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Science / Space Race

[March 24, 1965] New Leaps Forward in Space (Voskhod 2, Europa F-3, Ranger 9, and Gemini 3)

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by Kaye Dee

Returning to university kept me pretty busy in February, so I knew I wouldn’t have time to write, but this past month has seen yet more leaps forward in space exploration with the world’s first spacewalk and the launch of NASA’s first manned Gemini mission.

Soviet Space Achievements

It’s hard to believe that it’s just under four years since Yuri Gagarin rocketed into orbit as the first man in space. In that short time we’ve seen six flights in the Soviet Union’s Vostok program, including the first dual missions with two space capsules in orbit at the same time, and the first woman in space (how I’d love to meet Valentina Tereshkova!)


The first man and the first woman in space, Soviet cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova

Just last year, the USSR gave us the first flight of its new Voskhod spacecraft, carrying a crew of three. At that time, my fellow writer, Gideon Marcus asked, what would the Soviets follow it up with? (see October 1964 entry)

Now we know. On March 18, the USSR launched a new Voskhod mission that has once again denied the United States a significant space first. This time, the Voskhod 2 mission included the world’s first spacewalk – about a year ahead of when NASA has anticipated accomplishing the same feat.

A Mystery Spacecraft


One of the few Voskhod images released so far, showing the inside of Voskhod 1. The orange cladding may be covering up many of the spacecraft's instruments

We don’t know a lot about the Voskhod spacecraft as the Soviet Union has released few pictures of it or statistics about it. It clearly must be substantially larger than the Vostok, since it has proved capable of carrying three people on its first flight, and two cosmonauts plus an airlock device on the recent spacewalking mission. We do know that, according to official figures, Voskhod 1 weighed 11,728lb, while Voskhod 2 weighed in at 12, 527lb – presumably because of the extra weight of the airlock it carried.

Newly Revealed Cosmonauts

The crew for this historic space flight were two cosmonauts whose names were previously unknown to us in the West: Colonel Pavel Belyayev, the mission Commander, and Lt. Colonel Alexei Leonov, who performed the actual spacewalk, or Extravehicular Activity (EVA) as NASA terms it. Leonov’s name will now go down in the history books as the first person ever to step outside a spacecraft into open space. Soviet cosmonaut biographies don’t really tell us very much, but both men are apparently Air Force fighter pilots, and are married with children. At 39, Col. Belyayev is the oldest person so far to make a space flight; he is also the oldest and highest ranking of the cosmonauts we know about.


Official TASS photo of Belyayev (left) and Leonov (right) with Yuri Gagarin at a radio interview after their historic flight

Onboard Airlock

Voskhod 2 was launched at 07.00GMT (5pm Australian Eastern Standard Time) and it was just 90 minutes later, on the second orbit, that the spacewalk took place. At the time, Voskhod 2 was about 300 miles above the earth – the highest orbit by a manned spaceflight to date. Soviet sources describe the airlock that Leonov used to exit the ship as being mounted on the outside of the spacecraft and entered from the Voskhod cabin via a hatch. After the completion of the spacewalk, the airlock was jettisoned before the ship returned to Earth. Because the spacewalk would expose the crew to the vacuum of space if the airlock malfunctioned, both cosmonauts wore spacesuits for the duration of the mission, unlike the Voskhod 1 crew, who made their space flight in lightweight suits, which would seem to be an indication of Soviet confidence in the performance of the spacecraft.


Belyayev (left) and Leonov (right) in their spacesuits on the way to the launch site. Voskhod 1 cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov is between them

Stepping into the Void

According to the TASS news agency, Lt. Col. Leonov spent 20 minutes “in conditions of outer space”. Since his actual spacewalk lasted about 10 minutes, the rest of the time must have been spent in the airlock. I’ve heard a rumour from my friends at the WRE that the spacewalk did not go as smoothly as the Soviets would like us to believe, and that Leonov actually had some difficulty re-entering the airlock, which might explain the times reported by TASS. But stories of Soviet coverups of problems with their cosmonaut program occur after every mission, so it’s hard to know quite where the truth lies in this instance.


Lt Colonel Alexei Leonov floating in the void of space during the historic first spacewalk, seen in frames from the film taken by a camera mounted on Voskhod 2

Whether he had a problem or not, Leonov spent about 10 minutes floating in the void, attached to Voskhod 2 by a long umbilicus, to prevent him drifting away. His breathing oxygen was supplied from a tank on his back. Leonov said that he could look down and see from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Caspian Sea. The spacewalk was filmed and photographed from the Voskhod and I imagine that very few of the readers of this article will not have seen the breathtaking footage of Leonov somersaulting and making swimming movements as he floats in space with the Earth behind him (actually below, of course).

Problems in Orbit?

Voskhod 2 completed 17 orbits before returning to the Earth on 19 March, but there was a mysterious silence from Moscow about the mission after the 13th orbit, which has led to some speculation that there was a problem with the spacecraft, especially as it was not until about five hours after the crew had landed in the vicinity of Perm, west of the Ural Mountains, that their safe return was reported. Belyayev is reported to have brought the Voskhod back to Earth using manual controls. Although official statements said that this was part of the planned research programme, it might also be a hint that the mission experienced problems.


Official TASS photo of Leonov (right) and Belyayev (left) after their return from the Voskhod 2 mission. Leonov is holding folders containing congratulatory messages

But whatever problems the mission may have encountered cannot detract from Lt. Col. Leonov’s historic achievement in making the first spacewalk, a technique that will be needed to advance future space activities. I wonder what new surprises Voskhod 3 will bring….

The Latest ELDO Test Flight

On 22 March, the ELDO program at Woomera also took another step forward with the third successful flight of the Blue Streak first stage of the Europa launcher. Launched at 8.30am local time, the rocket flew 985 miles, reaching a maximum altitude of 150 miles. This flight completes the first phase of the launcher development program: the next phase will begin with an all-up test of a live first stage with dummy upper stages.


The Blue Streak first stage for the ELDO Europa vehicle on the pad awaiting launch

America hits a Double


by Gideon Marcus

Three for Three

Despite the clear success represented by Voskhod 2, it would be folly to overlook the fact that it has been a tremendous week for NASA.  The Ranger program, once the most ill-starred of NASA endeavors, has just completed its third successful mission in a row.  Less than six hours ago, at 3:08 AM PDT, Ranger 9 crashed into the crater Alphonsus in the lunar highlands.

The prior two successful Rangers, 7 and 8, were largely handmaidens to the Project Apollo.  They returned thousands of photographs of potential landing sites for the crewed lunar program.  Ranger 9, on the other hand, was the first mission with a primarily scientific aim.  In order for us to understand the Moon, its construction, and its history, we need close-up information on as many different types of terrain as possible — and no two regions of the Moon are more distinct from each other than the mountains of the lunar highlands and the relatively flat Maria or "seas".  Alphonsus is particularly interesting as it has a large central peak that may be evidence of lunar vulcanism from an ancient period.

Launched at 1:37 PM PDT on March 21, the Atlas Agena carrying Ranger 9 quickly disappeared into the cloudy sky.  The reliable booster's aim was true, propelling the spacecraft first into Earth orbit, and then off toward its final destination.  The next day, Ranger fired its own engines, correcting its course to mathematical perfection. 

Today, at Impact -20 Minutes, Ranger 9 warmed up its television cameras.  Images began appearing at the JPL auditorium…and around the nation, broadcast to anyone who was up to see it (and who had an online TV station to tune into!) This was the first time a robotic mission had been simulcast, and it was very exciting.  Now if only they could time their missions to be more accommodating to the aged thirty-nine year old science writers who cover them…

There were originally supposed to be 12, or even 15 Rangers, but because it took so long for them to work properly, there are now more advanced missions that are superseding them, namely Lunar Orbiter and Surveyor.  This is just as well.  While Ranger has been a triumph of engineering and science, bearing unexpected dividends in the successful spinoff spacecraft, Mariner 2, there is only so much one can learn from TV pictures.  Indeed, initial reports suggest that while Ranger 9's photos discovered new craters within Alphonsus that might be evidence for vulcanism, as Dr. Harold Urey quipped, it won't be until we have chemists on the Moon that we can draw solid conclusions.

In any event, bravo NASA, and bravo Ranger. 

Two in Three

After the spectacular mission of Comrades Tereshkova and Bykovsky in June 1963, there was a long pause in crewed spaceflight.  The Mercury program had ended in May '63 with the day-long mission of Gordo Cooper in Faith 7.  Talk of extending Mercury was poopooed (though you can get an idea of what might have happened if you read the excellent novel, Marooned).  For more than a year, as Mercury's 2-seat successor, Gemini, suffered delay after delay, we waited for Khruschev's shoe to drop.

And the Soviets did beat us back to space with their three-man flight last October, though the success of that mission was somewhat eclipsed by the Soviet coup that took place just a couple hundred miles beneath the orbiting space capsule.  Voskhod 2, with its remarkable space walk, only seems to further the Soviet lead.

Yet the American turtle still has ambitions to beat the Red Hare.  The third Gemini mission (the first and second were uncrewed test flights) had been planned for this month for some time, and yesterday morning, Gemini 3 took off from Cape Canaveral carrying astronauts Gus Grissom and John Young for a three-orbit test flight. 

A lot has changed since John Glenn's pioneering three-orbit flight in Friendship 7, just three years ago.  Both Grissom and Young were kept busy with a slew of biological experiments to conduct in orbit.  Grissom got to conduct the very first spacecraft maneuver, firing the ship's engines once per orbit to change its altitude and velocity.  Neither Mercury nor Vostok had this capability, and I haven't read anything that suggests Voskhod has it, either.  Score one for the home team!

In addition to the ordinary drama that attaches to every space mission, the astronauts created some of their own.  A couple of hours into the flight, as Gemini drifted along its second orbit, it was time for the astronauts to sample their carefully prepared space food.  This meal was lavishly prepared by NASA scientists to be nutritious, compact, and resistant to creating crumbs that could drift into and short vital ship components. 

Whereupon astronaut John Young pulled out a corned beef sandwich from his pocket, ate a bite, and offered it to his commander.  Grissom took a polite nibble, commenting on the sandwich's inability to stay together, and quickly put the thing in his pocket.  Apparently, this was all the brainchild of Schirra, the most renowned prankster of the Mercury 7. 

Beyond this incident, the very name Grissom chose for the first crewed Gemini was something of a scandal.  Christening a spacecraft has always been the privilege of its commander, and Grissom, sensitive to the fate of his last ship, chose an appropriate name: "Molly Brown."  This, of course, was the name of the eponymous character from The Unsinkable Molly Brown, a popular broadway musical about a survivor of the Titanic disaster.

NASA felt that the name lacked dignity and insisted on a change.  Grissom dug in his heels, insisting that if he had to change the name, it would be to Titanic.  NASA gave in.

Gemini 3 completed its three orbits without incident and reentered the atmosphere four and a half hours after leaving it.  Unfortunately, Molly Brown plunged back into the atmosphere somewhat off course.  Grissom tried to steer the capsule (such as it is possible to maneuver a shuttle-cock shaped craft) closer to the Atlantic recovery fleet, but the craft ultimately splashed down some 84 kilometers short.  It took a good half hour for the carrier, U.S.S. Intrepid, to arrive.  In the interim, Grissom and Young sweltered, the commander unwilling to open the capsule and risk another swamped spacecraft.  It is my understanding that Molly Brown is still decorated with Schirra's sandwich…

Minor issues aside, Gemini 3 was a fully successful flight, officially man-rating the Gemini spacecraft.  The next mission, currently scheduled for late spring, will feature the American version of the vacuum shuffle.  The first American spacewalk was originally planned for next year, but Leonov's jaunt changed all that.  Sometimes the rabbit gives the turtle a little goose…

(If you're wondering why the second Mercury astronaut got the honor of commanding the mission, it's because Alan Shepard, the first Mercury astronaut, has been taken off flight status due to an inner ear disease, and astronaut Slayton, the only Mercury astronaut who hasn't flown a mission, was grounded earlier for a heart condition.  I'd assumed that Wally Schirra would command Gemini 4 (Glenn retired to go into politics; Carpenter retired to become an aquanaut), and that Cooper would take Gemini 5.  Apparently, however, Ed White of the second group of astronauts so impressed his peers that he will command the next Gemini mission.  Because of the shifting Gemini schedules, Cooper is still taking Gemini 5, but Schirra is going after him, commanding Gemini 6.)

The Score

So there you have it.  In the last six months, the Soviets have orbited five men, one of whom stepped into Outer Space.  The Americans orbited just two, but they autonomously drove their own spacecraft.  Meanwhile, Ranger 9 raised the total of close-up pictures of the Moon to nearly 20,000 whereas the Russians still haven't added to the handful provided by Luna 3 more than five years ago!

I guess we'll see what happens.  Will the next flight be Gemini 4 or Voskhod 3?

We'll be talking about these space flights and more at a special presentation of our "Come Time Travel with Me" panel, the one we normally do at conventions, on March 27 at 6PM PDT.  Come register to join us!  It's free and fun…and you might win a prize!




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Science / Space Race

[February 20, 1965] Twice as nice (Ranger 8)

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by Gideon Marcus

Last time, I talked about how America's space program has reached a level of reliability that you can…well…rely on!  Three days ago, at 1:05 PM EST, February 17, 1965, the eighth in the Ranger moon probe series took off successfully from Cape Kennedy.

Really, a Ranger has three launches.  First, the Atlas-Agena launched Rancher from the surface to a "parking orbit" 115 miles above the Earth.  Fourteen minutes after that, the Agena upper stage fired again for 90 seconds, changing Ranger's orbit such that its trajectory would intersect with the Moon.  Finally, the next day, Ranger executed a mid-course burn, firing its onboard engines for 59 seconds.  Now, instead of missing the Moon by 1,136 miles, it was set to hit Mare Tranquilitas at 4:57 AM EST, February 20.

That target, one of the darker areas of the Moon known as a "sea", was not easily decided upon.  Since Ranger 7 had impacted the Sea of Clouds, some scientists wanted Ranger 8 to hit a different kind of lunar terrain, perhaps the highlands further north.  Others were keen on exactly duplicating Ranger 7's mission so as to have two sets of data they could compare.  Ultimately, however, program manager George Mueller chose a target that would be support the Apollo mission — a flat area close to the equator.

Ranger 7 had started started its footage just ten minutes before impact.  Ranger 8, on the other hand, started shooting 23 minutes before the crash so that its first images would match the resolution that could be gotten from the best Earth-based cameras.  The moment of truth was a tense one — Ranger 6 had died right at the moment it turned on its TV cameras.

But Ranger 8 performed beautifully, taking a broader swath of photos than its predecessor and revealing an unprecedented wealth of information on the lunar surface before it kamikazed into the Sea of Tranquility at just under 6,000 mph.  Before its demise, it had returned 7,000 photos of the lunar surface.

At first blush, it doesn't look like we've learned much new.  The pictures Ranger 8 returned might well be swapped with those from Ranger 7 and none would be wiser.  On the other hand, it is nice to know that the Seas of the Moon are consistent.

What we still don't know is how safe the Moon is to land on.  Drs. Urey, Kuiper, and Whitaker all believe the lunar soil will hold a spacecraft, the latter two saying that the Ranger data say the Moon's dirt is something like crunchy snow in texture.  But it won't be until the soft-landing Surveyors start going to the Moon next year that we'll have real answers.

Originally, there were going to be up to seventeen Rangers.  However, the lack of success of earlier missions, and the fact that new spacecraft in the form of Lunar Orbiter and Surveyor will be online shortly, has reduced the remaining Ranger missions to just one.

As a result, it is likely that Ranger 9 will be given a more purely scientific mission, perhaps to some place no Apollo crew will visit.  Either way, given America's current track record, and that of Ranger, specifically, we can all hope it will be a crashing success!




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Science / Space Race

[February 18, 1965] OSO Exciting!  (February 1965 Space Roundup)

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by Gideon Marcus

Remember the early days of the Space Race, when launches came about once a month, and there was plenty of time to ruminate over the significance of each one?

Those days are long past, my friends.  Like every other aspect of this crazy modern world we live in, the pace of space missions is only accelerating.  Just look at this grab bag of space headlines, any one of which might have been front page news just a few years ago:

Staring at the Sun

Three years ago, NASA launched the first of its "Observatory Class" satellites, the 200 kg Orbiting Solar Observatory (OSO).  Its mission was unprecedented: to get the first long-term observations of the Sun in all of the frequencies of the electro-magnetic spectrum, not just the narrow windows visible from the Earth's surface.

For two years, OSO gazed at the Sun with its thirteen instruments, dutifully reporting its findings to the ground.  The observatory revolutionized our understanding of our neighborhood star, particularly in finding the correlation between solar flares and the little microflares that precede them. 

OSO 1 went silent last May.  Like nature, NASA abhors a vacuum — at least one without satellites floating through it!  So on February 3, 1965, OSO 2 sailed into orbit to pick up where its predecessor had left off.

The new observatory only has eight instruments, but given that the weight of the craft is similar to that of OSO 1, I have to believe the new load-out is intentional.  Moreover, OSO 2 has some neat developments.  Its Ultraviolet spectrometer, Solar x-ray and UV telescope, and White-light coronagraph are all mounted on the "sail" of the spacecraft, and they can scan the disk of the sun from end to end, like a TV camera.  That should allow for more precision in the measurements.

Also, OSO 2 has a digital telemetry system rather than the analog FM system of OSO 1.  Digital systems are far less prone to error, and more information can be sent over any given length of time.  The new system can dump 3 million bits of data in just 5.5 minutes.

Finally, OSO 2 is smarter — it can accept some 70 commands from the ground instead of just 8.  Just what NASA scientists do with those commands, I don't know.  Maybe OSO brews great coffee.

The most important thing about OSO 2 is the timing of its launch.  Every 11 years, the Sun completes an output cycle, warbling from active to inactive status.  1965 is the Solar minimum, and this year marks a concerted international effort to watch the Sun from many different vantage points to take advantage of the opportunity.

You can bet OSO 2 will have some interesting data for us come 1966!

Requiem for a Vanguard

Hands over hearts, folks.  On February 12, NASA announced that Vanguard 1 had gone silent, and the agency was finally turning off its 108 Mhz ground transceivers, set up during the International Geophysical Year.  The grapefruit-sized satellite, launched March 17, 1958, was the fourth satellite to be orbited.  It had been designed as a minimum space probe and, had its rocket worked in December 1957, would have been America's first satellite rather than its second.  Nevertheless, rugged little Vanguard 1 beat all of its successors for lifespan.  Sputniks and Explorers came and went.  Vanguards 2 and 3 shut off long ago.  Yet the grapefruit that the Naval Research Laboratory made kept going beep-beep, helping scientists on the ground measure the shape of the Earth from the wiggle and decay of Vanguard's orbit.

The satellite's cry had slowly become weaker as its solar cell-charged batteries failed.  Finally, some time last year, Vanguard could be heard no more, though NASA kept listening for several more months.  It's not all sad news, however: Vanguard 1 will remain in orbit for hundreds of years more, and it can still be optically tracked.  That means it still has a long, useful life ahead of it, even now that it is mute.

Whole World in its Eyes

Here's a little TIROS tidbit.  Remember TIROS 9?  The first weather satellite launched into a polar orbit so it can see the whole Earth once a day as the planet rotates underneath?

We now have the very first picture of the world's weather.  It won't be the last:

The joys of being regular

There was a time when space was a hit-and-miss affair.  Seemed every time I opened the paper, there was news of yet another rocket blowing up.  These days, we can practically take success for granted.  Ranger 7 broke a six mission losing streak, the first two Gemini launches went swimmingly, TIROS has gone nine for nine.

Similarly, the Saturn 1 rocket, the biggest booster ever made, has had an impeccable launch record.  The lift-off on February 16 kept the streak going; the eight engine monstrosity delivered what I believe is the biggest satellite ever to be put into orbit.

Called Pegasus, it is an enormous cylinder with giant panels affixed to either side.  The panels occupy some 2300 square feet, and their job is to measure the density of micrometeoroids in orbit over the course of a many-year lifespan.

It sounds pretty mundane when you reduce the mission to its bare essentials.  Pegasus is like a big fly-catcher, spending its orbit running into space rocks.  But it's not the experiment that's so exciting, but the idea that we can now loft giant structures with a single launch.  Imagine that Pegasus was actually a space station module, and that it's wings were solar panels.  Now imagine assembling a few of them together using a maneuverable spacecraft, perhaps a Gemini derivative…

Yes, America is just on the edge of being in the space construction business.

Scenes to Come

Yesterday (February 17, 1965), the eighth Ranger blasted off from Cape Kennedy, destination: Moon.  If we've truly reached an era of reliability, we can expect the craft to hit its target on the morning of the 20th.  Stay tuned — you'll read about it here first!




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Science / Space Race

[August 1, 1964] On Target (The Successful Flight of Ranger 7)

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With the recent American lunar triumph, it is appropriate to take a look back at the long road that winds from Sputnik and ends in Oceanus Procellarum…


by Gideon Marcus

Shooting the Moon

It all began with a dream.

The Moon has captured our imaginations since we were first definably human.  Some two thousand years ago, the Greeks learned that the Moon was our closest celestial companion; it took another 1800 years for Galileo to determine that it was a spherical body, not unlike the Earth. 

It is no surprise that this discovery spawned some of our earliest science fiction stories: Godwins's The Man in the Moone, Verne's From the Earth to the Moon, Wells' recently cinemized The First Men in the Moon. 

With the launch of Sputnik, the heavens were broken open, and science fiction could be made fact.  Indeed, just after the Soviets launched their first satellite, the engineers at Ramo-Wooldrige's (now TRW) Space Technology Laboratories, made plans to build their own Moon rocket out of boosters already in existence, mating the Thor missile they had developed with the Vanguard rocket's second and third stages.  With luck, they would have probe around the Moon less than a year after the inauguration of the Space Age.

It was an ambitious plan.  Too ambitious.  The first of the so-called Pioneers blew up on the launch pad.  The next, Pioneer 1, made it halfway to the Moon before, like Icarus, falling back to Earth.  Pioneer 2 barely limped out of the Earth's atmosphere before burning up.

So ended the first American Moon program.  Enter Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Situated across the San Fernando Valley from its rival, JPL was working with Von Braun's Jupiter rocket, the same one that had launched America's first satellite, Explorer 1.  Unfortunately, JPL's first attempt, Pioneer 3, also faltered on the way. 

And then came the Soviets' turn.

Red Moon

1959 began with a Dream, a Russian Dream.  On January 3, Mechta ("dream") sailed off toward and past the Moon, the first human-made object to become a satellite of the Sun.  The American success of Pioneer 4, two months later, was subsequently eclipsed when the second Mechta impacted the Moon in September, depositing Soviet medals upon Earth's companion — the first interplanetary delivery. 

Capping off this lunar tour de force was the Soviet follow-up, called Luna 3, Lunik 3, and Mechta 3.  Not only did this probe sail around the Moon, but it took pictures.  These missions were not just engineering and prestige shots, they were returning valuable information about the Moon.  It had no magnetic field, for instance.  The never-before seen Far Side was curiously devoid of the "seas" that mottle its Earth-facing surface.

We had to know more.

Local Space Race

With JPL batting .500 with its Pioneers, STL decided it needed to do better than its .000 average (though, to be fair, the flight of Pioneer 1 was a triumph for its time).  Mating the Vanguard stages of its prior Pioneer rocket to the beefy Atlas ICBM, the boys from Redondo Beach were sure they could launch the first bonafide lunar observatory into orbit around the Moon.

It didn't work.  1959-60 saw four failed attempts, all botched because the bleeding-edge Atlas wasn't yet up to the task (and how reassuring that must have been to the Mercury astronauts who had to ride the thing in a couple of years!)

One team's failure is another's opportunity.  While the second STL lunar endeavor was ending in tears, JPL was already hard at work on its own second-generation Moon project: Ranger.

Ranger was actually two programs in one.  This reflected the tension between the engineers, who wanted a craft that could make it the Moon and return information about its surface (of immediate use to a crewed lunar program), and the scientists, who wanted not only to learn about the Moon, but the space between it and the Earth.

The first two Rangers weren't even built to go to the Moon.  Planned to be launched into high orbits on a combination of the Atlas and a powerful second stage called the Vega (this civilian stage later substituted with the military's Agena), Rangers 1 and 2 would measure magnetic fields and the solar wind.

Would, but never did.  Ranger 1 and Ranger 2 both were stranded in useless low orbits due to booster malfunctions (plus ça change).  On the other hand, the satellites themselves were sound, and a modified Block 1 Ranger became the highly successful Venus probe, Mariner 2, in 1962.

Never mind them.  Rangers 3-5 were the real lunar probes, even including giant balsawood pimples on the end, which housed seismometers that could survive impact with the Moon.  It was more important than ever that we know what the lunar surface was like now that President Kennedy had announced that we would, as a nation, put a man on the Moon and bring him safely back to Earth before the decade was out.

Easier said than done.  Ranger 3, launched in January 1962, missed the Moon.  Moreover, it sailed past while facing the wrong way.  The probe took no useful pictures, and a failure of the onboard computer prevented the acquisition of sky science data.

The identical Ranger 4 was both more and less successful.  From a launch and trajectory perspective, it was perfect: On April 26, 1962, Ranger 4 became the first American probe to hit the Moon.  Unfortunately, it was an inert frame of metal by that time; NASA might as well have shot a cannonball.  In fact, the probe never worked, the first Ranger not to function at all in space. 

Still, the mission was heralded (rightfully) as a partial success.  Surely Ranger 5, last in the Block 2 series, would be a win.

No dice.  Ranger 5, launched in October 1962, lost internal power shortly after take-off and sailed silently past the Moon two days later.

Sharper Focus

For those keeping count, the Americans were now 1 for 14 in the Moon Race, a record even worse than that of last year's San Francisco 49ers.  As 1962 drew to a close, JPL undertook an internal audit and came to the following conclusions:

  • JPL's management structure was unsuited to big, complicated projects like Ranger
  • Ranger was too complicated, too dependent on every system working perfectly
  • The general scientific objectives conflicted with the specific, Apollo-supporting objectives

The result was a beefed up management staff that would focus primarily on Ranger until the probe worked.  And a newer, leaner Ranger.

Ranger, Block 3, had one job.  It would crash into the Moon, taking TV pictures all the way down.  No other science experiments.  Up came the hue and cry from scientists, but the decision was made.  As it was, it would take at least another year to develop and launch Ranger 6.  It had to work.

It didn't.

Ranger 6 had a textbook launch on January 30, 1964.  Shortly after the probe reached space, its TV system inexplicably turned itself on and off, but otherwise, all was well.  Indeed, Ranger 6 cruised through its mid-flight course correction burn like a dream, pointed straight and true for the Moon's Sea of Tranquility.  JPL Director William Pickering felt confident enough to declare, "I am cautiously optimistic."

But when it came time for Ranger 6 to do its job, to take TV pictures of the Moon, it stubbornly refused.  The probe impacted the lunar surface without returning a single shot.

Uproar.  Six failures in a row.  There was serious Congressional talk of shutting down the Ranger program altogether.  On the other hand, the mission had been almost entirely successful.  There was every reason to believe (or at least hope) that improved check-out procedures on the next, already built, Ranger 7, would lead to a completely successful mission.  After a NASA investigation and a Congressional inquiry, JPL was given one more chance.

Dream into Reality

Opportunities for lunar missions come once a month, when the Moon is situated such that the least energy is required for a rocket from Earth to reach it.  The latest such apparition started on July 27, the opening of the lunar "window."  Ranger 7's powerful Atlas-Agena rocket, now the most reliable part of the mission infrastructure, stood ready on the launchpad.  The countdown was steady, until, just 51 minutes before the scheduled launch, a faulty telemetry battery had to be replaced.  It was, and the countdown resumed…but the a fatal flaw in a ground guidance component meant that the launch had to be scrubbed. 

But only for a day.  On July 28, the countdown proceeded smoothly, and at 9:50am PDT, Ranger 7 was sent into orbit.  The onboard TV system appeared to be working normally, and half an hour later, the Agena engine fired once more, propelling the spacecraft toward the Moon.

So accurate was this burn that Ranger 7 didn't need a mid-course correction to hit the Moon.  However, the path it was to take would carry it to the lunar Far Side, which would make the transmission of TV pictures impossible.  A day after launch, a short engine burn aimed the probe directly for its destination: The Sea of Clouds.

In the early morning on July 31, 1964, reporters and cameramen once again filed into JPL's von Karman Auditorium for Ranger 7's final descent.  Just six months ago, Ranger 6 had been so disappointing that Walter Downhower, the Chief of the System Design Section who had been the voice over the auditorium speakers that day, refused to ever do that job again.

This time, JPL's George Nichols was the voice of Ranger as it zoomed toward the Moon at 5000 miles per hour.  At 3:07am PDT (yes, I stayed up, too), Nichols was able to announce that Ranger's television system and its six cameras were working properly.  Three minutes later, the first images taken from the vicinity of the Moon began to pour in as a stream of ones and zeroes on a telemetry stream.  Five minutes went by.  Still going.  Ten minutes.  Then, at 6:25 PDT, the hum of Ranger's telemetry abruptly cut off.

But this was a planned cessation — Ranger had hit the Moon!

Where we Stand

In all, some 4,316 pictures were taken of the Moon, all of higher resolution than is possible from Earthbound telescopes.  JPL identified dozens of new craters, never before seen.  One cluster was probably made by rocks thrown into the sky when the giant impact crater, Copernicus, was formed ages ago, two hundred miles away from where Ranger 7 crashed.  More importantly, NASA has gotten its first close-up look of the lunar surface; JPL scientists have identified favorable and treacherous landscapes for the upcoming Apollo missions to land on.

There will be at least two more Block III Ranger flights aimed at other parts of the Moon.  Plans to continue the series through to #14 are in doubt given that the upcoming Lunar Orbiter project (managed by Langley Research Center in Virginia) may already be flying by the time the later Rangers are ready.

And what about the Soviets?  What happened to the madcap competitive days of 1958-9?

As it turns, out, the USSR has had just one lunar probe since then: Luna 4.  Launched during the gloomiest days of Ranger, on April 2, 1963, it was highly touted by Soviet news services.  Three days later, as the craft approached the Moon, TASS and Izvestia reported that a bonanza of science would be forthcoming.

Then…nothing.  The probe sailed past the Moon with hardly any coverage.  A couple of conferences scheduled for the discussion of Luna 4's results were quietly canceled.  Per the British astronomer, Sir Bernard Lovell, the craft actually failed in its mission to enter lunar orbit.

This brings up the interesting possibility that the Soviets have launched other Moon missions and that none of them have been successful enough to be publicly announced.  That would explain some of the Kosmos flights about which the Russians have been so terse in their reporting.  It may well be that the Soviet Union is finding the Moon as tough a target as the Americans were.

The bottom line, then, is this: After five years of diligent effort (presumably by both of the planet's Superpowers), the Americans have emerged the victors in this second stage of the Moon race.

Who will win the third?

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge!  Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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Science / Space Race

[May 30, 1964] Every journey begins… (Apollo's first flight!)

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by Gideon Marcus

One Step

Humanity took its first halting steps toward the Moon with the (mostly) successful launch of the first Apollo spacecraft into orbit on May 28, 1964.  Blasting off from Cape Kennedy's Pad 37B, the sixth Saturn I, biggest rocket in existence, carried a boilerplate, non-functional spacecraft. 

The mission marked firsts in several ways.  Whereas the previous five Saturns had been topped with Jupiter-C nosecones, SA-6 was the first to prove the actual Apollo structure.  Less auspiciously, the flight also marked the first malfunction of the Saturn rocket: 122 seconds into its mission, 24 seconds before planned cut-off, engine #8 prematurely shut down. 

But out of the jaws of failure came ultimate success.  The other engines continued to fire an additional two seconds, the four inboards shutting down shutting off 142 seconds into flight, the remaining three outboards going dark at Launch + 148.  Despite these compensations, AS-101 (the name for the spacecraft) was still flying "low and slow"; the second stage then ignited and compensated for the balky first stage, ultimately delivering the Apollo spacecraft almost perfectly into its planned orbit. 


That's Wernher von Braun in the middle; next to him, with the glasses, is George Mueller, who used to run the Pioneer lunar project at STL

Thus, the failure of engine #8 actually proved a blessing in disguise — we now know that the Saturn guidance system works quite nicely.  Moreover, given the excellent track record of the first stage's H-1 engines, I suspect the causes of the shutdown will be determined and remedied in short order.

AS-101 will be in orbit about one more day before it plunges into the atmosphere.  Like the first Gemini mission (last month), the spacecraft will not be recovered. 

SA-7/AS-102 will be a largely identical mission that will test the escape tower, the little rocket that will rescue Apollo astronauts in the event of a launch failure.  It is due to go up at the end of August.  Crewed spaceflights should happen as early as 1966!

No News is…

In other news, there isn't much news.  Since our last update, the Soviets launched Kosmoses 29 and 30 (April 25 and May 18), both of which landed just a week after launch, which suggests they were really spy satellites a la our Discoverer program.  Meanwhile, the United States Air Force lofted two birds of its own, a small one on April 27, and a big one on May 19.  I'd bet the first one was some a traditional film-return spy satellite (the kind that snaps photos in space and then sends the shots down to Earth for development in a little capsule).  As for the second, either it carries multiple canisters, or it's some kind of advanced system — maybe a real-time TV eye in orbit?

By the way, on April 21, I understand an Air Force rocket went boom, and the satellite it was carrying, a navigational Transit was on board.  That'd be no big deal…except this Transit was powered by the radioactive decay of plutonium-238.  I haven't heard much reporting on the subject, but I sure hope the flyboys are more careful next time!

The Soviets did launch Polyot-2 on April 12.  This is a special satellite that is able to change orbits.  That could mean that it's a precursor to the next Communist space vehicle (that's the thought advanced in Martin Caidin's recent novel, Marooned) or it could be a spacecraft designed to intercept missiles or other vehicles in space.  We won't know for a while, if ever.

Coming Attractions

As we head into the summer, it looks like things will remain pretty calm, unless the Russians pull another surprise out of their hats.  The only big event on the horizon is the launch of Ranger 7 in July.  After ten straight failures on the way to the Moon, I can't imagine the betting is particularly good for this flight.

But hope springs eternal…  See you then!

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge!  Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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Science / Space Race

[February 5, 1964] That was the Month that Was (January's Space Roundup)

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by Gideon Marcus

Another Lunar Black Eye

NASA's Project Ranger, which is basically a projectile aimed at the moon, has logged failure after failure since it started back in 1961.  The first ones in the series, Rangers 1 and 2, were just Earth-orbiting satellites designed to test the engineering and return scientific data.  Both of their missions were busts due to fault Agena second stages on their Atlas-Agena boosters.

Rangers 3 to 5 were bona-fide moon missions with giant pimples on their noses to do a bit of lunar geology (or selenology).  None of them completed their missions: Ranger 3 missed its target and was pointed the wrong way to boot, Ranger 4 hit the moon but was brain-dead from orbit onward, and Ranger 5 both missed and stopped working long before it got near the moon.

With five cracked eggs' experience to draw from, NASA tried again in January 30, 1964, with the first of the TV-armed Rangers, #6.  Aside from an odd voltage spike early on, Ranger 6 seemed to be working fine.  The spacecraft made a textbook-perfect flight all the way to its target, Mare Tranquillitas, impacting on schedule. 

But its TV camera never turned on.

I've been told that the fellow who announced the flight in real-time to the press has resigned from this duty, unable to go through such a harrowing experience again.  Who can blame him?  This is the sixth Ranger and the tenth failed (counting Pioneer Atlas Able) moon mission in a row.  On the other hand, and this is probably weak comfort at best, Ranger 6 did perform perfectly all the way until the end.  I'm sure Our American Cousin was a fine play, too.

There are three more third edition Rangers left to launch.  Let's hope at least one of them will be successful.  Right now, this program is making Project Vanguard look like an unalloyed success.

Stillborn Quintuplets

Speaking of Vanguard, on January 24, 1964, the Air Force launched another of its multi-satellite missions, attempting to orbit an unprecedented five spacecraft at once.  "Composite 1" comprised LOFTI 2, which was to study the ionosphere, Secor and Surcal, which would have helped the Army and Navy (respectively) calibrate their tracking radars, and Injun 2, a radiation satellite made by the University of Iowa (the same folks who discovered the Van Allen Belts.

Composite 1 also included SOLRAD (Solar Radiation) 4, and this is the Vanguard tie-in.  You see, the spottily successful Vanguard, which was America's first space project, was originally designed to study the sun's output of X-rays and ultraviolet light.  Unfortunately, the last of the Vanguards, number 3, was swamped with radiation from the Van Allen Belts, and its sun-pointed experiments were made useless.  End of story, right?

Well, SOLRAD 1, launched in 1960, was essentially Vanguard 4.  It was made by the same folks (the Naval Research Laboratory), used the same design, and carried the same experiments as Vanguard 3.  The only difference was purpose: the Navy wanted to know if there was a relation between solar flares and radio fade-outs (turns out yes). 

SOLRAD 2 was a dud thanks to a bad rocket, but SOLRAD 3 and Injun 1 returned good data.  The failure of SOLRAD 4 gives the program a .500 average — still pretty good to my mind.  I understand the Air Force will be trying again in a few months.

Five for five

How about some good news for a change?  For the fifth time in three years, the world's largest rocket took to the skies above Florida, January 29, 1964.  The Saturn I rocket, a precursor to the Saturn V behemoth that will take humans to Moon before this decade is out, has completed its run of test flights with a 100% success rate. 

I want that to sink in.  As far as I know, no rocket program has ever been 100% successful.  One would think that a booster as big as the Saturn should be more accident-prone than any other.  And yet, the trim cylindrical stack lifted off from Cape Kennedy, with both stages fueled for the first time, and placed its entire top half into orbit.  This gave Americans another first: world's largest satellite, weighing nearly ten tons!

The timing could not be better.  Apollo's future has been threatened a bit lately, with many in Congress seeking to reduce NASA's funding.  Some question whether there is even value in winning the race to the moon.  The outstanding success of the Saturn I will hopefully be a shot in the program's arm — and maybe for the related Project Ranger.

Now that testing of the rocket is complete, the Saturn I will go on to operational missions, flying full-scale examples of the Apollo spacecraft.  This will be the closest this first Saturn ever gets to the moon, however.  Huge as it is, it is not strong enough to launch Apollo to Earth's nearest neighbor.  It's not even strong enough to loft a fully-fueled Apollo!  But it's bigger brother, the Saturn IB, will be.  Expect its first flights in 1966 or so.

Can you hear me?

Last year, COMSAT corporation started selling publicly traded shares.  COMSAT was President Kennedy's compromise between a public and private satellite communications entity.  COMSAT has not yet developed any comsats, but that hasn't other entities are continuing to build experimental satellites toward the day when COMSAT birds begin to fly.

Relay 2

On January 21, 1964, the RCA-built Relay 2 joined its sister Relay 1, Ma-Bell-made Telstar 2, and the fixed-in-the-sky Syncom 2 in orbit.  With four active comsats in orbit (the kind that can retransmit broadcasts), we'll likely soon see transmissions bounce all over the globe.  The most exciting programming on the schedule?  This summer's Olympic games, live from Tokyo, Japan!

Echo 2

Just four days after the launch of Relay 2, NASA shot up Echo 2, a balloon-type passive reflector satellite — essentially a big mirror in space for bouncing signals.  It's larger than Echo 1, which is still in orbit, and should be visible from the ground when it zooms overhead.  I'm not sure why NASA bothered with this satellite given the sophistication of the active-repeater comsats.  I suspect there won't be many more.

Gavarit pa Ruskii?

Meanwhile, our Communist friends have not been entirely idle.  In addition to their increasing constellation of little Kosmos satellites, which may or may not be civilian in nature (probably not), the Soviets have created the twin "Elektron" orbiting laboratories.  The first two were launched on January 30 into separate orbits, their mission to explore the Van Allen Belts from both below and above!

It's the first time the Soviets have launched multiple satellites on a single rocket (we've been doing it since SOLRAD 1) and the first time since Sputnik 3 that a Russian mission has been verifiably civilian in nature. 

It's about time!

Space for Two

I'll wrap things up with a couple of pieces of news on the Gemini two-seat spacecraft, sort of a bridge between Projects Mercury and Apollo.  Firstly, it looks like the first uncrewed flight will happen as early as March, testing both the capsule and the Titan II rocket.  If this goes well, the first crewed flights may blast off as early as the end of this year.

Fingers crossed!

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Science / Space Race

[August 29, 1963] Why we fly (August Space Round-up)

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by Gideon Marcus

We've become a bit spoiled of late, what with space spectaculars occurring on a fairly regular basis.  So, I was not too surprised when a friend buttonholed me the other day and exclaimed, "When is the Space Race gonna get interesting again?"  After all, it's been a whole two months since the Vostok missions, three since the last Mercury mission, and even satellite launches have been few lately.

Oh ye of little faith.  The real work doesn't happen when the rockets go up, but after their payloads are aloft.  A lot happened in the arena of space this month — you just have to dig a little to learn about it.  Here are the exciting tidbits I gleaned (and the journos missed) in NASA's recent bulletins and broadcasts:

Bridging the Continents

Communication satellites continue to make our world a smaller place.  Syncom, built by Hughes and launched by NASA late last month, is the first comsat to have a 24-hour orbit.  From our perspective on the Earth's surface, it appears to do figure eights around one spot in the sky rather than circling the Earth.  This means Syncom can be a permanent relay station between the hemispheres.

It's already being used.  On August 4 the satellite allowed Nigerian journalists and folks from two U.S. services to exchange news stories as well as pictures of President Kennedy and Nigerian Governor General Dr. Nnamdi Zikiwe.  Five days later, voice and teletype was exchanged between Paso Robles, California and Lagos, Nigeria.  This 7,700 mile conversation represents the longest range real-time communication ever made.

And, on the 23rd, Syncom carried its first live telephone conversation — between President Kennedy and Nigerian Prime Minister Sir Abubaker Tafawa Balewa, as well as several other official conversations.  One has to wonder if the whole scheme wasn't hatched just so Jack could expand his pen pal list to West Africa…

More comsat news: RCA's Relay 1 is still alive and kicking, having been used in 930 wideband experiments, 409 narrowband transmissions, and 95 demos of TV and narrowband broadcasts.  And in a stunning imitation of Lazarus, AT&T's Telstar 2 came back on-line after having been silent since July 16.  I understand there will be an unprecedented experiment next month: NASA is going to use Relay and Syncom to bounce a message from Brazil to Africa.  Expect that kind of satellite ping-pong to become common in the future.

Finally, NASA's passive comsat, Echo 1, continues to be used for tests.  Come winter, it will be joined by Echo 2.  Because if there's anything space needs, it's more balloons.


First pass of Echo 1 satellite over the Goldstone

Predicting the Weather

Mariner 2, the Venus probe that encountered the Planet of Love last December, went silent early this year.  Yet its reams of data are still yielding discoveries.  During the spacecraft's long flight toward the sun, it took continuous measurements of the solar wind — that endless stream of charged particles cast off from the roiling fusion reactor of our nearest star.  These measurements were then compared to readings made on Earth and in orbit.  Scientists have now determined that the sun's radioactive breeze blows in gusts from 500 to 1350 kilometers per second, the bursts correlated with expansions in the solar corona.  When a particularly strong stream of electrons and protons, sizzling at a temperature of 500,000 degrees F., slams into the Earth's magnetic field, it causes disruptions in broadcasts and communications.

Closer to home, Explorer 12 soared far from Earth in its highly eccentric orbit, charting long-lived solar plasma streams in interplanetary space.  The satellite determined that these gouts of plasma caused geophysical disturbances more than twenty days after their creation.

One can imagine a constellation of satellites being deployed to provide solar system-wide space weather reports.  Not only would they help keep astronauts safe as they journeyed from planet to planet, but they'd also let radio operators on Earth know when to expect static in their broadcasts.

And speaking of weather forecasts, Tiros 6 and 7 continue to be our eyes in the sky, tirelessly shooting TV of Earth's weather.  They've already tracked the first hurricane of the season, Arlene.  Who knows how many lives and dollars they will save with their early warnings?

Previews of Coming Attractions

The ill-starred lunar probe, Ranger, has failed in all five of its missions.  In fact, NASA is 0 for 8 when it comes to moon shots since 1959.  Perhaps Ranger 6, set for launch around Thanksgiving, will break this losing streak.  It will be the first of the Block 3 Rangers, lacking the sky science experiments that flew on Rangers 1 and 2, and the big seismic impactors carried on Rangers 3-5.  The new Rangers will just shoot TV pictures of potential Apollo landing sites.  This sacrifice of science in deference to the human mission has not gone without protest, but given the dismal track record of the program, the labcoat crowd will have to take what they can get.

A full year after Ranger (hopefully) reaches the Moon, a pair of Mariners will set sail for Mars.  Unlike last year's Mariner 2, Mariners 3 and 4 will carry cameras to provide our first close-up view of the Red Planet.  Let's just hope neither of these upcoming probes meet the same fate as Russia's Mars 1, which died last March.

At some point in the mid-60s, even bigger Mariners will fly to the planets, carried by the big liquid oxygen "Centaur" second-stage.  The first successful test fire took place on August 17 just down the way from my house — at General Dynamics/Astronautics San Diego

And finally, another 271 space candidates applied to NASA this year.  They have been screened to 30, and out of them, 10-15 will be selected in late October to comprise the third group of astronauts.  None of them are women yet, but perhaps there will be some in time for Group Four.


Pilots Jerrie Cobb and Jane Hart testify before the Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, July 1962.  That's an Atlas Centaur model next to them.

Who knows?  Maybe you'll be one of them!

[Want to talk to the Journey crew and fellow fans in real-time?  Come join us at Portal 55! (Ed.)]

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Fashion, music, politics, sports, Science / Space Race

[October 31, 1962] Trick and Treat! (A Halloween candy wrap-up of the Space Race)

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[if you’re new to the Journey, read this to see what we’re all about!]


by Gideon Marcus

Halloween is normally a time for scares — for us to invoke, dress up as, and tell stories of various ghosts, ghoulies, and goblins.  But let's face it.  We've had quite enough fright for one month, what with the Free and the Communist worlds just seconds from Midnight over the Soviet placement of nuclear missiles in Cuba.  Thankfully, that crisis has been resolved peacefully, with the Russians agreeing to dismantle their weapons and return them home (who knows what unreported concessions we may have made to assure that outcome).  Nevertheless, with our heart rates still elevated, I think the best remedy is to skip terror this time around and focus on the things that make us smile:

Candy and space missions!

Niña and Pinta sail the magnetic oceans

Last year, I gushed rhapsodically about the voyage of Explorer 12, a vessel designed to map the contours of the Earth's magnetic field.  The results did not disappoint; thanks to that little probe's journey, we now know that there is a sharp boundary between the our planet's magnetosphere and the magnetic emanations of our sun.  This, then, is the map of our unseen ocean, as of this year:

But how constant is this border, this magnetopause, between ours and the solar magnetic sea?  What are the mechanisms of its flow?  Moreover, what of the three charged "Van Allen" belts girdling the Earth?  And what impacts do our atmospheric atomic tests have on them, short and long-term?

That's the nature of science.  Early experiments tend to provide more questions than answers!  Explorer 12, which ceased operations in late '61, won't be answering any more of them; however, NASA launched two more Explorers just this month to pick up where the magnetic Santa Maria left off.

Explorer 14 was launched October 2.  Like Explorer 12, it has a highly eccentric orbit in which the 89 pound spacecraft zooms 60,000 miles into the sky before flying near the Earth.  This takes the probe through all of the layers of the Earth's magnetic field.  The experiment load is largely the same as Explorer 12's, with a couple of additional sensors. 

Explorer 15 is a different kind of ship.  It only goes up to about 10,000 miles, and its mission is more focused on the artificial particle fields created as the result of nuclear explosions.  Unfortunately, when the spacecraft launched on October 27, it did not extend its "arms" — little weight-bearing spars — to slow down the spin imparted to it by its rocket.  Like an ice skater with her arms tucked in, Explorer 15 is spinning much faster than intended.  Nevertheless, good data is being gotten from five of its seven experiments.

Watch this space for exciting updates.  Between the new Explorer twins and the Venus probe, Mariner 2, now several million miles from Earth, the age of space magnetic exploration is truly underway!

Chocolate Arms Race

Since early this century, two superpowers have faced off, each developing a physical and sociological arsenal designed to sway the world into one's camp or the other's.  I am not speaking of the mortal struggle between Communism and Democracy…but that of Pennsylvania's Hershey Company versus Minnesota's Mars, Incorporated.

On the one side, we have the eponymous Hershey Bar, the conical Hershey's Kisses, the peanut-infused Mr. Goodbar, the rice-included Krackel, etc.  On the other, the Milky Way bar, the Three Musketeers Bar, and most importantly (at least to this column's editor) the peanutty Snickers Bar.

Of course, this oversimplifies things.  There are plenty of "Third World" candy makers, including Nestle's (Crunch), Necco (Clark Bar), and Peter Paul (Mounds and Almond Joy).  In fact, my favorite chocolate-based candy is Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, made by Harry Burnett Reese Candy Co.  Harry died six years ago, but I think we can trust his six sons to carry on the independent tradition that has made these confections so delicious. 

In fact, I wholeheartedly support greater parity among the world's chocolatiers.  After all, we've just seen what crises can result in a bipolar world…

Canada joins the Space Race!

Typically, a Thor Agena B launch from Southern California means yet another Air Force "Discoverer" spy sat has gone up; such flights are now weekly occurrences.  But the flight that went up September 29 actually carried a civilian payload into polar orbit: Alouette 1, the first Canadian satellite. 

Alouette is designed to study the ionosphere, that charged layer of the atmosphere hundreds of miles up.  But unlike the sounding rockets routinely sent into the zone, Alouette will survey (or "sound") the ionosphere from above.  Canada is particularly interested in understanding how and when the sun disrupts the region, interrupting radio communications.  Our neighbor to the north is a big country, after all, and it is the Northern Hemisphere's first line of defense against Soviet missiles and bombers.  Radio is, therefore, vital to both defense and civilian interests.

According to early data, it looks like the highest "F2" layer of the ionosphere is as reflective to radio waves from the top as the bottom.  Alouette has also, by beaming multiple frequencies down to Earth, helped scientists determine what radio wavelengths aren't blocked by the ionosphere. 

Sometime next year, Alouette will be joined by an United States "sounder" mission with a different experiment load.  Then we'll have two sets of space-based data to corroborate with ground-based measurements.  Soon, one of the more mysterious layers of the atmosphere, one completely unknown to us a century ago, will be well understood.

Sweetly Sour

Some people love chocolate.  Strike that — most people love chocolate.  But I tend to favor fruit-flavored candies.  For instance, Smarties, Pixy Stix, the recent Starbust Fruit Chews, and brand new for this year: Lemonheads!

Made by Ferrara, the same folks who make Red Hots (which I also love), Lemonheads are a delicious hard candy mix of sour on the outside, sweet on the inside.  I have now made myself sick at least twice on these things, and I firmly intend to do so at least twice more.  I'm an adult, and no one can stop me.  Besides — it keeps me away from Candy Corn…

The Moon claims another Victim

Speaking of sour…first it was the three Air Force Pioneer missions launched in 1958 – none of them made it even halfway to the Moon.  Then the four Atlas Able Pioneer missions of 1959-60 didn't even got into Earth orbit.  Now five out of five Ranger probes launched over the last year have failed. 

Launched October 17, the fifth of the Rangers went on the fritz just a few hours after take-off.  On the way to the Moon, the solar power transformer went kaput, leaving the spacecraft on battery power, which rapidly depleted.  Two days later, the silent ship sailed 9,000 miles over the surface of the Moon, after which ground-based 'scopes quickly lost sight of it. 

Ranger 5 marked the last of the "Block II" line.  The two Block I spacecraft were supposed to stay in Earth orbit and do sky science, but neither of them lasted long enough.  None of the three Block IIs succeeded in their mission of smacking the Moon with their bulbous noses, filled with sensor equipment.  I suspect NASA is going to do a lot of work making sure the Block III craft, armed with cameras, reach their destination alive and snapping photos.  That is, if Congress doesn't cut their funding.

Happy Halloween, and don't let the news get you down. 




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Magazine

[Apr. 30, 1962] Common Practice Period (April Spaceflight Round-up)

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by Gideon Marcus

The radio plays Classical music on the FM band now. 

The difference is palpable.  Bach and Mozart on the AM band were tinny and remote.  It was almost as though the centuries separating me and the composers had been attenuating the signal.  This new radio band (well, not so new, but newly utilized) allows transmissions as clear as any Hi-Fi record set could deliver. 

Don't get me wrong; I still listen to the latest pop hits by The Shirelles and The Ventures, but I find myself increasingly tuned into the local classics station.  The sound, and the selections, are just too good to ignore.  The last movement of Robert Schumann's Symphony #1, with its stirring accelerando is playing right now, and it is a fitting accompaniment for the article I am currently composing.

Time was I would write an article on a space mission about once a month.  This wouldn't be a wrap-up, but an article devoted to a single satellite.  But the pace of space launches has increased – there were two successful orbital flights in 1957, nine in 1958, 13 in 1959, 20 in 1960, 38 in 1961.  There were six flights just last week.  Either I'm going to have to start abbreviating my coverage, or I'll need to start a satellite (no pun intended) column. 

But that's a decision for next year.  Right now, with a bit of musical texturing, let me tell you all about the exciting things that happened in spaceflight, April 1962:

Quartet in USAF Minor

Late last year, President Kennedy put a lid on all military space programs, classifying their details.  This was a break from Ike's policy, which was to publicize them (more or less accurately).  I think Eisenhower's idea was that any space shot was good for prestige.  Also, if we were upfront about military flights, maybe the Soviets would follow suit.

The current President has decided that discretion is the better path.  So even though I have it on good authority that four boosters took off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California (it being rather hard to hide a blast of that magnitude, and the papers are still reporting on them as best they can), I couldn't tell you exactly what was at the tips of those rockets.  It's a fair bet, however, that three of them were reconnaissance satellites, snapping photos of the USSR from orbit.  The last was probably a nuclear missile launch detector called MIDAS.  That's make it the 5th in the series. 

Quartet in USSR Minor

Meanwhile, the Russians, who had not reported any spaceflights since Comrade Titov's flight last summer, suddenly threw up four probes in about as many weeks.  The missions of "Kosmos" 1-4 were "to study weather, communications, and radiation effects during long space flights in preparation for an eventual manned landing."

That sounds good, but while the first three satellites are still up in orbit returning scientific data, the fourth, launched four days ago, landed three days later – after passing over the United States several times.  All we know about it was it was launched from "a secret base" and "valuable data [was] obtained."  Given that Kosmos 4's mission plan bore a striking resemblance to that of our Discoverer capsule-return spy sats, I suspect the first three Kosmos shots were a flimsy camouflage.  What's interesting here is that the Communists feel it necessary to construct a cover-up.  But the fact is, they just can't hide when they launch things into space, any more than we can. 

Solo for English Horn

The first UK satellite, Ariel 1, was successfully launched on April 26, 1962 atop an American Thor Delta booster.  The little probe will investigate the Earth's ionosphere.  You can read all about this mission in Ashley Pollard's recent article.

Mooncrash Sonata

It's two steps forward, one step back for NASA's ill-starred ("mooned?") Ranger program.  Thrice, the lunar probe failed to fly due to a balky Atlas Agena booster.  This time, Ranger 4, launched April 24, 1962, was hurled on a perfect course for the Earth's celestial companion.  The trajectory was so perfect that the craft didn't even require a mid-course correction.

Of course, it wouldn't have mattered if it had.  Upon leaving the Earth, it quickly became apparent that Ranger 4 was brain-dead.  It issued no telemetry, nor did it respond to commands.  NASA dispiritedly tracked the probe's 64-hour trip to the moon, which ended in its impact on the far side. 

Heart-breaking, but it is a sort of semi-victory: At least the rocket works now, and the United States as finally caught up with the Soviets in another aspect of the Space Race (just two-and-a-half years late…)

Saturn (fortissimo)

Speaking of successful rockets, the tremendous Saturn I had another successful test on April 25, 1962.  Like the first, the upper two stages were inert, filled with water for ballast.  This flight has a twist, however.  After the first stage had exhausted its fuel, the dummy stages were detonated and the ensuing watery explosion observed.  This "Operation Highwater" was designed to demonstrate how far the debris of a booster blast would travel.  I imagine it was also a lot of fun.

I have to wonder about the future of the Saturn I.  It has already been determined that the Apollo moon craft will be launched by the much more powerful and generally unrelated Saturn C-5 and Nova boosters.  It seems that the Saturn I is something of a technological dead end, though I'm sure they are at least perfecting their heavy booster launch techniques.

Prelude, Symphony #2

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is planning another Mercury one-person shot for next month.  It will be an exact duplicate of John Glenn's February flight, down to the three-orbit duration.  To be piloted by Navy aviator Scott Carpenter (the hunkiest of the Mercury 7), the main purpose of the mission is to make sure that the errors that plagued Glenn during his flight are fixed before the little spacecraft takes on longer journeys.  And, of course, then we will have caught up with the Russians in another way – we'll have had two men orbit the planet.

No doubt, Carpenter's flight will be the spaceflight highlight of next month; I have not seen any other missions announced.  Then again, the Reds might have a surprise that'll have us singing a different tune…

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Science / Space Race

[February 1, 1962] Silver Lining (January Space Race round-up!)

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by Gideon Marcus

January has been a frustrating month in the Space Race.  We are no closer to matching the Soviets in the manned competition, much less beating them, and our unmanned shots have been a disappointment, too.  That said, it's not all bad news in January's round-up: stick to it through the end, and you'll see cause for cheer!

Quintuplets fail to deliver

The Air Force has been playing around with combined launches for a while now.  After all, if you're going to spend millions of dollars to throw a booster away, you might as well get multiple bangs for your buck.  Sadly, the latest attempt, a Thor Ablestar launch on January 24 dubbed "Composite 1," failed when the top stage tumbled in orbit and failed to separate from its payloads.

What we lost: SolRad 4, for measuring solar X-rays (only visible above the curtain of the atmosphere); Lofti 2, which would have examined the effects of Earth's ionosphere on Very Low Frequency radio transmissions; Surcal, a strictly military probe designed to calibrate the navy's communications net in orbit; the wholly civilian Injun 2, which would help map the Van Allen belts (see below); and Secor, a big balloon that would have helped the Army with their ranging equipment.

Copies of these probes will end up at some point, either launched together on a big rocket or separately on little ones.

Moon Miss-ion

It's been a bad run of luck for NASA's latest moon program, Project Ranger.  After the failure of the first two Ranger missions, designed to test the probe's engineering and return sky science, there were high hopes for the lunar flight, launched January 26. 

Things went badly from the beginning.  Ranger 3 was pushed into a bad trajectory by a faulty guidance system.  Not only did it rush past the moon, failing both to hit the target or end up in orbit, but it was pointed the wrong way the entire length of the journey.  No useful data or pictures were obtained.  That nifty seismometer that makes up Ranger's Rudolph nose went completely unused. 

Ranger 4, a carbon copy of #3, should launch in the next few months.  Hopefully, they'll have the kinks worked out by then.  This is one of those clear places where the Communists are ahead in the space race, having pioneered both lunar orbit and the moon's surface several years ago.

A rain check for Mercury

The third time turned out also not to be the charm for Major John Glenn.  His orbital Mercury mission has now been postponed three times.  It's a good thing the Marine is so good-natured; I know I'd be frustrated.

The first delay happened on January 22 when there was a failure in the spacecraft's oxygen system.  Definitely something I'd like working on a five hour flight!  On the 27th, cloud cover prevented the launch, and just today, there was a problem with the temperamental Atlas booster.  The next opportunity to launch won't come until February 13.

So much is riding on this flight.  The Soviets have already launched two of theirs into orbit while we flutter futilely on the ground.  Newspapers and talking heads are already opining that we'll have a Red-staffed space station and a Red-dominated moon before long if we don't hurry to catch up. 

Explorer 12: Reaping the harvest

Here's the good news: I've said before that the most exciting thing about a satellite is not its fiery launch but the heap of data it returns.  That's where the taxpayer gets one's money's worth and where the scientist sees the payoff.  Explorer 12 was the latest in the series of probes (starting with America's first, Explorer 1) sent into orbit to probe the hellish fields of charged particles that circle the Earth.  The spacecraft is still up there, though it went silent in December.  However, in its four months of life, it learned a great deal about the furthest reaches of our planet's influence.

For one, Explorer 12 found that the outer of the two "Van Allen" belts around our planet is made mostly of protons rather than electrons (though there are still plenty of the latter — enough to make hanging around a dangerous proposition for astronauts).  Those protons, particularly the less energetic ones, have been linked to solar magnetic storms, which result in spectacular auroras on Earth.

Perhaps even more interesting is that the probe found the edge of the Earth's magnetosphere.  "What's that?" you ask.  Well, our planet is a giant magnet, probably the result of a dense iron core that spins deep inside the Earth.  These magnetic lines of force extend far beyond the Earth's crust and 70,000 kilometers into space where they trap the wind of high energy particles from our sun.  This keeps them from scouring away our atmosphere. 

Where our magnetic field meets the field carried on the solar wind, called the magnetopause, there is an area of turbulence and disorganized magnetism. It is now believed that the sun's wind smashes against the Earth's field, creating a bow shock – the kind you'd see when a blunt body is smacked by a supersonic gas.  Moreover, the Outer Van Belt "breathes" inward and outward, responding to waves in the solar wind.

And speaking of magnetic fields, NASA scientists just released findings from the intentionally short-lived Explorer 10 found a magnetic "shadow" behind the Earth.  Specifically, the solar wind seems to hit our planet's magnetosphere and deflect around the Earth, but the magnetic field acts as kind of an umbrella, shielding a large portion of near-Earth space. 

The general contours of Earth's magnetic environment have thus been mapped.  Neat stuff, eh?

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