50th Anniversary of Alan Shepard's Mercury Flight

The mission only lasted 15 minutes and 28 seconds, but it put the United States in the middle of the space race with the Russians and was our first step to eventually getting to the Moon.

Naval pilot Alan Shepard was part of the first group of seven astronauts for NASA's Mercury program and in January 1961 was chosen to be the first American on  a manned space mission.     The flight was originally scheduled to take place in October 1960, but delays pushed it back to March 6, 1961.   Flight preparation delays pushed the launch date back to May 2  and a weather delay pushed it back a few more days to May 5.   In the meantime the Soviet Union beat us to that historic feat by launching Yuri Gagarin into space on his 108 minute flight on April 12. to become not only the first human in space, but the first to orbit the Earth.

When Freedom 7 launched at 9:34 AM EDT with Shepard aboard on May 5 and 45 million people watching it live on television the flight plans for the first American in space were more modest. 

It was a suborbital flight on a ballistic trajectory that reached a 116 mile height (187 km) and traveled 302 miles (486 km) down the Atlantic Missile Range before splashdown off the Bahamas   Unlike Gagarin's totally automatic flight weeks earlier, Shepard had some ability to control the Freedom 7 capsule 

With the successful conclusion of the Freedom 7 flight the race to the Moon by the superpowers was on in earnest.  Shepard would later command the Apollo 14 lunar mission and become the fifth person to walk on the Moon.    

But America's successful road to the Moon started with a suborbital flight piloted by our first man in space.

Houston Snubbed For Retired Shuttles

On the 30th anniversary of the launch of the first space shuttle flight NASA decided which four cities will get one of the four retired space shuttle orbiters once the program finally comes to a close with the launch of the final shuttle missions..

There were 30 applications submitted for the shuttles, and when the smoke cleared, the shuttles were dispersed in the following manner.  

Atlantis will go to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Discovery to Washington DC, Endeavor to Los Angeles and the Enterprise which never flew in space to New York.


I can understand KSC because the majority of the missions were launched into space from there.  DC makes sense because it's the home of the National Air and Space Museum.   The California Science Center in Los Angeles even makes sense because it was designed in that state plus it's only fair that one be on the West Coast.  

But New York?    Hell, naw.   It doesn't have the history or the deep connection with the United States space program like Houston does.   Johnson Space Center and NASA Mission Control are not only in the Houston metro area in Clear Lake City, but the astronauts train at JSC.  Four of the shuttle astronauts who died in the Challenger and Columbia accidents were Houston residents.    We had a downtown rally April 6 and a petition drive that collected 90,000 signatures that demonstrated our desire to have one of those shuttle here

And don't even go there with the disrespectfully snarky 'Texas got the Columbia in 2003' comment.

If any place deserves one of those shuttles, it was Houston, and the decision is getting bipartisan condemnation from local and state politicians.    Of course the Lone Star conservafools are blaming President Obama, which if it came down to politics, their partisan Hate on Obama antics may be one of the reasons we didn't get one in the first place.

And by the way, Houston and Harris County voted for Obama in the 2008 election.

Mayor Annise Parker definitely thinks politics had a hand in the shuttle snubbing..  

"This is certainly disappointing, but not entirely unexpected as the Administration has been hinting that Houston would not be a winner in this political competition," Mayor Parker said in a statement. "I am disappointed for Houston, the JSC family and the survivors of the Columbia and Challenger missions who paid the ultimate price for the advancement of space exploration.   "There was no other city with our history of human space flight or more deserving of a retiring orbiter. It is unfortunate that political calculations have prevailed in the final decision."

Yeah, needless to say we're more than a little pissed here about how this played out. 

50th Anniversary Of First Manned Spaceflight

April 12 is also a noteworthy day in history for another event that all us space junkies are aware of.   

50 years ago today Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human being launched into space aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft.   He orbited Earth once and returned one hour and 48 minutes later as an international hero.   

It didn't happen for the United States until NASA launched astronaut Alan Shepard, our first American man in space,  on a suborbital May 5 flight from Cape Canaveral, FL..

It was Gagarin's only spaceflight, and he tragically died in a MiG 15 plane crash in 1968 at age 34.   But since then countless men and women from various nations have followed him into the Final Frontier.

Astronaut Alvin Drew On Last Discovery Mission

As I continue to point out, every month is Black History month.   Sometimes Black history is being made in our current timeframe and isn't as obvious as the first Black president and FLOTUS occupying the White House
.
One such instance is the current STS-133 mission of the space shuttle Discovery.  One of the astronauts taking part in this mission is African-American.

Air Force Colonel B. Alvin Drew is on his second shuttle mission to the International Space Station, and one of the 14 African-Americans who have been launched into space.  

On February 28 when he ventured outside the ISS with astronaut Steve Bowen, he not only became the fifth African American astronaut to perform an EVA, but the 200th person to walk in space.

This STS-133 mission is also notable for the fact it is the last one for the space shuttle Discovery, which will be decommissioned and sent to a museum after the completion of this flight.

It is cool to know that an African-American astronaut is taking part in not only writing another chapter of our nation's spacefaring history, but Black history as well.

First Native Houstonian In Orbit

Despite the fact that Houston kids have grown up since the 1960's with NASA's Johnson Space Center in our backyard and being immersed in space flight news, it was only yesterday that we had our first native Houstonian launched into space.

Astronaut Shannon Walker accomplished that historical footnote when she blasted off aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft along with NASA astronaut Doug Wheelock and cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin from the Baikonur Cosmodrome yesterday afternoon.

Her launch from Baikonur was also the 100th combined launch to the space station, including Soyuz and Russian Progress vehicles as well as the space shuttle. During Walker’s mission the ISS will mark 10 years of continual habitation.

They will dock with the International Space Station on Thursday and stay on board the ISS until November.

When the Rice University grad arrives and joins Tracy Caldwell Dyson on board the ISS, it will mark the first time that two women have served together as long-duration station residents.

But it's also cool that a native Houstonian gets an opportunity to make some of that space history.

Hubble Space Telescope Launch 20th Anniversary

Today is the 20th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, named for renowned astronomer Edwin Hubble.

On April 24, 1990 the Hubble Space telescope was launched on the STS-31 mission. It was the culmination of the dreams of many astronomers and astrophysicists to have a telescope in low Earth orbit free of the distortion of our atmosphere.

It was designed to be serviced in space, and that part of its design turned out to be fortuitous.

Not long after its deployment in space, it was discovered that one of the mirrors had a flaw that caused fuzzy images instead of the promised clear ones.

But after five repair missions starting in 1993, the Hubble was repaired, and we Earthlings began to be treated to some spectacular photos.

It also provided scientists with answers to some questions about our universe, debunked others and created new ones.

The Hubble 20 years later has exceeded expectations. Its lifespan has been extended until a new and improved space telescope can be deployed in 2014.

So happy launch anniversary Hubble. And keep those beautiful photos coming.

Girl Power Aboard The International Space Station

TransGriot Note: My latest piece for Global Comment

Though many of us did not notice, April 9, 2010 was a historic day for humankind.

When the shuttle Discovery docked with the International Space Station, three women, Naoko Yamazaki, Stephanie Wilson, and Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, were part of that seven person crew. Waiting onboard the ISS was Tracy Caldwell Dyson, who had launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on April 2. Out of the 13 people currently aboard the ISS, the four history-making women are a former schoolteacher, a chemist who once worked as an electrician, and two aerospace engineers. Three are from the United States and one from Japan. Collectively, they represent the largest number of women in orbit at one time in human spaceflight history.

All of this points out the undeniable fact that there are women who indeed excel in math and science, regardless of stereotypes. If they are encouraged to do so, one day they might make even more history.

Since Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s June 1963 flight aboard Vostok 6 gave her the distinction of becoming the first woman in space, there have been 54 women from the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and Great Britain that have followed in her footsteps.

Others followed to make history in their own right, like cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya did. She was not only the second woman launched into space in 1982, she was the first woman launched into space twice. On July 17, 1984 she became the first woman to perform a space walk.

In June 1983, Dr. Sally Ride became the first American woman launched into space. Dr. Mae Jemison became the first African-American woman in space in September 1992. She was quickly followed by Dr. Ellen Ochoa, the first Latina astronaut in space on April 1993.

Eileen Collins holds the distinction of not only being the first woman to pilot a space shuttle in February 1995 – in July 1999, she became the first woman to command a space shuttle mission.

Read the rest at Global Comment

One Giant Leap For Women Astronauts

I've been a big fan of space missions and space exploration ever since I watched the 1968 Apollo 8 mission and the Apollo 11 moon landing. I followed the drama of Apollo 13, the last Apollo mission, the three Skylab missions and the beginning of the Space Shuttle program.

No matter what country launches it, whether it's mine, Russia or now China, I've always been one of these people that feels that humankind needs to begin exploring space ASAP in order for humankind to survive and continue evolving.

Unfortunately I missed this morning's 6:21 AM EDT launch of Discovery and its seven person crew. Madame Space Junkie needs to be paying closer attention to the remaining launch schedule since there are only four more shuttle launches that will happen before the fleet is retired in September.



But back to STS-131 news. This is a 14 day resupply mission to the International Space Station that will have three planned spacewalks.

This mission is also notable for the women's history it is making. This is the third time NASA has launched a shuttle with three women in the crew and the women taking part in STS-131 are Japan's Naoko Yamazaki, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, and Stephanie Wilson.

Mission Specialist Stephanie Wilson has already etched her name in the history books as the second African-American woman to be launched into space. She achieved that feat during the 2006 STS-121 mission. This is her third shuttle flight, having also flown on STS-120 in 2007.

Dr. Mae Jemison was the first, Dr. Joan Higginbotham was the third. US Air Force Colonel Dr. Yvonne Cagle is part of the astronaut corps as well but has yet to be assigned to a shuttle flight crew.

There is a fourth woman currently in space on the ISS, Astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson. When she and the other three women on board Discovery meet up after the shuttle docks on Wednesday, it will result in the largest gathering of women in space in history.

In all there have been 54 women out of the 517 people that have reached space, with hopefully more to come.

Will definitely be keeping with what's happening with STS-131 until the mission is completed.

SpaceShipTwo Unveiled By Virgin Galactic

We're probably a long way off before the scenes of commercial space travel you remember from the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey or Battlestar Galactica become a reality, but we came one step closer to it today.

"We want this program to be a whole new beginning in a commercial era of space travel," said British billionaire Sir Richard Branson.

He has partnered with aircraft designer Burt Rutan to form Virgin Galactic with the goal of creating an aircraft capable of making space travel as routine as commercial aviation flight.

SpaceShipTwo is based on Rutan's design of a stubby white prototype called SpaceShipOne. In 2004, the Rutan designed craft captured the $10 million Ansari X Prize by becoming the first privately manned craft to reach space.

Engineers from Rutan's Scaled Composites LLC have been laboring in a Mojave Desert hangar to commercialize the SpaceShipTwo prototype in heavy secrecy. They are hoping to begin the flights in 2011 after rigorous safety testing.

The first passengers on board the maiden flight of SpaceShipTwo will be Branson, his family and Rutan.

Branson is hoping to tap into a potentially lucrative market for would be space travelers. Several people have shelled out millions for rides on Russian rockets to the International Space Station, and according to Virgin Galactic some 300 clients have paid the $200,000 ticket price or placed a deposit.

"NASA spent billions upon billions of dollars on space travel and has only managed to send 480 people," Branson said. "We're literally hoping to send thousands of people into space over the next couple of years. We want to make sure that we build a spaceship that is 100 percent safe."

I wouldn't mind taking that ultimate plane ride either.

STS-129 Mission Includes Two African-American Astronauts

The TransGriot will be tuned in later today to watch the launch of the space shuttle Atlantis at 2:28 PM EST assuming there are no delays or problems.

STS-129's all male crew for this 11 day mission includes two African-American astronauts, Mission Specialists Leland Melvin and Robert Satcher, Jr. It is also Melvin and Satcher's first trips into space.

STS-129 also has experiments on board created by the minds at Texas Southern University, the HBCU in my hometown.

STS-129 is slated to be the 31st and final space shuttle crew rotation flight to or from the space station. In addition to transporting parts and a spare gyroscope to the International Space Station, it will include three spacewalks.

Atlantis will be returning station crew member Nicole Stott to Earth.

You space junkies like me will only have five more opportunities after today to watch a shuttle launch before they retire the shuttle fleet in 2010.

NASA Finds Water On The Moon!

There's water on the moon!

More precisely, there's frozen water in the permanently shadowed Cabeus Crater at the lunar South pole.

Project lead investigative scientist Anthony Colaprete announced at a midday NASA news conference at the Ames Research Center about the LCROSS Centaur project, I'm here today to tell you that indeed, yes, we found water. And we didn't find just a little bit; we found a significant amount" -- about a dozen, two-gallon bucketfuls, he said, holding up several white plastic containers.

The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, back on October 9 intentionally crashed into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus crater near the moon's south pole.

So what's the significance of this discovery that has the scientific world buzzing?

Finding significant frozen water amounts means that a permanent manned lunar base just made a giant leap forward toward becoming a reality by 2020.

That's assuming NASA's effort to establish a US base gets properly funded by the federal government

The Chinese space program has set a goal of placing taikonauts on the moon by 2020 as well.

Water on the moon means we humans don't have to transport it up there from Earth. It is also one of the ingredients for making rocket fuel.

Previous spacecraft have detected the presence of hydrogen in lunar craters near the poles, which could be evidence of ice. In September, scientists reported finding tiny amounts of water mixed into the lunar soil all over the lunar surface.

"We've had hints that there is water. This was almost like tasting it," said Peter Schultz, professor of geological sciences at Brown University and a co-investigator on the LCROSS mission.

Mission scientists said it would take more time to tease out what else was kicked up in the mile high moon dust plume the impact temporarily stirred up.

"The discovery opens a new chapter in our understanding of the moon," the space agency said in a written statement shortly after the briefing began.

Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington, said the latest discovery also could unlock the mysteries of the solar system.

Yeah, if we can get the funding to do so past the GOP Know-Nothings and Neo-Luddites in Congress.

Apollo 11 40th Anniversary

Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.

With those eight words the decade long race to the moon ended and President Kennedy's promise to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade was fulfilled.

It's been a long time since the United States space program has had the kind of support or clear vision since those heady days.



Hopefully they can regain that with increased competition from the Chinese and a new mission to the Moon to establish a permanent base there and a manned mission to Mars.

If the human race is to thrive and survive, we need to begin exploring the final frontier.

That includes establishing off earth colonies for humankind as well.

China's New Red Star- In Space

TransGriot Note: My latest piece for Global Comment.

When I was growing up, the space race between NASA and the Soviet space program was a major topic of conversation.

The race to the moon between the United States and Russia was a major avenue of Cold War competition that NASA lagged in during the early days.

The Russian space program piled up history making achievement after achievement during the late 50's and 60's while the United States struggled just to get a rocket off the launch pad.

From its Baikonur Cosmodrome Russia launched the world's first ICBM, the world's first orbiting satellite in Sputnik 1, the first satellite to reach the moon in Luna 1, the first manned orbital flight in 1961 with Yuri Gagarin, and the 1963 flight of Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space.

Under the Interkosmos program 14 cosmonauts from 13 nations such as Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Cuba and France were paired up with a Russian cosmonaut and blasted into space.

Eventually the United States got its space act together during the 60's, spurred on by President John F. Kennedy bold declaration of putting a man on the moon before the end of the decade. Thanks to NASA's Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs the goal was accomplished when Apollo 11 landed on the moon July 20, 1969.

In the United States we're about to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Our onetime Russian Cold War rivals are one of our major international partners helping to assemble and staff the International Space Station.

Just as our space program has slipped from the heady days of the Apollo era, the Russian one has fallen a bit as well due to tight budgets. The breakup of the Soviet Union also put the Russians in the position of having to lease the historic Baikonur Cosmodrome until 2050 since it now sits in Kazakhstan.

As the Russians upgrade the Plesetsk Cosmodrome and NASA prepares to retire its aging space shuttle fleet in 2010, China has made moves over the last few years to challenge both nations in a bid to become the leading space-farer on earth.

China launched its first satellite in 1970, but didn't conduct a manned space mission until the Shenzhou 5 mission was launched October 15, 2003. Taikonaut Yang Liwei made 15 orbits of the Earth before touching down in Inner Mongolia.

They quickly followed it up with the Shenzhou 6 two-man mission almost two years later. It was launched October 12, 2005 with taikonauts Nie Haisheng and Fei Junlong making 76 earth orbits over nearly five days before touching down.

Read the rest of my post at Global Comment.

Charles Bolden, Jr. Nominated To Become First Black NASA Head

Retired Marine Corps General Charles Bolden, Jr. made a lot of history during his 13 year NASA career as an astronaut. He logged 680 hours in space on four shuttle mission, piloted the shuttle and was mission commander on two from 1980 to 1994.

On May 23 the former deputy administrator of NASA was nominated for the job by President Obama. Assuming the Senate confirms his nomination, he is set to become the first African-American to head NASA.

"Charlie Bolden is well known to everybody in the space community from the human spaceflight side of the house, where he's had extensive shuttle experience, to the science people he worked with as he was part of the crew that launched the Hubble telescope," says John Logsdon, professor emeritus at the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.

As a space junkie, in this 40th anniversary year of the Apollo 11 moon landing, I miss the days of frequent moon launches and bold goals for NASA. Much of the medical, computer and other technological advances we enjoy is because of the space program. In order to colonize the moon and land on Mars, we will once again have to put our best and brightest minds to work in addition to once and for all expunging 'intelligent design' from our classrooms.

This nomination comes at a crossroads time for he United States and NASA. While we retire the shuttle fleet next year and wait for the new Constellation and Orion vehicles to be finished for their 2015 launch, the Russians are looking to get their space swagger back.

Japan and several European nations are wishing to become major players in space as the Chinese aggressively work toward their national goals of putting a Chinese space station in orbit by 2012 and landing a Chinese citizen on the moon by 2020

If humanity is going to continue to survive and thrive, we have to step off this planet, explore the solar system and the stars and eventually colonize them. This nominee will have the responsibility of charting NASA's space course for the next twenty years and beyond.

Happy Birthday NASA!

Today is NASA's 50th birthday. A Cold War baby spurred by the October 4, 1957 launch of the Russian Sputnik satellites and their progressively heavier siblings, it spurred congressional hearings and the rapid consolidation of a coalition of scientific, military, and political leaders for the establishment of an agency to coordinate space activities in the United States.

On October 1, 1958 the agency opened for business after the passage of the National Aeronautics and Space Act by Congress and it being signed into law by President Eisenhower on July 29, 1958.

Section 102 of the Space Act laid out the goals for the nascent organization:

1. The expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space;

2. The improvement of the usefulness, performance, speed, safety, and efficiency of aeronautical and space vehicles;

3. The development and operation of vehicles capable of carrying instruments, equipment, supplies, and living organisms through space;

4. The establishment of long-range studies of the potential benefits to be gained from, the opportunities for, and the problems involved in the utilization of aeronautical and space activities for peaceful and scientific purposes;

5. The preservation of the role of the United States as a leader in aeronautical and space science and technology and in the application thereof to the conduct of peaceful activities within and outside the atmosphere;

6. The making available to agencies directly concerned with national defense of discoveries that have military value or significance, and the furnishing by such agencies, to the civilian agency established to direct and control nonmilitary aeronautical and space activities, of information as to discoveries which have value or significance to that agency;

7. Cooperation by the United States with other nations and groups of nations in work done pursuant to this Act and in the peaceful application of the results thereof;

8. The most effective utilization of the scientific and engineering resources of the United States, with close cooperation among all interested agencies of the United States in order to avoid

NASA has not only fulfilled those objectives, it has done so in sometimes spectacular fashion. Only 11 years after NASA's birth Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were walking on the Moon.

If there's one consistent thread in my life, it's NASA. Being born in Houston, I'm a rabid space junkie because the space program has always been a presence in my life on one level or another.

Alan Shepard's May 5, 1961 suborbital flight happened 364 days before I was born. The Mercury and Gemini missions happened during my infant and toddler years. Thanks to the Apollo program I was an excited soon to be third grader watching on July 20, 1969 with the rest of the planet Neil Armstrong take his first steps on the Moon and had a few Saturday morning cartoon watching sessions interrupted by subsequent moon missions. I can't count how many field trips I took or times we took out of town relatives with regularity to the Johnson Space Center down in Clear Lake.

Skylab was the thrust of the program during my teen years and after writing and being one of my junior high school's winners of a NASA sponsored essay contest, I had the pleasure of meeting the first group of African-American shuttle astronauts.

I've watched the ups and downs of the shuttle program during my college and young adult years from the tragedy of two shuttles being lost in 1986 and 2003 to the launch of various space probes, the Hubble Space Telescope and the building and expansion of the International Space Station.

It's interesting that as NASA turns 50, we have another Communist nation aggressively pushing to establish itself in space. The Chinese launched their first manned mission in 2003 and have a goal of building a space station by 2012 and putting a man on the moon by 2020. They just recently completed a three man mission that featured a taikonaut emerging from their space capsule to do their first spacewalk.

In the meantime, the Space Shuttle will be retired in 2010 and its successor won't even be flight tested until 2015. NASA is considering building a moon base, but the question is will the anti-science Luddites in the GOP even allow funding for it?

Maybe competition from the Chinese will be just the tonic NASA and elements of the American public need to remind us that we didn't become the preeminent scientific power by being timid about space exploration, and that much of the technology, improved satellites, scientific knowledge and medical advances that we enjoy now came out of NASA research and the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab and Space Shuttle programs.

Competition is always healthy, and if it gets NASA off the sidelines and back in the game of manned spaceflight pushing for manned mission to Mars and beyond, then that's all good too.

For the human race to survive and thrive, we will have to start exploring and establishing habitats on other worlds, and the sooner we do it, the better.