Tag Archives: discoverer 20

[Feb. 21, 1961] Trading up (Mercury Atlas 2, Discoverer 21)

I'm starting to enjoy these musical interludes.  Indulge me while I flip on my hi-fi to play my new favorite pop tune, Del Shannon's Runaway.  Now, don't get me wrong, I'm often still as square as a lot of the slightly older set, and I still tap my toes to Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, and Count Basie, but I enjoy the new stuff, too.

Now, on to the news.  With all of the talk about Mercury capsules on Redstone rockets, it's easy to forget that the main mission is to get a person into orbit–and you just can't do that without a bigger booster.

It appears that bigger booster, in the form of the Atlas ICBM, is ready to roll.

I actually missed the first flight of Mercury Atlas, back on July 29, 1960, as I was traveling Japan and didn't have easy access to English newspapers.  In that flight, the Atlas' payload was a boilerplate Mercury.  There was also no ejection system or passenger.  The goal was to test the Atlas as well as to plunge the Mercury in a steep reentry angle, simulating an abort situation.

Unfortunately, MA-1 broke up 58 seconds after lift-off.  It was a cloudy day, so no one saw it occur, but when the telemetry stopped and pieces of the craft fell from the sky, it was pretty clear the mission was over.  The culprit was later identified as the junction between the capsule and booster.

MA-2, launched this morning, was a far happier flight.  The sky was perfectly clear, and the mission was a complete success.  It was a short flight, just 17-and-a-half minutes, and it didn't go any farther than Ham's flight last month, but the results were gratifying, nonetheless.  NASA now knows that the Mercury can survive a serious abort situation, and the rocket is ready for an unmanned orbital test.  After that, it we'll just be a chimp away from a fellow in orbit; this could happen as soon as the end of the year, I reckon.

Speaking of chimps, here's Ham enduring the rigors of reentry.  He had to go through an unplanned 17gs of gravity for a few seconds on the way down, poor thing.  He's all right, though, NASA vets assure.

There's a new Discoverer in orbit, Number 21, launched on the 18th.  I don't know why the Air Force launched it so fast on the heels of Number 20, which was sent up just the day before.  It may be because their missions are so different.  #20 is a simple capsule-return mission, differing from prior ones in just the length of the planned mission–four days.  #21 will test an in-orbit engine fire, presumably to test its ability to change photographic targets while over the Soviet Union (assuming it's a spy sat, of course!).  The latter probe also carries more equipment planned for use on the official spy sat, Midas.  It's all a little sketchy; the Air Force is increasingly clamping down on its press releases.

By the way, #20's mission was a bust.  The capsule was supposed to come down yesterday, but it's still in orbit.  Perhaps it was smitten by #21 and decided it just could bear to be apart…

Meanwhile, the Soviet probe to Venus, Venera, continues to sail along.  It is around 4 million kilometers away, and the Russians have confirmed at least three transfers of data.  Like Pioneer 5, it will return science on the interstellar medium all the way to Venus.  In fact, this may be all we get out of it.  Sadly, the probe will miss the mark, ending up perhaps 200,000 kilometers away at closest approach.  That may not be near enough to get much useful information, though you never know.

Still no clarification of the February 4 launch, by the way.  An article in the Feb. 13 Aviation Weekly advances all kinds of theories, one of which is similar to the "spy sat" explanation my daughter advanced.  But in the latest (Feb. 20) issue, it seems the hypothesis I advanced,that Sputnik 7 had the same mission as Sputkin 8 and simply fizzled out, is gaining favor.  The twin launches of Sputniks 7 and 8 (the latter being the rocket from which Venera was launched) have apparently galvanized the American government into action.  Or, at least, a lot of talking…

Finally, Happy Birthday to me!  Like Dr. Asimov, I am a little past 30 (a status I've enjoyed for some time).  A fan nominated me for the Hugo this year.  I'm flattered beyond words; it's a great present.

[Feb. 18, 1961] Lost and Found (Explorer 9 and Discoverer 20)

February is definitely making up for January's relative paucity of space flights; this week, in particular, has been noteworthy. 

I'd held off reporting on NASA's February 16 launch of Explorer 9 since, well, NASA lost it.  You see, the satellite's beacon was tracked through half an orbit, but then the signal was lost, and no one could confirm that the thing was still up there.  Yesterday, the vehicle was tracked optically, and it looks as if the probe will be able to fulfill its mission.

'What mission?' you ask.  Explorer 9 is a big, polka-dot balloon.  Unlike Echo, whose main purpose is to bounce communications signals across continents, Explorer 9 is an incredibly simple experiment.  By tracking the path of the balloon, scientists can tell a great deal about the air density of the upper atmosphere and the effect of the sun and solar wind thereon.  They will also be able to refine their gravity maps of the world by tracing the satellite's dips and rises as it travels.  It is the very simplicity of this satellite that allows it to function even without a functioning beacon.  As for the polka-dots, they are designed to help regulate the temperature of the 11-foot wide aluminum/mylar sphere.

Perhaps more exciting than the satellite itself is the rocket that launched it.  It was a cheap, civilian-made, four-stage, solid-fuel rocket called Scout.  The exciting bit is that it's the first purpose-built booster that isn't a knock-off of a missile (technically, that honor might go to Vanguard, but it traces its origins to the Viking sounding rocket, itself an evolution of the V2).  It's cheaper than the military missiles, too.  This launch is actually the second try of the Scout and balloon sat, the first ending in failure during ascent back in December.  The mission also marks the christening of a new orbital launch facility at Wallops Island, Virginia.  That base has been a sounding rocket pad for a long time, but now it joins Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Air Force Base as an origin for true spaceflight missions.

In other news, the Air Force launched its twentieth Discoverer yesterday atop a Thor Agena rocket of decidedly military origin.  Once again, the capsule-return probe went into polar orbit, the kind that is best for espying global weather conditions…or enemy army bases.  The flyboys plan to wait an unprecedented four days to recover the capsule, which reportedly contains emulsions for detecting radiation, and probably also for catching a glimpse of Khruschev's new Model A.  More on that as it crosses my desk.

In the meantime, I'm finishing up this month's IF, and picked up a recent reprint of A.E.Van Vogt's The War against the Rull.  We'll see if I get those reviews done before the next space spectacular.