopilot and manually fired the retrorockets, he could have splashed down even further afield.
At this stage, the spacecraft’s fuel supplies read barely 20 percent for manual and five percent for automatic. Carpenter survived re-entry, but experienced a wild ride through the atmosphere, as Aurora 7 oscillated between plus and minus 30 degrees in pitch and yaw. The astronaut was able to damp out many oscillations with the fly-by-wire controls and, indeed, the post-flight report would commend him as having “demonstrated an ability to orient the vehicle so as to effect a successful re-entry”, providing clear evidence that a human pilot could overcome malfunctioning automatic systems.
Carpenter’s descent and Aurora 7’s large trapezoid window offered him a spectacular view of Earth. “I can make out very small farmland, pastureland below,” he reported, four hours and 37 minutes after launch. “I see individual fields, rivers, lakes, roads, I think.” Five minutes later, he was informed that weather conditions in the anticipated recovery zone were good. By this time, Carpenter began to see the first hints of an intense orange glow as particles from the ablative heat shield formed an enormous ‘wake’ behind him. Then came distinct green flashes, which the astronaut assumed were the ionising beryllium shingles on Aurora 7’s hull. As the re-entry G forces peaked at 11 times their normal terrestrial load, cardiac readings at Mission Control revealed the substantial physical effort needed by Carpenter to speak words, announce observations and make status reports.
Five minutes before splashdown, at an altitude of 7.6 km, he manually deployed the drogue parachute, which steadied the capsule and damped out what he had earlier described as “some pretty good oscillations”. The drogue was soon followed by the main chute, again manually deployed, although Carpenter’s announcements fell on deaf ears. No one could hear his transmissions and Capcom Gus Grissom was forced to broadcast ‘in the blind’ to inform him that his splashdown point would be some 400 km ‘long’ and advise that pararescue forces would arrive on the scene within the hour. A minute before splashdown, Carpenter acknowledged Grissom’s call. The impact with the water, 215 km north-east of Puerto Rico, he wrote later, was not hard, but Aurora 7 was totally submerged for a few seconds. It popped back up and listed sharply, 60 degrees over to one side, before the landing bag filled and began to act as a sea anchor.
Keen to get out as soon as possible, Carpenter exited the capsule through the nose, becoming the only Mercury astronaut to do so. It took him four minutes and required him to remove the instrument panel from the bulkhead, exposing a narrow egress up through the spacecraft’s nose, where the two parachutes had resided. As he squirmed his way through the cramped space, he decided not to deploy his pressure suit’s neck dam. He was already overheating and felt that the gently swelling seas would make it unnecessary. Next, still perched in the nose of the capsule, he dropped his life raft into the water, where it quickly inflated and a search and rescue homing beacon came on automatically. The latter would guide recovery forces to his position.
As he prepared himself for a long wait, Carpenter tied the life raft to the side of the capsule, finally deployed his neck dam, said a brief prayer and relaxed. He stretched out on his raft and was joined, he wrote later, by “a curious, 18-inch-long black fish who wanted nothing more than to visit”. It was his first physical contact with another living being and his first moment of calm in four hours and 56 minutes since launch.
For those watching the mission from afar, however, there was no relaxation. At Cape Canaveral, CBS veteran Walter Cronkite played up the drama by describing Mission Control’s repeated attempts to contact Aurora 7. “While thousands watch and pray,” Cronkite told his audience, “certainly here at Cape Canaveral, the silence is almost intolerable.” In Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal, a hush fell over the crowd gathered before a huge CBS screen, while in the White House a direct telephone link with Cape Canaveral had been set up to provide President Kennedy with news. In fact, the homing beacon had already provided Carpenter’s co-ordinates and his heartbeat had been clearly heard in Mission Control throughout re-entry.
Aboard the destroyer USS John R. Pierce (the ‘Fierce Pierce’), the attitude was quite different, thanks to the reception of a strong signal from the beacon. “Believe you me,” reported CBS journalist Bill Evenson from aboard the destroyer, “this bucket of bolts is really rolling now and what a happy crew we’ve got!”
It was a Lockheed P2V Neptune, one of the same breed of patrol aircraft that Carpenter himself flew, a decade earlier, in Korea, that finally greeted him. The astronaut signalled the pilot with a hand mirror and was acknowledged when the Neptune began circling his position. One hour and seven minutes after splashdown, at 1:48 pm EST, Airman First Class John Heitsch and Sergeant Ray McClure from an SC-54 transport aircraft joined the astronaut in the water, opened their rafts and tethered them together. Carpenter offered them some of his food rations, which were politely declined. Eventually, the astronaut was picked up by the USS Intrepid, originally earmarked as the prime recovery ship, but delayed in its arrival by Aurora 7’s 400 km overshoot. The Fierce Pierce, meanwhile, successfully recovered the spacecraft itself and delivered it, on 28 May, to Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico.
Carpenter was hot and wet after almost an hour on his back on the launch pad, followed by five hours in space and more than an hour in the Atlantic. Soon after boarding the rescue helicopter, he borrowed a pocket knife, cut a hole in the sock of his space suit and let his sweat and seawater drain out of the makeshift toe hole. Army physician Richard Rink asked him how he felt. In true Mercury Seven fashion, came the clipped response: “Fine”.
The situation within Mission Control, though, was far from fine. Deke Slayton had been stationed at the capcom’s console at the Muchea tracking site in Australia, which he described as “a good place to be, all things considered”. Flight Director Chris Kraft, and many other mission controllers, were furious, accusing Carpenter of having recklessly endangered himself during a botched re-entry. Their anger was exacerbated when, aboard the recovery ship, the astronaut had off-handedly remarked that “I didn’t know where I was…and they didn’t know where I was, either”. One controller is said to have retorted: “Bullshit! That son-of-a-bitch is damned lucky to be alive!”
Kraft, apparently, was considerably more caustic. In his autobiography, Flight, he wrote of Carpenter’s “cavalier dismissal of a life-threatening problem” – the failure of the spacecraft’s navigational instruments – and troublesome re-entry and swore that the astronaut would never fly again. Scott Carpenter had indeed seen the end of his spacegoing days and after a month-long tour in the Navy’s Sealab-II underwater habitat, off the coast of La Jolla, California, resigned from NASA in 1967. Some have seen Carpenter’s mistakes and omissions as evidence that the early Mercury flights were overloaded with experiments and manoeuvres and that Mission Control was partly to blame for failing to identify the horizon pitch scanner malfunction. Tom Wolfe wrote that speculation that Carpenter had panicked was unlikely, “in light of the telemetred data concerning his heart rate and his respiratory rate”.
Aurora 7, though harrowing, was certainly viewed as a success by Carpenter’s family and hundreds of thousands of residents of his home state, Colorado. In Denver, a 300,000-strong crowd cheered the nation’s newest astronaut son in their own ticker-tape parade. The city of Boulder declared 29 May 1962 as Scott Carpenter Day, sponsoring its biggest celebration, and the University of Colorado named the astronaut its most distinguished graduate. Years earlier, Carpenter’s own father, a research chemist, had achieved the same accolade from the same institution. In the case of the younger Carpenter, however, it also came with the formal conferring of his engineering degree, which he completed in 1949, save for a final examination in thermodynamics. The university granted the degree on the grounds that his “subsequent training as an astronaut has more than made up for the deficiency in the subject of heat transfer”.
Carpenter’s flight brought Project Mercury to a crossroads. Speaking before the Exchange Club in Hampton, Virginia, NASA engineer Joe Dodson pointed out that the lessons learned from Glenn and Carpenter were pleasing and speculation arose that a day-long mission, to rival that of Gherman Titov in Vostok 2, could be attempted as early as 1963. Indeed, many congressional observers supported a flight to surpass that of Titov. Within a year of Scott Carpenter’s mission – a mission of so many mixed blessings – Project Mercury would draw to a triumphant conclusion and would open the way for Project Gemini and, later, an assault on reaching the Moon itself.
END
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