Category Manned Spaceflight Log II—2006-2012

The first rockets to explore space flew a basic up-and-down trajectory and did not have the velocity (of 18,000 mph or 29,000 kph) to attain Earth orbit. In their plans to place a man in space first, both the Americans and the Soviets investi­gated a program of suborbital space shots, launching on smaller rockets to about 100 miles (approximately 160 km) before separating for landing several hundred miles downrange. Clearly these rockets could not attain the thrust required for orbital flight and the vehicles they carried (commonly called capsules) would not have the capacity for a controlled land landing similar to the X-15, so they were termed suborbital missions. While the Russians abandoned the suborbital program in favor of proceeding directly to orbital missions, NASA chose to send its first two astronauts on suborbital hops down the Atlantic Missile Range in 1961, ending up in the Atlantic Ocean barely 15 minutes after launch. These two mis­sions have always been accredited as America’s first two space flights, but in some more recent online listings, while the pilots Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom are accredited with their “suborbital space missions”, they are not listed under manned space flights. Instead, the three-orbit mission of John Glenn in February 1962 is credited as America’s first (orbital) flight in space, so the debate continues—and will probably do so for some time.

The new decade opened with a year of great success and shocking tragedy. The first mission, Apollo 14, continued the success of the series with a third lunar landing, this time at Fra Mauro, the intended site of Apollo 13. The mission confirmed that walking on the Moon for short distances was possible but could be confusing and disorientating without adequate reference points or navigational aids. The astronauts were aided by a two-wheeled rickshaw-style equipment trans­port to ease the load they had to carry, but often found themselves carrying the device when it became stuck in the lunar regolith, which tired them even more.

Six months later, the Apollo 15 astronauts benefited from the first electrically powered manned lunar roving vehicle. This remarkable device significantly increased the capabilities and productivity of the two astronauts on the surface. Meanwhile, in lunar orbit the third crew member participated in an expanded orbital program of science and observations, using equipment and experiments housed in a special instrument bay in the Service Module and from within the Command Module. In the closing months of the Apollo program, NASA was trying to make the most of the three remaining missions to the Moon by flying as much science as possible.

There were three streams to manned space flight operations during the 1990s. First, the main Shuttle program completed a range of independent engineering, science, deployment, and servicing missions. The Russian national Mir program flew a series of long-duration expeditions and a number of shorter visiting missions, some of which were international cooperative ventures. The third element was the Shuttle missions associated with the ISS program, including the series of rendezvous and docking missions with the Mir station and the start of ISS assembly operations.

For the Shuttle program, an important learning curve was climbed by sending orbiters to the Russian Mir station. When Space Shuttle was originally proposed, one of its major objectives was to create and support space station operations. This objective was lost in the early years of Shuttle operations and almost for­gotten well into the 1980s, but by the 1990s the Shuttle finally had an objective and the target it was designed for. As plans to send the Shuttle to a space station were finalized, the 1990s also saw a range of missions flown by the Shuttle which at times seemed very much like cleaning a house: flying long-delayed missions, adapting others to support the new Mission to Planet Earth program; expanding the scope of the Hubble Space Telescope and deploying other great observatories and research satellites; and preparing for the start of ISS construction.

It is amazing now to look back at this period. It was a time of great change in the Soviet Union and a struggle for funding for the new Russian space program. Across the Atlantic, there were similar difficulties in securing a future for the U. S. Freedom station and continuing with Shuttle operations. The unique circum­stances of these events allowed both nations to come together and, with some effort, overcome their differences to launch a true partnership that was extended to include 16 nations, creating what we now know as the International Space Station. The program of cooperation has, in hindsight, allowed the creation of the ISS to run relatively smoothly during the last decade or so, even with further tragic setbacks and operational hurdles to overcome.

The Mir program was the cornerstone for both the Russians and, to an extent, the Americans to progress on to the ISS. One of the most important lessons learned from Mir was adaptability. Being able to adapt flight plans, over­come difficulties, and have the skills, alternative systems, and procedures to keep flying was a testament to the robust nature of the Soviet/Russian hardware, if not its refined technology. Being prepared for the unexpected was a lesson well learned by the Americans during the seven residencies on the station.

During Mir, something new was learned on every expedition; there were often unexpected lessons. It was surprising to some how long the program continued to be operational. Mir, as a space complex, had been continuously manned between September 7, 1989 and August 27, 1999 by a succession of crews for 3,640 days, 22 hours, and 52 minutes. That record has now been surpassed by the ISS, but at the time this was a huge achievement, especially with the difficulties in keeping the station flying at all in its latter years. Often overlooked was the significant amount of science research conducted on the station over a period of 14 years. By 2000, the station had over 240 scientific devices on board with an accumulated mass of over 14 tons. Over 20,000 experiments had been conducted (see Andrew Salmon’s “Firefly” in Mir: The Final Year, edited by Rex Hall, p. 8, British Interplanetary Society, 2001).

It was not smooth sailing by any means. Simply maintaining Mir systems began to consume most of the main crews’ time on board, as did trying to find places to store unwanted equipment. Once cosmonauts began to make return visits to the station, sometimes years apart, they reported that the time spent on repairs had increased significantly over their earlier tour. They found equipment already stored in locations meant for experiments to be set up, which caused valuable experiment time to be lost because of relocating the logistics. International crew members described finding equipment on board the station a nightmare, with conditions on the station reported as detrimental to an efficient working environment. But much of this would prove valuable for the new ISS program. In quantifying the value of their series of missions to Mir and support­ing the seven NASA residencies, John Uri, the NASA mission scientist for Shuttle-Міг, commented in the fall of 1998 that NASA had developed a host of lessons learned from Phase 1 operations at Mir. Of these, he estimated that 80-90% would have useful and direct application for the planned science program on the ISS. The others were somewhat peculiar to performing science on Mir; yet there is always something to be gained. Clearly identifying what not to do can be an equally valuable lesson as learning how to approach and complete a task.

2001-2010: THE EXPANSION YEARS

From the start of the new decade and the new millennium, the emphasis of human space flight focused around the creation and operation of the International Space Station. All but 3 of the 31 Shuttle missions flown in this decade were associated with the assembly and supply of the station. The first non-ISS mission was the fourth Hubble Servicing Mission, SM-3B (STS-109) in 2002. The second conducted ISS-related science, but flew independently of the station. This was the research flight STS-107, which ended tragically on February 1, 2003, with the high-altitude destruction of Columbia just 16 minutes from the planned landing. Following the loss of a second orbiter and crew in 17 years, the decision was made to retire the fleet. Originally, this was expected to be in 2010 but this was subsequently delayed until 2011, after 30 years of flight operations. As a result of the Columbia tragedy and inquiry, there was a review of the remaining payloads and hardware still to be launched to the station and a revised launch manifest was released for the remainder of the program, now with some of the planned elements deleted from the schedule. Once the Shuttle completed its return to flight qualifica­tion in 2006, there were no further serious delays in completing ISS assembly and finally retiring the Shuttle fleet.

In addition to the effort to complete the ISS, there was a move to fly one more service mission (SM-4) to Hubble. This had originally been canceled follow­ing the Columbia loss but was reauthorized after lobbying from the scientific community and the public. This third non-ISS mission of the decade was flown with great success, as STS-125 in 2009. The flight rounded out an impressive series of six missions specifically associated with the telescope but, sadly, the end-of – mission return to Earth on board a shuttle for the Hubble, which was on the manifest for about 2013 prior to the loss of Columbia, had to be abandoned. Had this been possible, a significant amount of information could have been gained from studying the telescope’s physical structure after over 20 years in orbit, prior to displaying the historic spacecraft in a museum for public viewing.

For the Russians during the first decade of the new millennium all effort was focused on supporting ISS operations, with the slow expansion of the Russian segment but regular resupply via Progress unmanned freighters. The venerable Soyuz was still in service at the end of the decade and in a new variant, the Soyuz TMA-M. This was the fifth major upgrade to warrant a separate designation. Though other vehicles have often been proposed by the Russians as Soyuz replacements, the almost 50-year-old design remains the primary crew ferry and rescue vehicle. In the period of 2003-2006, while the Shuttle was grounded or being requalified for operational flight, only the Soyuz was able to ferry crews to and from the station. It enabled the station to continue to be manned and oper­ated, albeit with a reduced two-person caretaker crew. In hindsight the option taken in the early 1990s to include Soyuz in the program has been, with the grounding and eventual retirement of the Shuttle, a wise one and has saved the ISS program until something else replaces the Shuttle orbiter to take American astronauts into orbit.

There are moments in human history that define significant change and development. One of the more positive moments occurred on October 4, 1957. On that day, the world’s first artificial satellite was placed into Earth orbit, signifying the dawn of what became known as the “space age”. That defining moment, when Sputnik attained a successful orbital insertion, finally unlocked the age-old secret of flight beyond the confines of our planet and brought human dreams, stories, and plans to explore “space” closer to fruition and reality. The rapid pace of advancement has become a feature of space exploration since that date. After those centuries of hopes and desires, another significant development occurred but a short two and one half years later.

Over a decade later, a third suborbital trajectory was inadvertently flown during an aborted Soyuz launch in April 1975. In this case, a spent stage of the R-7 launch vehicle failed to separate cleanly and caused the remaining launch vehicle to veer off course, triggering an abort just a few minutes into the mission before completing an emergency parachute recovery just over 21 minutes after launch. As a result of the failure, the Soviets did not assign an official Soyuz designation to the flight (it should have become Soyuz 18). Instead, they termed the event “the April 5 anomaly”. In the West, this “mission” is often referred to as Soyuz 18-1, to distinguish it from the successful replacement Soyuz 18 mission flown with a

different crew a few weeks later. As the aborted flight attained a peak altitude of 119 miles (192 km) it was officially credited as a space flight in progress, becoming the highest altitude suborbital trajectory to date.

In September 1983, a second Soyuz launch was aborted seconds before release from the pad when the carrier rocket suddenly exploded. The emergency escape rocket fired and propelled the crew to a safe, if rapid recovery five minutes later. As the maximum altitude attained was just a few thousand feet and the “launch” had not taken place, this did not become an accredited space flight or official “mission”. It was an unwelcome and surprising experience. In July 1985, Shuttle mission 51F suffered a main engine failure which threatened its ascent to orbit. Fortunately, sufficient velocity and altitude had been attained at the time of the failure and the loss of the engine could be compensated by those remaining. Abort-To-Orbit (ATO) mode was followed, resulting in a lower-than-planned Earth orbit which was modified over the next few days.

The question of when a space flight is not credited as a flight into space, but is instead deemed a mission in progress, was demonstrated tragically in January 1986 with the STS-51L mission and the tragic loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger and its crew of seven. The vehicle exploded just 73 seconds after leaving the pad at an altitude of 14,020 m (45,997 ft.), far below the recognized altitude to be termed a true space flight. However, in respect to the lost crew, NASA credited them post­humously with a mission duration of 1 minute 13 seconds to the point of the disaster and officially termed the ill-fated flight a “space mission in progress”.

This same classification was attributed to the STS-107 mission in February 2003, when that vehicle and its crew of seven were lost during a high-altitude breakup just 16 minutes from the planned landing in Florida. Again as a mark of respect to the crew, they were credited a mission duration to the point of loss of signal. Unlike STS-51L, they had completed a 16-day flight and were coming home from orbit when disaster struck. In most records of space flight missions, the flights of Soyuz 18-1 and STS-51L tend to be listed as attempted orbital mis­sions which fell short of that goal during flight. Had all gone well, they would have both attained sufficient velocity to have been accredited as true orbital space flights.

In contrast, the Soviet program was not going well. All their effort for manned operations was now diverted to creating a space station. The objectives of this program were, typically, not forthcoming from the secretive Soviets, and would not be for some years. However, it was subsequently revealed by Soviet space watchers that there would be two distinctly separate space station programs, either civilian and scientific in nature or more military in intent, which would both be run under one heading, called “Salyut” to help mask the clandestine nature of the military stations.

In April 1971, as part of the celebrations for the 10th anniversary of the Gagarin flight, the first Salyut was launched. Tragically, the first man in space had not lived to see the tribute, having been killed in a plane crash in March 1968 at the age of 34. He had never had the opportunity to return to orbit. The first Salyut was a compromise between the DOS scientific stations (identified later as “civilian” in the West) planned by OKB-1 and the Almaz (“Diamond”) military – focused stations designed by OKB-52. It was plagued by difficulties from the start. The first crew (Soyuz 10), launched a few days after the Salyut, could not complete a hard docking and returned after only two days in space. Then the second crew was grounded when one of them failed a medical, so their intended mission was flown by the backup crew. Launched as Soyuz 11, this replacement crew completed a challenging 21 days on board the station but tragically died during the recovery phase due to a faulty air equalization valve.

As a result, the Soviet manned program was grounded and a planned third visit to the Salyut canceled. It would be two years before the next Soyuz crew entered orbit to test the improvements to the ferry craft and three years before a

cosmonaut crew would enter another Salyut in orbit. During this period, the Americans completed both the Apollo program and the three Skylab program manned missions, forging ahead in both lunar and space station experiences much to the chagrin of the Soviets.

The final Apollo missions to the Moon were flown in 1972. Apollo 16 and 17 completed the J-series of scientific missions to more geologically challenging sites, maximizing the variety of samples retrieved from the six landing sites. The Apollo program was a highly successful series and, even with the Apollo 13 aborted landing, significant experience and confidence was gained in sending crews out to the Moon and from performing the first EVAs on the surface of another celestial body. Unfortunately, a number of factors contributed to the closure of the program, which prevented the Americans from expanding upon this experience and contributed to the diversion of hardware, funds, and investment elsewhere. Most notably, this was to the planned Space Shuttle program, which had been authorized in January 1972 and approved in April that year while the Apollo 16 astronauts were exploring the Moon.

Just over a decade after manned space flight had become possible, the emphasis was already changing. No longer was it a race to achieve leadership at the Moon. Now, a concerted effort to look back at Earth began to develop and with it, hopefully, the creation of economical access to and from Earth orbit, with additional emphasis on sustained and extended operations in low Earth orbit. When Apollo stopped flying to the Moon in December 1972, no one really thought it would be over 35 years before we would even consider going back there seriously with a new program, and probably over 50 years before we finally make it.

This decade also brought a new, third player into the field of manned space flight operations—the Chinese. Long thought to have keen interest in developing human space flight capability, a planned program to place Chinese citizens in space in the 1970s was abandoned due to more pressing difficulties in the country. In 1992 a new manned space flight program was authorized, and from 1999 a series of unmanned test flights of the Shenzhou vehicle finally qualified the system to put a man into space.

In October 2003, taikonaut (or yuhangyuan) Liwei Yang flew Shenzhou 5 on a 21-hour mission, certifying the vehicle for human space flight operations. Two years later, in October 2005, a trio of taikonauts flew Shenzhou 6 on a five-day manned test flight, qualifying the vehicle for more extensive operations. It would be almost three years later, in September 2008, before the next Shenzhou crew entered orbit. This was also a three-man mission, but much shorter, with the specific objective of performing the first Chinese EVA. This was accomplished by mission commander Zhai Zhigang on September 27, 2008. All of these missions were explained by the Chinese authorities as planned steps toward the creation of a small space research laboratory, leading to larger space stations and eventually to Chinese manned expeditions to the Moon.

The first decade of the 21st century would put in place the infrastructure to expand the capabilities of the U. S., Russia, and the other partners in the ISS program, and to support the future direction that would be pursued over the coming two decades. The emergence of China added a whole new element to human space exploration and the appearance of their first space laboratory signals their intention to create a permanent presence in space, possibly far beyond low Earth orbit.