1963-015A
15 May 1963
Pad 14, Cape Canaveral, Florida
16 May 1963
128 km southeast of Midway Island, Pacific Ocean Atlas 130D; spacecraft serial number SC-20 1 day 10 hrs 19 min 49 sec Faith 7
First US 24-hour space flight
Flight Crew
COOPER, Leroy Gordon Jr., 36, USAF, pilot
Flight Log
Such was the increased confidence in the Mercury spacecraft and manned space flight, that NASA not only planned a flight three times as long as Schirra’s, but also increased the duration again in November 1962 to a full 22 orbits. The man in the hot seat, Gordon Cooper, was named the same month, with a May 1963 launch date as the target. Cooper, who affirmed his faith in God, his country and the Mercury team by naming his spacecraft Faith 7, had a packed flight plan, with emphasis on photography. He called the mission, the “flying camera’’. The camera was fixed on to the tripod on 22 April and was ready to go on 14 May.
Unfortunately, the gantry tower refused to budge because water had seeped into its diesel fuel pump and when the gantry was moved away two hours later, radar data from the Bermuda tracking station was insufficient and the launch was scrubbed. Not so on 15 May, when the relaxed Cooper awoke from a catnap in Faith 7 in time to be launched at 08: 04 hrs local time. He reached his 32.5° orbit with an apogee of 267 km (166 miles) and a peak velocity of 28,238 kph (17,547 mph) five minutes later. Cooper remained extremely unruffled and calm throughout the flight, which featured the first in-flight television from a US spacecraft, although the pictures were disappointing.
Cooper’s photography from Faith 7, however, was a revelation, confirming to observers his own reports of being able to see the wakes of ships and smoke from a log cabin in the Himalayas with the naked eye. Cooper deployed a small flashing beacon from Faith 7, the first deployment in history, as well as a tethered balloon like Schirra’s. The flight went swimmingly, with Cooper becoming the first American to sleep in space, but during the nineteenth orbit, the astronaut noticed the one-G light coming on, which apparently detected the onset of gravity.
Tracing the cause, the astronaut discovered that the attitude and stabilisation control system a/c converter had failed. The astronaut would have to perform an
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Gordon Cooper heads for orbit aboard Mercury Atlas 9
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entirely manual re-entry, which he did perfectly, splashing down just 7 km (4 miles) from the USS Kearsage, 128 km (80 miles) southeast of Midway Island in the Pacific Ocean, at T + 1 day 10 hours 19 minutes 49 seconds, the longest launch-to-landing solo US manned space flight in history. A planned three-day mission (Mercury-Atlas 10/Freedom II, flown by Alan Shepard) was mooted but scrapped, and the Mercury programme ended officially on 12 June 1963
Milestones
10th manned space flight
6th US manned space flight
6th and final Mercury manned flight
1st satellite deployment from manned spacecraft
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VOSTOK 5
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AND 6
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Int. Designation
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1963-020A (Vostok 5); 1963-023A (Vostok 6)
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Launched
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14 (Vostok 5) and 16 (Vostok 6) June 1963
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Launch Site
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Pad 1, Site 5, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan (both launches)
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Landed
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19 June 1963
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Landing Site
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619.4km northeast of Karaganda, Kazakhstan (Vostok 6); 539 km northwest of Karaganda, Kazakhstan (Vostok 5)
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Launch Vehicle
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R7 (8K72K); spacecraft serial number (11F63/3KA) #7 (Vostok 5); and #8 (Vostok 6)
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Duration
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4 days 23 hrs 6 min (Vostok 5); 2 days 22 hrs 50 min (Vostok 6)
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Callsign
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Yastreb (Hawk) – Vostok 5; Chaika (Seagull) – Vostok 6
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Objective
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Second group flight; five-day solo flight and first female space flight
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Flight Crew
BYKOVSKY, Valeri Fyodorovich, 28, Soviet Air Force, pilot Vostok 5 TERESHKOVA, Valentina Vladimirovna, 26, Soviet Air Force, pilot Vostok 6
Flight Log
The much-rumoured launch of Vostok 5 was delayed by bad weather on 13 June but the following day, at 17:00 hrs local time at Baikonur, launch pad 1 reverberated to the sound of another SL-3 ignition as cosmonaut Valeri Bykovsky began what was planned as a long-duration mission. At 4 days 23 hours 6 minutes, it actually became (and still remains) the longest manned solo space flight in history. Vostok 5 entered a 65° inclination orbit with an apogee of 209 km (130 miles) as rumours persisted that another Vostok would be launched the following day. It was to be a Vostok that would overshadow Bykovsky’s feat.
Vostok 6 carried the first woman (and tenth human) to venture into space. Valentina Tereshkova was launched at 14: 30 hrs Baikonur time. Reflecting the frenetic space activity of the 1960s, in between the Vostok 5 and 6 launches, the USA had performed six satellite launches, all from California. Vostok 6 entered a 65° inclination orbit with a peak altitude of 218 km (135 miles) and almost immediately came to within 5 km (3 miles) of Vostok 5 for a brief encounter, which according to the western press went much further, with such headlines as “Valya chases her space date’’.
As Tereshkova was not a pilot, it was perhaps inevitable that she reportedly had difficulties in adapting to weightlessness, but the rumours of her being so ill that she pleaded to come home seem far-fetched, as it appears that the flight, originally
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Tereshkova and Korolyov in discussion prior to her historic space flight
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planned to be a 24-hour affair, was in fact extended. The launch of a woman into space was undoubtedly a major propaganda coup for Premier Khrushchev, who may have ordered such a mission, a theory supported by the fact that the next woman to fly into space was not launched until 1982.
Tereshkova was the first of the space pair to land, 624 km (388 miles) northeast of Karaganda at mission elapsed time of 2 days 22 hours 50 minutes. As the landing was a nominal one, she is thus the only woman to end a space flight outside her spacecraft, as well as the only one to make a solo female space flight. Bykovsky was the third Vostok pilot to experience a partial separation of the descent module but the separation occurred prior to the worst part of the re-entry profile and he returned to Earth about 540 km (336 miles) northwest of Karaganda. Plans were set in motion for a Vostok 7 mission lasting a week, by “non-cosmonaut” doctor Boris Yegorov, in the summer of 1964 but, like the US Mercury programme, the Soviet Vostok project ended after six flights. However, the next series of spacecraft (Soyuz, or “Union”) would not be ready for some time and so in order to appear ahead in the space race with the Americans, the Vostok was converted into what seemed to outsiders to be a radically new and improved spacecraft – Voskhod.
Milestones
11th and 12th manned space flights 5th and 6th Soviet manned space flights
5th and 6th Vostok manned flights
1st space flight with female crew (Vostok 6)
1st joint male-female space flight
Bykovsky has held the solo space flight record for over 43 years
On 27 June 1963, Robert Rushworth, 39, of the USAF flew X-15-3 on the third astro – flight, to 88 km. Less than a month later, on 19 July 1963, Joe Walker, 42, flew the same vehicle on the fourth astro-flight, this time to 105 km. Finally this year, on 22 August 1963, Walker flew X-15-3 to 107 km in the fifth astro-flight, the highest altitude any X-15 would attain.
Flight Crew
KOMAROV, Vladimir Mikhailovich, 37, Soviet Air Force, commander FEOKTISTOV, Konstantin Petrovich, 38, civilian, flight engineer YEGOROV, Boris Borisovich, 27, civilian, doctor
Flight Log
Voskhod (“Sunrise”) 1 provided the classic illustration of how the secret Soviet space programme completely misled the west. After the Vostok missions, Sergei Korolyov, the then anonymous space designer, considered improvements to the basic spacecraft to allow longer missions by more than one passenger. These studies led to the design of a new spacecraft, Soyuz, which would perform Earth orbital and lunar looping missions and support a possible lunar landing programme. Delays to Soyuz meant that there would be a hiatus in the manned space programme, to which Premier Khrushchev reacted in customary fashion, demanding a multi-crewed space flight before the United States launched its two-man Gemini spacecraft in early 1965.
As Soyuz could not be accelerated, Korolyov responded with a version of the uprated Vostok. But in order to launch three men rather than two, as the Americans were planning, practically all the “stuffing” had to be taken out of Vostok and the crew would have to fly without spacesuits and without any means of emergency escape. Voskhod would, however, carry a back up retro-rocket. Despite the imperfections of Voskhod, seven cosmonauts seemed happy to be assigned to train for the most risky manned space flight in history. The three to be chosen were a commander, Vladimir Komarov, a scientist, Konstantin Feoktistov – who, it turned out, was the man who helped design Vostok to fly with three passengers – and a doctor, Boris Yegorov.
They arrived at the launch pad wearing cotton overalls and leather flying helmets, about to board the first SL-4 booster to fly a manned crew a few days after the one and only “test flight” of the “new” Voskhod, as Cosmos 47. Launch came at 12: 30hrs Baikonur time and soon after the spacecraft had reached its 65°, 409 km (254 miles)
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The first “space crew” walk down the red carpet to report on the success of their mission to welcoming officials in Moscow. L to r Feoktistov, Komarov, Yegorov
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maximum altitude orbit, the western media went wild, reporting that Russia had launched a “mammoth” new spaceship in which the scientist and doctor would perform experiments while the commander controlled the mission. In truth, the conditions were so cramped inside the Voskhod that it must have been hard to eat and go to the toilet, let alone perform experiments, although Yegorov apparently performed some basic medical checks.
Khrushchev had the propaganda success he wanted, but as he was congratulating the crew by telephone, the receiver was taken from his hands. The Brezhnev-Kosygin takeover had begun and it was they who greeted the fortunate cosmonauts after they had landed safely. The crew remained in the spherical capsule as small retro – rockets fired just before touchdown to cushion the impact, some 310 km (193 miles) northeast of Kustanai. The mission lasted just 1 day 17 minutes 3 seconds, the shortest three-crew flight in history. The three-man crew apparently requested an extension but were refused by Korolyov, who quoted Shakespeare: “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio…” At the time, no one knew the name of the chief designer, who had one more spacecraft to design before he succumbed to ill health in January 1966.
Milestones
13th manned space flight
7th Soviet manned space flight
7th Vostok manned flight
1st Voskhod manned variant flight
1st three-person crew
1st flight by crew without spacesuits
1st flight with no launch escape or ejection system
1st Soviet space flight to end with crew inside spacecraft
1st space flight with non-pilot, civilian crew
1965-022A
18 March 1965
Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan
19 March 1965
180 km northeast of Perm, Siberia
R7 (11A57); spacecraft serial number (11F63/3KD) #4
1 day 2hrs 2 min 17 sec
Almaz (Diamond)
First Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA – spacewalk) demonstration
Flight Crew
BELYAYEV, Pavel Ivanovich, 39, Soviet Air Force, commander LEONOV, Alexei Arkhipovich, 30, Soviet Air Force, pilot
Flight Log
The second of a planned series of multi-crew Voskhod missions got underway at 12: 00 Baikonur time, entering a 65° inclination orbit with the highest manned apogee to date of 495 km (308 miles). Instead of three crewmen without spacesuits, there were two, this time suitably attired. This Voskhod had been reconfigured to carry a telescopic airlock leading from the crew cabin. The space where the third seat had been was left free to give one of the crewmen, Alexei Leonov, the room in which to don an emergency oxygen backpack and connect an umbilical air and communications tether to his spacesuit, before crawling through the airlock after the spacecraft had been depressurised.
The first walk into open space began at the start of the second orbit of Voskhod, as Leonov emerged from the airlock at the end of his 5 m (16 ft) tether, watched by two television and film cameras attached to the end of the airlock and on top of the backup retro-rocket. Leonov cavorted in space doing cartwheels, not for show but because he was essentially out of control as his umbilical snaked around. His official free spacewalk lasted 12 minutes 9 seconds, but he was in the vacuum environment for about 20 minutes, since he couldn’t get back into the airlock. His spacesuit had ballooned more than anticipated and he had to squeeze himself back into the airlock quite forcibly before closing the hatch and re-pressurising the spacecraft.
Unfortunately, he forgot to retrieve the film camera which would have shown clear photos of the EVA rather than the blurred and fuzzy television reproductions. Nonetheless, Leonov’s exploits had a dramatic effect on the watching world, capturing more headlines than Gagarin himself, and this mission was one of the highlights of the “Space Age’’ of the 1960s. The rest of the flight went quietly until they
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The first “walk” in space
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attempted retro-fire at the end of the seventeenth orbit. The prime retro-rocket in the instrument module of Voskhod failed to fire because of a sensor attitude control malfunction.
The cosmonauts made one more orbit as, not without a certain amount of drama, preparations were made to fire the back-up retro-pack on the next pass. The instrument section was apparently jettisoned (again not cleanly) before this, and the Voskhod spherical flight cabin was manually orientated by Belyayev, who punched the retro-pack arming device. The re-entry was quite dramatic and the capsule naturally missed the main recovery area by 960 km (597 miles), landing in the thick, snow – covered forest near the city of Perm. A damaged telemetry antenna made it impossible for the rescue teams to locate the craft, so the cosmonauts put their emergency landing training into effect, lighting a fire and waiting for rescue. However, ravenous wolves compelled their return to the capsule and it was two and a half hours before a helicopter spotted the capsule, thanks to the parachutes which were splayed out across the tree tops. Ground vehicles rescued the crew after they had spent a night in the forest.
Observers in the west, expecting a landing announcement to be made at the end of the seventeenth orbit, suspected that something was wrong and were only told of the touchdown when the crew had been located, four hours later. The drama of
the landing events was only fully revealed a year later, rather perversely, after the emergency US landing of Gemini 8. Flight time was 1 day 2 hours 2 minutes 17 seconds. This proved to be the last Voskhod manned mission. There had originally been plans for a series of at least seven manned Voskhod flights. Voskhod 3 was to have been a two-man 15-20-day extended scientific mission, and then Voskhod 4 would have flown a 15-day biomedical mission with a cosmonaut doctor in the crew. Voskhod 5 would be an all female crew with an EVA, Voskhod 6 was a 14-day EVA mission featuring the use of a small manoeuvring unit, and Voskhod 7 would attempt tether dynamics with the spent upper stage before flying a 10-15 day mission. There was also a plan to include a professional Soviet journalist on board a Voskhod but all these flights were cancelled.
Milestones
14th manned space flight
8th Soviet manned space flight
8th Vostok manned flight
2nd Voskhod manned variant flight
1st manned space flight with two crew
1st space flight with EVA operations
1st extended mission
Flight Crew
GRISSOM, Virgil Ivan “Gus”, 39, USAF, commander, 2nd mission Previous mission: Mercury-Redstone 4 (1961)
YOUNG, John Watts, 35, USN, pilot
Flight Log
Project Gemini was born as the logical follow-on to the Mercury programme, but its raison d’itre was changed by President Kennedy’s pledge to land a man on the Moon before 1970. Gemini was to act as the testing ground for all the manoeuvres and operations to be performed on an Apollo mission, but in Earth orbit – orbital manoeuvring, rendezvous, docking, extended flights and spacewalking. The task of Gemini 3 was straightforward: with the aid of the first computer on a manned spacecraft, Gemini 3 would change its orbit.
The crew was chosen at the time of the Gemini 1 unmanned test flight and was well into training by the time unmanned Gemini 2 had become the first to be recovered. Command pilot Gus Grissom and his pilot John Young, the Taciturn Twins as they were dubbed, were overshadowed by the exploits of Voskhod 2 five days earlier, particularly as Gemini 3 was to make only a modest three orbits. The crew were lying in their ejector seats inside Gemini 3 at 07: 30 hrs, waiting for a 09: 00 hrs launch. At T — 35 minutes, the Titan II first-stage oxidiser line sprang a leak and a handy wrench was required, delaying the launch by 24 minutes. The hypergolic engines of the Titan gave out a high-pitched whine and sprang to life and the mission lifted off.
As the second stage ignited while still attached to the first stage, its exhaust spewing out of the lattice framework between the two, the rocket was surrounded by a bright aurora, disconcerting the pilot. After reaching the 32.5°, 224km (139 miles) peak apogee orbit, the crew was immediately assigned to a series of science
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Young (left) and Grissom aboard Gemini 3
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experiments, including a sea urchin cell growth experiment, which failed because Grissom was rather heavy-handed with it.
At last, the frustrated astronauts had some real space flying to do as, at T + 1 hour 30 minutes, Grissom performed the first orbital manoeuvring system burn, for 75 seconds. Two more burns followed, with the last placing Gemini 3’s perigee at 72 km (45 miles), low enough to ensure re-entry even if the retros failed to fire, which they didn’t. Grissom tried to use Gemini’s lift capability to reduce a predicted landing miss but the capability of the spacecraft was less than anticipated and resulted in a 111 km (69 miles) miss. As Gemini assumed splashdown position, it literally yanked from vertical to an almost horizontal position, pitching the crew forward and smashing Grissom’s faceplate against the instrument panel.
The flight ended near Grand Turk Island in the Atlantic Ocean at T + 4 hours 52 minutes 51 seconds, the shortest US two-crew mission. The landing miss meant a long wait in heaving seas but Grissom – remembering Liberty Bell – elected to stay on board with the hatch well and truly closed. Grissom lost his pre-launch breakfast and both doffed their spacesuits in the heat. They later walked rather ignominiously along the deck of the carrier Intrepid, to which they had been helicoptered, in sporting underwear beneath bathrobes. After the Liberty Bell 7 incident, Grissom named his next space craft “Molly Brown’’ after the hit Broadway show “The Unsinkable Molly
Brown”. NASA was not happy about this and asked him to change the name, but when he indicated that his second choice was “Titanic” they relented. “Molly Brown” became the last named American spacecraft until Apollo 9 in March 1969.
Gemini 3 became known as the “corned beef sandwich flight”, when afterwards it was revealed that Young had been reprimanded for carrying food aboard and offering it to Grissom who, on taking a hefty bite, spread crumbs around the cabin. The prank was, not surprisingly, hatched by the back-up command pilot, Wally Schirra, who put the sandwich into Young’s spacesuit, but the joke got out of hand and became the subject of a Congressional inquiry. The cost of the sandwich, which Schirra had bought in Cocoa Beach, escalated, and it became known as the “$30 million sandwich’’.
Milestones
15th manned space flight 7th US manned space flight 1st Gemini manned flight
1st manned space flight to perform orbital manoeuvres
1st US two-man crew mission
1st flight by crewman on second mission
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Int. Designation
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1981-111A
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Launched
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12 November 1981
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Launch Site
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Pad 39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida
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Landed
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14 November 1981
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Landing Site
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Runway 23, Edwards Air Force Base, California
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Launch Vehicle
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OV-102 Columbia/ET-3/SRB A09; A10/SSME #1 2007; #2 2006; #3 2005
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Duration
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2 days 6 hrs 13 min 13 sec
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Callsign
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Columbia
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Objective
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Second Orbital Test Flight (OFT-2); tests of the Remote Manipulator System (RMS)
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Flight Crew
ENGLE, Joseph Henry, 49, USAF, commander TRULY, Richard Harrison, 44, USN, pilot
Flight Log
As Columbia was being prepared for its second mission, originally scheduled for 10 September then pushed to 30 September, with 1,000 new tiles, new RCS components, an OMS nozzle and fuel cells, nitrogen tetroxide leaked from a ruptured fuel line during propellant loading, damaging another 240 tiles on its nose. The launch was postponed to 4 November. Things looked good but the launch was delayed for 2 hours 40 minutes and finally scrubbed, holding at T — 31 seconds, when an oil flush on one of the APUs failed and a computer malfunctioned. Both had to be replaced before a new launch attempt, eight days later.
The first flight of a re-used manned spacecraft began at 10: 10 hrs local time and astronauts Joe Engle and Richard Truly (marking a space first by being launched on his birthday) were at last on their way, into a 38° inclination orbit which would have a maximum altitude of 219 km (136 miles). A five day flight was on the agenda, with a complement of science experiments and the testing of the Remote Manipulator System robot arm, being carried for the first time. An increase in the alkaline level of the electrolyte in one of Columbia’s three fuel cells spoiled the day for Engle and Truly, who were told to cram five days work into two, as mission rules dictated.
The RMS did not work quite as well as planned since it suffered a back-up drive failure, but TV cameras at its end gave interesting views of the payload bay and other parts of the Shuttle. Engle did not get the chance to try out the Shuttle EVA suit inside the airlock. Mission scientists were pleased with the results from the science experiments, particularly the multi-spectral imaging radiometer and the Shuttle Imaging Radar. Columbia came home on the dry lake bed runway 23 at Edwards Air Force
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The launch of STS-2 sees Columbia become the first manned spacecraft to return to orbit
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Base, touching down at a speed of 361 kph (224 mph), at T + 2 days 6 hours 13 minutes 13 seconds, main gear touchdown time.
Milestones
82nd manned space flight
33rd US manned space flight
2nd Shuttle flight
2nd flight of Columbia
1st manned space flight by reused spacecraft
Truly celebrates his 44th birthday by being launched into space (12 November)
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Int. Designation
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1985-043A
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Launched
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6 June 1985
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Launch Site
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Pad 1, Site 5, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan
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Landed
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26 September 1985
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Landing Site
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220 km northeast of Dzhezkazgan
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Launch Vehicle
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R7 ( 11A511U2) spacecraft serial number (7K-ST) # 19L
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Duration
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112 days 3hrs 12min 6 sec (Dzhanibekov)
168 days 3 hrs 51 min 0 sec (Savinykh – returned in Soyuz T14)
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Callsign
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Pamir (Pamirs)
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Objective
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Salyut 7 rescue and recovery mission
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Flight Crew
DZHANIBEKOV, Vladimir Aleksandrovich, 43, Soviet Air Force, commander, 5th mission
Previous missions: Soyuz 27 (1978); Soyuz 39 (1981); Soyuz T6 (1982); Soyuz T12 (1984)
SAVINYKH, Viktor Petrovich, 43, civilian, flight engineer, 2nd mission Previous mission: Soyuz T4 (1981)
Flight Log
After the return of the long-duration Soyuz T10 trio from the Salyut 7 space station in late 1984, another three manned missions were planned for 1985/1986 to continue manned operations. Indeed, the crews had been selected and were in training. Soyuz T13 would be launched in May, crewed by Vladimir Vasyutin, Viktor Savinykh and Aleksandr Volkov to complete a six-month mission. They would be visited by Soyuz T14, carrying an all-female crew on a two-week mission in November. This crew would comprise commander Svetlana Savitskaya on her third mission, along with Yekaterina Ivanova and Yelena Dobrokvashina. The Soyuz T15 flight would then launch at the end of 1985 to complete the Salyut 7 programme by the spring of 1986, when a new station would have been launched. Soyuz T15 was to have been crewed by Viktor Viktorenko, Alexandr Alexandrov and Yevgeny Salei.
Then, in early 1985, came the blow that Salyut 7 was effectively dead in space. Contact had been lost and the space station was out of control. Systems were freezing and observers expected that it would never be manned again. There was concern that it would make a Skylab-like uncontrolled re-entry. It was decided to send the most qualified veteran cosmonaut (Vladimir Dzhanibekov, with four previous space flights to his credit) to the station along with veteran Salyut 6 FE Savinykh to see if they could restore the station to operational use. Dzhanibekov had already proven his
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Savinykh and Dzhanibekov wearing thermals during the early occupation of the stricken space station
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docking skills in past missions, and all his knowledge would be required on this demanding space flight. If the two men could restore the station sufficiently, then the Soyuz T14 crew would be sent to Salyut to resume their intended programme. Flying along with the T14 crew would be Salyut veteran Georgi Grechko, on a short science – orientated mission. He would return with Dzhanibekov after a few days on the Salyut.
The fate of the other crews would be decided if Salyut could be restored. The launch of Soyuz T13 at 12:40 hrs local time from Baikonur on 6 June to conduct “joint work” with Salyut 7 caught western observers by surprise. The two cosmonauts, Vladimir Dzhanibekov – the first Soviet to make five space flights – and flight engineer Viktor Savinykh, proceeded to fly one of the bravest and most remarkable space missions ever.
Soyuz T13 arrived at Salyut two days later, flying all around to check the condition of the exterior and finally docking at the front port with the aid of a new laser ranging device. The crew donned oxygen masks and lots of woolly clothing and entered the freezing space station. Salyut was stabilised so that its solar panels were pointing at the Sun for long enough periods to re-start some form of electrical power. The station’s life support system was fixed thanks to expert repairs by the two crewmen, who often retreated to Soyuz to warm their bodies. Communications directly from the station were restored and by late June, Salyut 7 was declared to be in an operational state.
Progress 24 arrived on 23 June with additional repair and replenishment supplies, and the crew even got to work on some experiments dedicated to Earth observation, while Progress loaded the Salyut propulsion system with fuel. Confounding experts who regarded the Soyuz T13 mission as finished, the Soviets launched a Heavy Cosmos module, rather than the Progress-class spacecraft that it was first suspected to be by analysts. Designated Cosmos 1669, it docked with Salyut on 21 July, enabling even more fruitful work to be conducted by the remarkable crew, which even went on EVA on 2 August to place two small solar arrays on the third large array on Salyut. The walk lasted about 5 hours.
Cosmos 1669 undocked on 28 August, making a controlled re-entry two days later, and the T13 crew went on conducting a mission as ordinary and routine as a normal residency. The 51.6° mission reached a maximum altitude of 359 km (223 miles). Soyuz T14 was launched and joined them on 18 September. Dzhanibekov and one of the T14 crew, the burly Georgy Grechko, undocked on 25 September, flew a day’s autonomous mission and came home – the first individual space travellers who were launched separately but landed together – at T13 flight time of T + 112 days 3 hours 12 minutes. Savinykh, meanwhile, remained on board Salyut 7 to attempt the longest manned space flight in history, only to be thwarted by his new commander’s illness.
Milestones
106th manned space flight
58th Soviet manned space flight
51st Soyuz mission
12th Soyuz T mission
1st reactivation of a dead space station
10th Soviet and 31st flight with EVA activities
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Int. Designation
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1990-019A
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Launched
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28 February 1990
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Launch Site
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Pad 39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida
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Landed
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4 March 1990
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Landing Site
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Runway 23, Edwards Air Force Base, California
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Launch Vehicle
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OV-104 Atlantis/ET-33/SRB BI-036/SSME #1 2019;
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#2 2030; #3 2027
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Duration
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4 days 10 hrs 18 min 22 sec
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Callsign
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Atlantis
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Objective
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6th classified DoD shuttle mission
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Flight Crew
CREIGHTON, John Oliver, 45, USN, commander, 2nd mission Previous mission: STS 51-G (1985)
CASPER, John Howard, 46, USAF, pilot
MULLANE, Richard Michael, 45, USAF, mission specialist 1, 3rd mission Previous missions: STS 41-D (1984); STS-27 (1988)
HILMERS, David Carl, 40, USMC, mission specialist 2, 3rd mission Previous missions: STS 51-J (1985); STS-26 (1988)
THUOT, Pierre Joseph, 34, civilian, mission specialist 3
Flight Log
This DoD classified military mission by the orbiter Atlantis was always going to be a quiet affair, other than the usual comical revelation of exactly what the classified payload was going to be. In this case, it was a digital imaging and electronic signals intelligence satellite, which was to be deployed on the Shuttle’s eighteenth orbit, comparatively late in the proposed four-day mission, by a new system called the Stabilised Payload Deployment System, SPDS. This was fixed to the payload in the payload bay before launch and was to be used to rotate the satellite clear of the Shuttle before release by spring-loaded pistons.
Another innovation for the mission was its high inclination of 62°, ostensibly 5° over the safety limits for launches from the Kennedy Space Center, but on a trajectory which would not quite take it over land. As if to veil this fact as much as possible, Atlantis was first scheduled for a night launch on 16 February, which was eventually moved to 22 February, at 01: 00hrs local time. Before the crew could board the Shuttle, however, the weather caused concern and for the first time since Apollo 9, a US mission was delayed by the illness of the crew. In this case, it was commander John Creighton, who was suffering from an upper respiratory tract infection.
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Commander Creighton photographs views out of the overhead windows of Atlantis
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His illness delayed the launch until 25 February and the count reached T — 31 seconds when a range safety computer went on the blink. By the time it had been fixed, the liquid oxygen was too cold for the SSMEs. The launch was cancelled the following day due to winds at altitude and a low cloud deck and was routinely postponed for 48 hours. On 28 February, the weather looked to win again, but with just seconds of the launch window remaining, Atlantis lit up the night sky at 02: 50 hrs local time, heading for its unique launch azimuth. Deployment of the classified satellite took place as planned and the mission ended quietly with a landing at Edwards Air Force Base at T + 4 days 10 hours 18 minutes 22 seconds.
It was revealed later that the satellite had apparently broken apart in orbit and two of the six resulting fragments had re-entered soon after. The satellite may have failed to fire its rocket stage to reach operational orbit. All in all, it seems that STS-36 was an expensive waste of a mission.
Milestones
132nd manned space flight 64th US manned space flight 34th Shuttle flight 6th flight of Atlantis
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Int. Designation
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1992-026A
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Launched
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7 May 1992
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Launch Site
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Pad 39B, Kennedy Space Center, Florida
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Landed
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16 May 1992
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Landing Site
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Runway 22, Edwards AFB, California
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Launch Vehicle
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OV-105 Endeavour/ET-43/SRB BI-050/SSME #1 2030; #2 2015; #3 2017
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Duration
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8 days 21 hrs 17 min 38 sec
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Call sign
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Endeavour
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Objective
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Capture, repair and redeployment of stranded satellite INTELSAT VI (F-3); Assembly of Space Station by EVA Methods demonstration (ASSEM)
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Flight Crew
BRANDENSTEIN, Daniel Charles, 49, USN, commander, 4th mission Previous missions: STS-8 (1983); STS 51-G (1985); STS-32 (1990)
CHILTON, Kevin Patrick, 36, USAF, pilot
HIEB, Richard James, 36, civilian, mission specialist 1, 2nd mission Previous mission: STS-39 (1991)
MELNICK, Bruce Edward, 42, US Coast Guard, mission specialist 2,
2nd mission
Previous mission: STS-41 (1990)
THUOT, Pierre Joseph, 36, mission specialist 3, 2nd mission Previous mission: STS-36 (1990)
THORNTON, Kathryn Cordell Ryan, 39, civilian, mission specialist 4, EV3, 2nd mission
Previous mission: STS-33 (1989)
AKERS, Thomas Dale, 40, USAF, mission specialist 5, 2nd mission Previous mission: STS-41 (1990)
Flight Log
The maiden flight of the Endeavour (the replacement orbiter for Challenger which was lost in the 1986 launch accident) was an impressive mission that clearly demonstrated the value of having astronauts on board to overcome technical problems. Whether there was a need for Endeavour itself was a question long debated, but it was the loss of Challenger that finally secured the construction of the new vehicle from the structural spares that had been factored into the orbiter construction programme several years before. There was no such contingency to replace Columbia seventeen years later.
Three astronauts hold onto the 4.5-ton Intelsat VI satellite after completing a six-handed “capture”. L to r are astronauts Hieb, Akers and Thuot, who stands on the end of the RMS. This first three-person EVA was the third attempt at grappling the satellite
Following the 6 April 1992 flight readiness firing of Endeavour’s three main engines, the management team decided to replace all three due to irregularities that had arisen in two of the high-pressure oxidiser turbo-pumps. The launch of STS-49 was set for 4 May, but was rescheduled for 7 May, with an early launch window that would offer better lighting conditions for photo-documentation of the behaviour of the new vehicle during its first ascent. The lift-off on 7 May was delayed by 34 minutes due to bad weather at the transoceanic abort landing site, as well as technical problems with one of Endeavour’s master event controllers.
The primary objective of the flight was the capture and redeployment of the Intelsat VI satellite that had been launched aboard a Titan rocket on 14 March 1990.
During the launch, the second stage of the Titan had not separated, preventing the satellite’s ascent into a geosynchronous orbit. Quick thinking by ground controllers triggered the separation of the satellite from the unused Perigee Kick Motor (PKM) that was still attached to the Titan stage, and careful use of onboard liquid propellant allowed the satellite to reach a thermally stable 299 x 309 nautical mile orbit. Subsequent data analysis suggested it would be more cost-effective to bring a new kick motor up to the stranded satellite on the Shuttle than to return it to the ground and relaunch it. The Hughes Aircraft Company’s Space and Communications Group worked with NASA to construct special hardware to support the EVA operations that would be required.
The crew split into two EVA teams. Thuot (EV1) and Hieb (EV2) were termed the Intelsat EVA crew for the satellite retrieval and redeployment, while Thornton (EV3) and Akers (EV4) would work on the planned evaluation of space station construction techniques. A specially designed capture bar would be used to capture the satellite but in the event, this did not work as planned. During the first attempt on 10 May, Thuot had been unable to attach the capture bar, causing the satellite to bounce away and tumble at even greater rates the more he tried. The following day, the rotation of the satellite had slowed sufficiently for Thuot to gently move the bar into place. This time, however, the latches on the bar failed to fire, causing the satellite to drift off once again. It became evident that the planned method of capture would not work and during 11 May, as the crew rested, plans were formulated for another attempt. This would be the last chance, as Endeavour had only enough propellant aboard to support one more rendezvous. The following day, the crew practised getting three pressure – suited astronauts into an airlock that was designed to accommodate just two. Other astronauts simulated the operation in the water tank at JSC and the crew played an important role in the final decision to try the first three-person EVA.
On 13 March, Thuot, Hieb and Akers ventured outside and placed themselves in foot restraints 120° apart around the payload bay. Hieb was stationed on the starboard wall of the bay and Akers stood on a borrowed strut from the ASSEM experiment, while Thuot rode the RMS. Brandenstein and Chilton flew Endeavour and gently closed in on the satellite, allowing all three EVA astronauts to reach up and grasp the satellite by the three electric motors that would deploy the satellite’s cylindrical solar panel. Over a difficult 85 minutes, the capture bar was finally attached to the satellite, allowing the RMS to manipulate it over the payload bay and onto the new kick motor. Thuot and Hieb then used hand-operated ratchets to pull the satellite down and latch it into place with four clamps. They then connected two electrical umbilicals. With the astronauts back in the airlock, but with an open hatch in case they were still required, the new PKM was ejected from the payload bay. Thirteen minutes later, a procedural error on the checklist prevented the initial deployment. The EVA set a new duration record, surpassing that of the Apollo 17 astronauts on the Moon in December 1972. The new engine worked perfectly on 14 May, placing the satellite on its way to geosynchronous orbit.
The same day, Thornton and Akers were in the payload bay performing the ASSEM EVA demonstration. Originally scheduled for two EVAs, the Intelsat difficulty had curtailed this to a single excursion. The pair assembled a pyramid out of struts to simulate a station truss section, then attached a triangular pallet to this to simulate the mass of a major component such as a propulsion module. Scheduled for three hours, the astronauts found that it took twice as long as expected and proved very tiring, forcing other activities planned for this EVA to be cancelled. The mission had been extended by two days to complete its primary objectives and this took a toll on the crew. They also had to complete the rest of their experiment programme, including the Commercial Proton Crystal Growth experiment, the UV Plume Instrument experiment and the USAF Maui Optical Site experiment. Post-flight inspections revealed negligible damage and the crew and flight controllers reported only minor problems. The new vehicle had joined the fleet in style.
Milestones
150th manned space flight 77th US manned space flight 47th Shuttle mission 1st flight of Endeavour
25th US and 46th flight with EVA operations 1st Shuttle mission to feature four EVAs 1st use of landing drag parachute 1st three-person EVA
1st astronaut attachment of rocket motor to orbiting satellite
