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[April 26, 1970] Red stars in space (Communist China and the USSR make leaps)

April 26, 2025 Gideon Marcus Leave a comment

by Gideon Marcus

It's likely you missed the other big news in space given how much the flight of Apollo 13 dominated the air waves. But while we were busy ensuring that Lovell, Swigert, and Haise made it back home, the ChiComs and the Russkies were accomplishing some space spectaculars of their own:

If you look up in the sky, you'll see nine new stars, all of them Red!

The East is Red

Radio Peking announced the launch on its April 24th evening newscast, crediting Chairman Mao's leadership for the success. This makes China (the Communist one that we don't recognize as existing) the fifth nation to orbit a satellite with its own booster (Japan having beaten its neighbor to the punch by just two months). Thousands of Chinese marched through Tien An Men Square in an organized demonstration clearly planned in advance. To the sound of exploding firecrackers and the crashing of drums and cymbals, the young and old paraded with red banners and portraits of the Chairman while a People's Liberation Army group carried a man-high model of the Chinese ideogram for double-happiness, while downtown office buildings were lit with white lights and colored bulbs decorated trees along the Boulevard of Eternal Peace.

The satellite is called DongFangHong, which means "The East is Red", and as it orbited, the spacecraft broadcast on 20.009 megacycles the revolutionary song of the same name. Its eccentric orbit takes it nearly 1500 miles above the Earth and down to just under 300, circling the globe every 114 minutes. The satellite masses a respectable 173 kilograms, suggesting a rocket similar in capability to our Delta (compare, say, Relay 1). The satellite is being tracked closely both by the United States and by Nationalist China (Formosa/Taiwan).

The Dong Fang Hong satellite

America's reaction to the flight was something of a yawn. NASA Administrator, Dr. Thomas O. Paine, released this statement:

“This new development has been anticipated for some time. . . . It is a dramatic demonstration of the determination of the Chinese leaders, despite many problems, to put science and technology very high on their list of national priorities.”

Scientists at the Department of Defense and the Air Force displayed a distinct lack of surprise. Indeed, Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird told Congress on February 20 that he expected the Reds to try a launch soon. One unidentified DOD scientist quoted by the Associated Press stated that the launch did not necessarily mean that the ChiComs had developed an ICBM, which makes sense—the Delta is derived from the shorter ranged Thor IRBM. Still, Intelligence analysts estimated Communist China might be able to develop and deploy 10 to 25 intercontinental ballistic missiles by mid-1975, which could threaten the United States.

Or as Tom Lehrer might sing, "China's got the Bomb, but have no fear—they can't wipe us out for at least five years!"

Japan concurred, officials saying that if China had developed a guidance system for satellite launching, it soon would be able to fire intercontinental missiles with high precision. Some have expressed concern that, with the Communist Chinese entering the missile race, ABM development will be accelerated, derailing the ongoing Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT).

More positive were the U.K., whose Minister of Technology, Anthony Wedgwood Benn, congratulated Chinese government, their engineers and space workers on the launch, and West Germany, whose Bochum Observatory called the event a greater technological feat than the 1957 launch of Russia's Sputnik 1.

Meanwhile, the Soviets, long on the outs with their erstwhile sister country, devoted just 10 words on an inside page of Pravda to the launch. Tit for tat—the Red Chinese don't talk about Soviet flights, either. Romania, on the other hand, in a wider orbit from the USSR than other Warsaw Pact states, congratulated the Chinese for "fresh successes in the field of scientific investigation of outer space," and Albania, a long-time supporter of the Chicoms, also hailed the achievement. North Vietnam's news agency said that the launching "brings out the supremacy of socialism and contributes to the development of science and technology in the interests of progressive mankind." That rounds out the Communist response.

Pakistan President Yahya Khan, in a message to Chinese Premier Chou En-lai, called the launch a "great step forward," demonstrating the progress of China’s technology. He said the feat "by our friendly neighbor has been received by us with a feeling of admiration." It is no coincidence that India and Red China have been trading shots across their border, so even though Pakistan is far from a Communist country, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" seems to obtain.

Interestingly, Red China's first satellite is believed to have been the brain-child of Tsien Hsueh-shen, a former MIT and Cal Tech scientist who was a high-ranking Pentagon adviser during World War II. He was later charged with being a Communist Party member and booted from America in 1955.

Tsien at his deportation hearing in 1950

Well, we certainly showed them!

Communist Octuplets

On the 25th, the Soviets brought off what I believe is their first eight-in-one satellite launch. Kosmoses 336 through 343 went into medium Earth orbit around the 1000 mile high mark. No information has been released about the spacecraft, but it reminds me a bit of how we launch eight Initial Defense Communications Satellite Program (IDCSP) satellites at a time on Titan rockets. This suggests that the Soviets are developing a constellation of military communications satellites separate from their Molniya high-orbit comsats—perhaps for global military use, perhaps for use by missile subs or far-flung Communist countries like Cube or North Vietnam. It also means that the Russians have perfected the "space bus" architecture for rockets, allowing the deployment of multiple satellites from a single vehicle.

Artist's rendering of a Titan Transtage deploying IDCSP satellites similar to how the Soviets might have dispersed their Kosmoses

Incidentally, we (America) are a lot more on the ball with regard to Soviet satellites than I thought. Not only are we able to identify which of the "science" Kosmoses are spy sats, but we can even determine trends in their cadence and capabilities. Aviation Weekly had an article on it earlier this month, and it was fascinating reading.

So, all in all, an exciting month for the Eastern Hemisphere. Let's just hope that these developments presage the peaceful development of space…and not doom for the world

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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Science / Space Race

[April 22, 1970] “Houston, We’ve had a Problem Here!” (Apollo-13 emergency in space)

April 22, 2025 Kaye Dee Leave a comment

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

by Kaye Dee

We all breathed a sigh of relief when the astronauts of Apollo-13 returned to Earth safely a few days ago, after the Apollo programmes’ first (and hopefully last) inflight emergency, but superstitious people are claiming that Apollo-13 was unlucky because of a prevalence of “13s”! After all, the mission was launched at 13:13 Houston time (but somewhere in the world there will always be a place where the time is 13: something!) and the explosion that caused its inflight emergency occurred on 13 April (but only in certain timezones – it was already 14 April in Australia and most of the world east of the United States).

Don’t tell me the Apollo-13 crew were “unlucky”; in fact, they were immensely lucky that when something did go wrong they were a team with the right skills for the situation. As seasoned test pilots, the crew were experienced at working in critical situations with their lives on the line, and their professional skills as astronauts were matched by the “tough and competent” (to quote Flight Director Mr. Gene Kranz) Mission Control teams, backed by highly trained engineers and scientists – all determined to “return them safely to the Earth”, just as President Kennedy committed NASA to do when he set the goal of a manned lunar landing by 1970!

Timeline of major mission events during Apollo-13

Crew Switcheroo
The prime crew for Apollo-13 changed multiple times, the last alteration occurring just days before launch! Instead of rotating the Apollo-10 back-up crew to become the prime crew for Apollo-13 – the normal procedure – Director of Flight Crew Operations, Mr. Deke Slayton, designated astronauts Alan Shepard (Commander), Stuart Roosa (Command Module Pilot) and Edgar Mitchell (Lunar Module Pilot) as the Apollo-13 prime crew. However, although he was the first American in space, Captain Shepard had only recently returned to flight status after a lengthy medical issue. It was felt that he needed more training time, so in August 1969, his crew was swapped with the prime crew for Apollo-14.

The prime crew for Apollo 13 then became US Navy Captain James Lovell, as Commander, civilian Mr. Fred Haise as Lunar Module Pilot (LMP) and USAF Lt. Col. Ken Mattingly as Command Module Pilot (CMP).

Official crew portrait for Apollo-13. L.-R. Jim Lovell, Ken Mattingly and Fred Haise. They are shown with ancient scientific and navigation instruments hinting at the classical elements in the mission patch and callsigns

Unfortunately, just a week before launch back-up LMP Charles Duke contracted German measles (rubella) from a child and accidentally exposed both the prime and back-up crews to the disease. CMP Mattingly was found to have no immunity, and the astronauts’ medical team had serious concerns that he could become too sick to perform adequately during the flight if he began to experience symptoms of the disease.

Normally, NASA policy would dictate that the back-up crew step into the mission. However, since back-up LMP Duke also had the measles, this wasn’t feasible. Just three days before launch, the difficult decision was made to replace Lt. Col. Mattingly with Mr. Jack Swigert, the fortunately-immune back-up CMP. This made the final crew for Apollo-13 Lovell, Haise and Swigert. Astronaut Mattingly will be re-assigned to a later Apollo mission, probably Apollo 16.

The last minute Apollo-13 crew portrait, following the swap of Ken Mattingly to Jack Swigert

Who’s Who?
Although he announced his intention to retire from NASA prior to Apollo-13, 42-year-old Mission Commander James “Jim” Lovell is the world's most experienced astronaut, the record holder for the most time in space, with 572 hours aboard Gemini-7, Gemini-12 and Apollo-8!

Members of the fifth astronaut group, selected in 1966, Captain Lovell’s crewmates may have both been space rookies, but fortuitously they each had specialisations that provided vital knowledge and experience during the in-flight emergency.

Mr. Fred Haise, the Lunar Module pilot (LMP), is a 36-year-old aeronautical engineer, who was both a Marine Corps and Air National Guard fighter pilot. A civilian research pilot for NASA before his selection as an astronaut, Mr. Haise previously served as back-up LMP for Apollo-8 and 11. He is a specialist on the Lunar Module (LM), having spent fourteen months at the Grumman factory where the spacecraft are built.

Mr. John “Jack” Swigert, the Command Module Pilot (CMP), is 38 years old, with degrees in mechanical engineering and aerospace science. He has served in the US Air Force and in state Air National Guards and was an engineering test pilot immediately prior to his astronaut selection. A specialist in malfunctions of the Command and Lunar Modules, Mr. Swigert “practically wrote the book on spacecraft malfunctions.”

Knowledge from the Moon
It’s probably fortunate that, like Apollo-11, Captain Lovell’s original crew made the decision that the Apollo-13 mission patch would not carry their names: when the last minute crew swap occurred, no changes were required to the design. Instead of names, the Apollo-13 patch carries the motto “Ex Luna, Scientia”, Latin for “From the Moon, knowledge”. This references Apollo-13’s intended role as the second ‘H’-class mission, designed to demonstrate precision landing capability so that the crew could explore a specific site on the Moon. As a Navy officer, Captain Lovell derived the motto from that of the US Naval Academy, “Ex scientia, tridens ("From knowledge, sea power").

A powerful image of the Sun rising behind the horses of the god Apollo’s chariot forms the centrepiece of the design. As Apollo is the god of both the Sun and knowledge, this plays upon both the project name and the mission motto. Against the black background of space, the golden horses of Apollo prance over the Moon, their journey from the Earth (in the background) to the Moon depicted by a bright blue path. Artist Lumen Martin Winter, designer of the Apollo-13 mission patch, based the horses on a mural he previously painted for the St. Regis Hotel in New York City (below). Using Roman numerals for the mission number also complements the classical connections of the spacecraft names and callsigns.

Classical Callsigns
Captain Lovell drew upon classical mythology in selecting the Command Module callsign “Odyssey” – taken from Homer’s epic Greek poem. Since an “odyssey is “a long voyage with many changes of fortune”, it turned out to be an extremely appropriate choice indeed! The name was also a nod to the classic science fiction film "2001: a Space Odyssey".

For the Lunar Module, the crew selected the callsign “Aquarius”. Although the media have linked the callsign to the song in the musical “Hair”, it is actually meant to reference Aquarius, the cup-bearer of the Graeco-Roman gods, and bringer of water – the only water on the Moon being that carried there by the Apollo crew.

Medieval illustration of Aquarius watering the Earth

Preflight Preparations
Apollo-13’s launcher, AS-508, had some slight modifications compared to earlier Saturn-V vehicles, to prepare for the future J-class missions which will carry heavier payloads. New “spray-on insulation” was used for the liquid hydrogen propellent tanks in the S-II second stage. The rocket also carried additional fuel, as a test for future launches, making it the heaviest Saturn-V yet flown.

The intensive preparation for the Apollo-13 crew included over 1,000 hours of mission-specific training, with a much greater focus on geology, since the intended landing area in the hilly Fra Mauro formation (named for a 15th Century cartographer monk) is of significant geological interest. If rocks from this area could be dated, they might improve our understanding of the early geological history of both the Moon and the Earth. Scientist-astronaut Harrison Schmitt, himself a geologist, was heavily involved in the crew’s geological training.

Jim Lovell and Fred Haise during geology training in Hawaii

Due to the difficulty of distinguishing astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin from each other in Apollo-11 photographs, NASA introducec a means of differentiating crew members from each other on the Moon by adding red stripes on the helmet, arms and legs of the commander's spacesuit. This system will now be implemented on Apollo-14.

Experiments That Might Have Been
A major component of Apollo-13’s lunar surface activities would have been the installation of a new Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package (ALSEP), powered by a SNAP-27 radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG). This small nuclear generator contains 8.36lb of plutonium oxide. The fuel capsule is intended to withstand the heat of re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere in the event of an aborted mission, which means that Apollo-13’s RTG may have survived Aquarius’ re-entry on return to Earth, splashing down into a remote area of the southern Pacific Ocean.

Mission Commander Lovell practicing the deployment of an ALSEP instrument during training

Like Apollo-11 and 12, Apollo-13’s ALSEP included a seismometer (the Passive Seismic Experiment), which was to be calibrated by the impact of Aquarius’ ascent stage, a Lunar Atmosphere Detector (LAD) and a Dust Detector. New to the Apollo-13 instrument package was a Heat Flow Experiment (HFE), and a Charged Particle Lunar Environment Experiment (CPLEE), designed to measure solar protons and electrons reaching the Moon.

A Shakey Start
Originally scheduled for launch in March, Apollo-13 was delayed for a month while NASA re-considers how it will schedule the remaining Apollo missions out to Apollo-19, now that Apollo-20 has been axed due to President Nixon’s budget cuts.

The mission hit trouble right at the start: five and a half minutes after liftoff on Saturday 11 April (US time). The crew felt “a little vibration”, then the centre engine of the S-II stage shut down two minutes early. This required the remaining four engines to burn and additional 34 seconds longer, while the S-IVB third stage had to burn 9 seconds longer to put the spacecraft into orbit. But with the extra fuel on board for this flight, the engine failure fortunately didn’t cause any major problem.

A successful trans lunar injection burn placed Apollo-13 on course for the Moon, with the CSM and LM docking occurring 20 minutes’ later. Unlike previous lunar missions, after the LM was extracted from the S-IVB stage, the stage was not sent off into solar orbit, but targetted to impact the Moon so the vibrations could be detected by the Apollo-12 seismometer. This would later cause unexpected communications complications after the accident occurred.

Apollo-13's S-IVB stage heading towards the Moon

“We’re Bored to Tears”
With the spacecraft safely on its way to the Moon, the first phase of the flight was uneventful. Approaching 31 hours into the flight, the crew performed a burn to place Apollo 13 on a hybrid trajectory, enabling Aquarius to ultimately land at the Fra Mauro site. This change from the free-return trajectory used on earlier missions would cause later complications for returning the astronauts to Earth: on a free-return trajectory, no further engine burns were necessary to ultimately bring the spacecraft home, but a hybrid trajectory would miss Earth on its return leg, unless further burns were performed.

Apollo-13 White Team Flight Director Mr. Gene Kranz catching up on his paperwork in Mission Control during the calm before the storm

The day after launch, Mr. Swigert became worried by the realisation that, in the rush to replace Ken Mattingly, he had forgotten to file his Income Tax Return, and needed to apply for an extension! Fortunately for him, an amused Mission Control advised that “American citizens out of the country get a 60-day extension on filing; assume this applies to you.”

With Apollo-13’s telemetry showing that the spacecraft was “in real good shape”, on 13 April Capcom Joe Kerwin told the crew “We are bored to tears down here.”—a situation that was soon to change.

The Last Apollo-13 Show
Astronauts Lovell and Haise entered the LM to test its systems about an hour before a major television broadcast, scheduled for 55 hours into the mission.

With Commander Lovell acting as MC, the astronauts put on a lively show, exhibiting some of their gear such as space helmets, sleeping hammocks and newly-designed bags for drinking water inside their spacesuits. From Odyssey, Captain Lovell played tinkly lounge music using a small tape recorder, and he said it was an awesome thing to see the Moon accompanied by the theme to 2001.

Mission Control during the Apollo-13 broadcast. Astronaut Fred Haise can be seen on the big screen

Disappointingly, American television viewers had become, it seems, even more bored than Mission Control with now-“routine” missions to the Moon. None of the major US networks carried the broadcasts, although they were seen in Australia and, I believe, other countries. Marilyn Lovell and Mary Haise had to go to the Mission Control VIP viewing room to see their husbands’ half hour broadcast on television.

“Houston, We’ve had a Problem Here!”
Just nine minutes after the conclusion of the television broadcast, at 205,000 miles from Earth, an incident occurred that turned Apollo-13 from a routine mission into an emergency situation: one that the media and anxious communities in the US and around the world would intently follow as soon as the news broke!

At the request of Mission Control, Mr. Swigert stirred the cryogenic hydrogen and oxygen tanks that powered the fuel cells in the Service Module (SM). This action was followed by a “pretty large bang”, felt as a jolt through the spacecraft, accompanied by fluctuations in electrical power, attitude control thrusters firing automatically and a brief loss of communications and telemetry to Earth.

Diagram of the Service Module showing the location of the fuel cells and oxygen tanks that must have been damaged by the explosion, based on the available telemtry

CMP Swigert quickly reported "Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here," confirmed moments later by the Mission Commander, "Houston, we've had a problem. We've had a Main B Bus undervolt”. This meant that the SM’s three fuel cells were not providing sufficient voltage to the second of the Service Module’s two electrical power distribution systems

Captain Lovell momentarily thought that LMP Haise had activated Aquarius’ cabin-repressurisation valve (which Haise could have done as a joke, since its bang would startle his crewmates); CMP Swigert initially thought that a meteoroid might have struck the LM, though there was no atmospheric leakage. But voltage was dropping in both electrical buses, one oxygen tank was empty, and the other leaking, and two of the three fuel cells were failing!

Headline from Australian newspaper "The Sun" just a few hours after the accident. It references Lovell's description of gas venting from the Service Module

Looking out Odyssey’s hatch window, seeking a cause for the spacecraft thrusters to be firing erratically and affecting their course to the Moon, Captain Lovell saw “gas of some sort” venting into space. Some kind of physical rupture had definitely occurred: whatever had caused the problem, the situation was serious.

Mission Control Swings into Action
Although the Flight Controllers in Houston initially assumed that their bizarre anomalous readings from Apollo-13 had to be the result of instrumentation issues, it quickly became obvious, judging from the reports from the crew, that they were dealing with a genuine emergency.

The Mission Control White Team, led by Flight Director Gene Kranz, was on duty when the incident occurred and had to deal with the initial hours afterwards. With extensive Flight Director experience going back to the Mercury programme, and including critical phases of the Apollo-11 mission, Mr. Kranz played a crucial role in the rescue of the Apollo-13 crew.

Flight Director Gene Kranz (seated) and senior Flight Controllers during the tense period following the Apollo-13 accident

With telemetry data providing some insight into the condition of the spacecraft, and support from “backroom” teams of technical specialists, White Team worked to diagnose the problems and prioritise recovery and rescue actions.

The fuel cells needed oxygen to operate, but it was rapidly leaking away. Attempting to stem the leak, they shut down the two failing fuel cells. This immediately meant the loss of the lunar landing, as mission rules prohibited going into orbit around the Moon unless all three fuel cells were functioning. With oxygen still being lost, Mr. Kranz ordered the isolation of a small oxygen supply within the Odyssey, to retain it for use with the last remaining fuel cell, which would be needed for the final hours of the mission. The CM's batteries would be needed to power the craft during re-entry, so they were also shut down to conserve power.

Lifeboat Aquarius
Ninety-three minutes after the accident, oxygen pressure in the Command Module was dropping and Mission Control determined that the last fuel cell would soon fail as oxygen ran out, leaving the CM effectively dead. Aware of training simulations that had used the LM as a “lifeboat”, Mission Control ordered the crew to transfer to Aquarius.

Lovell, Haise and Swigert had themselves already realised that Aquarius would be needed as a lifeboat, and had commenced to power-up the Lunar Module, transferring necessary information to the LM’s guidance system. They bagged up as much water as possible from Odyssey’s supply (needed for equipment cooling as well as drinking), storing the water and food supplies in Aquarius.

The Apollo-13 crew's only view of their lifeboat Aquarius in space, drifting after it was cast loose shortly before re-entry

It was going to be a tight fit for three astronauts in a spacecraft meant for two, but the crew were fortunate that the emergency occurred when they had a fully-powered and supplied Lunar Module attached to the Odyssey. Had the explosion occurred after the lunar landing, with Aquarius jettisoned, the CM would not be able to provide enough life support to keep the astronauts alive until they returned to Earth.

Apollo-13 was being surrounded by a cloud of debris from the explosion. Communications were weak and erratic, due to probable antenna damage from debris, as well as interference from the S-IVB stage also on its way to the Moon. Its tracking beacon was operating on the same frequency as the Lunar Module, as it had not been anticipated that the LM and S-IVB stage would be communicating at the same time. (I’ll cover this situation in more detail in an article in May).

Flight Controllers conferring on how best to bring Apollo-13 safely home. Note the lack of data usually present on the big screens

“Returning Them Safely to the Earth”
Apollo-13’s new mission goal became the safe return of the crew to the Earth. Vital consumables (oxygen, electricity, and water) were assessed and rationing plans devised. Calculating the best way to get the spacecraft back to Earth before supplies were exhausted became a priority, with the mindset that “failure is not an option”.

Ultimately, the safest course of action was deemed to be putting Apollo-13 back on a free-return trajectory, firing the LM’s descent engine so that the spaceship would loop around the Moon and head back to Earth. Using the large Service Module engine was ruled out, since it was uncertain if it had been damaged by the explosion.

NASA’s “Return to Earth” trajectory specialist, Miss Poppy Northcutt, calculated a new course to carry Apollo-13 around the Moon and safely home. Anxious to assist in any way they could, other astronauts arrived at Mission Control, including Lt. Col. Mattingly, who still had not developed German measles! Some would spend time in the Apollo simulators, helping to work up needed procedures, such as powering up the Command Module for re-entry with limited electricity available.

NASA Contollers and astronauts gathered in Mission Control to assist the rescue of Apollo-13. Seated, left to right, Guidance Officer Raymond F. Teague; astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell, Apollo 14 prime crew lunar module pilot; and astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr., Apollo 14 prime crew commander. Standing, left to right, are scientist-astronaut Anthony W. England; astronaut Joe H. Engle, Apollo 14 backup crew lunar module pilot; astronaut Eugene A. Cernan, Apollo 14 backup crew commander; astronaut Ronald E. Evans, Apollo 14 backup crew command module pilot; and M.P. Frank, a flight controller

Sixty one and a half hours after launch, Aquarius’ descent engine burn put Apollo-13 back on a free return trajectory. As it looped around the Moon, Apollo-13 captured the Guinness World Record for the farthest distance from Earth attained by a crewed spacecraft – 248,655 miles.

The Moon's far side photographed by the Apollo-13 crew. The shut down CM Odyssey can also be seen in the foreground of this view from Aquarius

I’m sure you recall the tension during those 25 minutes of radio blackout when Apollo-13 was behind the Moon. People around the world tuned into television and radio, or gathered in public spaces, eager for news, now engrossed in the gripping drama being played out in space. Would the astronauts survive? Religious leaders led congregations in prayer for their safe return.

On Their Way Home
Mission Control determined that a burn following trans-Earth injection would shave 12 hours off the flight time back to Earth and land Apollo-13 in the Pacific, where the main US recovery fleet was located. Thirteen nations (another number 13!), including the USSR, offered to provide rescue ships or aircraft for emergency recovery, should the spacecraft come down off course in the Pacific, Indian or Atlantic Oceans.

When this crucial burn took place, the debris cloud surrounding the spacecraft made it impossible to use stellar navigation to check the accuracy of the firing. However, the crew were able to use the positions of the Sun and Moon to confirm that the trajectory was on target. They were going home!

The astronauts then shut down most LM systems to conserve consumables, making for a miserable return flight: in Aquarius it was extremely cold (38 °F), dark and damp, with moisture condensing out on every surface, including the windows. The same issue occurred in Odyssey, raising concerns of short-circuits occurring when it was powered back up. Fortunately, lessons learned from the Apollo-1 fire prevented that from happening.

Mission Commander Lovell tries to sleep in the extreme cold and semi-darkness of the Lunar Module

The crew slept poorly, eating and drinking little (cold frankfurters and water for dinner, anyone?). They lost weight, with Mr. Haise developing a urinary tract infection, apparently from dehydration.

Putting a Square Peg in a Round Hole
A new problem arose during the return journey – with three astronauts in the LM, dangerous levels of carbon dioxide were building up in Aquarius. They were running out of lithium hydroxide canisters, designed to scrub it from the air, and the square canisters used in Odyssey were not compatible with the round openings in Aquarius!

Jack Swigert, with assistance from Jim Lovell (just out of frame) assembles the connections for the makeshift CO2 scrubbing device nicknamed "the mailbox", which is box shaped object beside Swigert

NASA engineers fortunately found a way to fit “a square peg in a round hole,” using only items available on the spacecraft. After the instructions for building the device were radioed up, Swigert and Haise constructed it and carbon dioxide levels began dropping immediately.

The Final Leg
Apollo-13 showed a tendency to drift slowly off course, and two more mid-course correction burns were needed to keep the spacecraft within the safe re-entry flight path. Just after 138 hours into the mission, the crew jettisoned the SM from the command module, allowing the astronauts to see and photograph the explosion area for the first time. They were shocked by the extent of the damage they saw and concerned that the explosion might have damaged the heatshield.

The astronauts' only view of the Service Module, showing the extent of the damage caused by the explosion, which blew out an entire side panel.

Moving back into Odyssey, the astronauts then reactivated its life support systems, while retaining Aquarius until about 70 minutes before entry. With no heatshield of its own, the LM could not safely re-enter, but as it drifted away, watched sadly by the crew, Capcom Kerwin offered an epitaph from Mission Control: “Farewell Aquarius, and we thank you”.

There's no place like home! Earth taken from Apollo-13 in the final stages of its return from the Moon

Home at Last!
At last, on April 17 (US time),142 hours after launch, Apollo-13 re-entered Earth’s atmosphere. Its shallow re-entry path lengthened the usual four-minute radio communications blackout to six minutes, causing Mission Control to briefly fear that the CM's heat shield had failed. But Odyssey had survived and splashed down safely in the South Pacific Ocean south-east of American Samoa, just four miles from the recovery ship, USS Iwo Jima: total flight time: 5 days, 22 hours, 54 minutes and 41 seconds. Mission Control erupted in cheers!

While the world rejoiced at their safe return, the exhausted Apollo-13 crew stayed overnight on the recovery ship, without undergoing quarantine since they did not land on the Moon.

Exhausted but elated, the Apollo-13 crew are formally welcomed aboard the recovery ship, USS Iwo Jima as returning heroes after their space ordeal

The astronauts flew to Pago Pago in American Samoa the next day, then on to Hawaii, where they were re-united with their wives and President Nixon awarded them the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest US civilian honour. The Presidential Medal of Freedom was also awarded to the Apollo-13 Mission Operations Team, for their efforts in ensuring the safe return of the Apollo-13 crew. After staying overnight in Hawaii, Capt. Lovell, Mr. Haise and Mr. Swigert have now returned to Houston to be re-united with their families.

Returning heroes after their space ordeal. the Apollo-13 crew stand proudly with President Nixon after being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom

At present, the cause of the explosion that crippled Apollo-13 is unknown, so I will leave the speculation until my follow-up article in May, talking more about Apollo-13’s epic journey. I’d like to end here with the words of President Nixon, during the Presidential Medal of Freedom presentation: “You did not reach the Moon, but you reached the hearts of millions of people on Earth by what you did.”

The astronauts only learned about the extent of the pubic reaction to their emergency after they returned to Earth!

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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[March 30, 1970] The Age of Explorer — the end of the Space Race

March 30, 2025 Gideon Marcus Leave a comment

by Gideon Marcus

In February 1958, just months before Galactic Journey took to press, Vice President Nixon visited Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He went personally congratulate the team that had built America's first artificial satellite, Explorer 1.

Vice President Richard Nixon and a model of the Explorer satellite with Dr. Lee DuBridge, left, president of Cal Tech, and Dr. William H. Pickering, right, director of the Cal Tech Jet Propulsion lab, during a news conference in Pasadena, Calif., Feb. 17, 1958.

Now it is 1970. President Nixon is presiding over a severe curtailing of our space program. Next month, Apollo 13 will head to the Moon, marking the end of the first stage of lunar reconnaissance. The original plan was for ten increasingly ambitious lunar landings, paving the way for long term exploration and exploitation. But it's looking now like Apollo 11 was more of a conclusion than a beginning. The Saturn V assembly line is shut down, Congress and the President are against any ambitious space endeavors, and even the three phases of Apollo flights are being cut down to two.

That said, our space endeavors are not entirely ended. In addition to at least five more Apollo flights (the fates of Apollos 18 and 19 are in the balance; Apollo 20 has been canceled definitively), NASA plans to launch a space station into orbit built out of a dry Saturn upper stage. The first 28-day mission will take place in 1972. Three astronauts will conduct the first long-term experiments in space. Two more missions of 56-day duration will follow.

But then "Skylab" will go into hibernation. There won't be any more American spacecraft to visit or service the home in space—at least not until 1977. That's the earliest that the proposed "space shuttle", all that's left of NASA Administrator Tom Paine's grandiose proposal for space development, which had included a trip to Mars on nuclear engines and several large space stations, can be brought online.

It is appropriate that it looks like tomorrow will be the day Explorer 1's orbit finally decays and sends the little satellite plunging into fiery reentry. In its 13-year lifetime, it completed more than 58 thousand revolutions of the Earth, traveling 1.66 billion miles. Explorer discovered the Van Allen Belts, fields of radioactive solar particles trapped in the Earth's magnetic field. Its launch, on January 31, 1958, marked the true beginning of the Space Race. Perhaps in decades to come, this comparatively brief moment of space pioneering will be known as "The Age of Explorer".

Ironically, one of the biggest poo-pooers of space exploration, at least of the manned variety, is the scientist who perhaps contributed the most to Explorer 1's design. Dr. James A. Van Allen, Univ. of Iowa Director of Physics and Astronomy Departments, had this to say earlier this month:

"The Apollo missions, to me, are straightforward though immensely difficult tasks. They do, however, yield relatively little in the way of fundamental understanding of nature. They are not scientific in that sense. There is a longstanding controversy as to whether a manned spacecraft is a better way to conduct science in space than an automated, commandable spacecraft. I’m sure there is no simple answer to that question. As the general romance and entertainment value of manned flight tend to wear off a little, I think this question will be attacked in a thoroughly pragmatic way.

"[Apollo 11's lunar landing] might properly be compared to the explorations of Amundsen and Perry and Byrd in the Arctic and Antarctic, or perhaps Lindbergh flying the Atlantic. These are great achievements, heroic achievements, but the general potential of the Moon in its relationship to human life on a large scale is by no means obvious to me. I don’t think any competent person has found a significant, economic, human use for the Moon.

"[The Space shuttle and Skylab are feasible.] Whether or not it is sensible to pursue them, I have a great difficulty in judging."

President Nixon, Congress, and the majority of the American people seem to agree with the Professor.

What do you think?

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Magazine/Anthology, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 20, 1970] Here comes the sun (April 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

March 20, 2025 Gideon Marcus 2 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

Out, damn spot!

A couple of weeks ago, Victoria Silverwolf offered us a tidbit on the latest solar eclipse. I've since read a bit more about the scientific side of things and thought I'd share what I've learned with you.

It was the first total solar eclipse to be seen over heavily populated areas of U.S. since 1925, greeted by millions of viewers who crowded the beaches, towns, and islands where viewing was most favorable. The eclipse cut a nearly 100 mile wide swath through Mexico, Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, and Nantucket Island, Mass. It was 96% total in New York City and 95% in the nation's capital.

a clipping from Escondido's Times-Advocate

But ground viewing was only the beginning. NASA employed a flotilla of platforms to observe the eclipse from an unprecedented variety of vantages. A barrage of sounding rockets (suborbital science probes) were launched during the eclipse to take measurements of the Earth's atmosphere and ionosphere.

In space, radio signals from Mars probe Mariner 6, currently on the far side of Sun, were measured to determine how the eclipse affected communications and to study changes in charged particles in earth’s atmosphere.

Two Orbiting Solar Observatories, #5 and #6, pointed their instruments at the Sun to gather data on the solar atmosphere, while Advanced Test Satellite #3 took pictures of the Moon's shadow on the Earth from more than 20,000 miles above the surface. Three American-Canadian satellites, Alouette 1, Alouette 2, and Isis 1, all examined the change the eclipse caused in the Earth's ionosphere.

Earthside telescopes got into the mix, too: Observers from three universities and four NASA centers at sites in Virginia and Mexico not only got great shots of the solar corona, but also of faint comets normally washed out in the glare of the Sun.

I can't imagine anyone in 1925 but maybe Hugo Gernsback could have foreseen how much attention, and from how many angles such attention would be applied, during the 1970 eclipse. It's just one more example of how science fiction has become science.

Waiting for the dawn

The last two months of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction weren't too hot. Does the latest issue mark a return of the light or continued darkness? Let's find out…

cover by Chesley Bonestell

Ill Met in Lankhmar, by Fritz Leiber

Because I didn't get into science fiction and fantasy in a big way until the early '50s, there are glaring gaps in my literacy. One big hole is Leiber's Fahfrd and Gray Mouser stories, which were were hits in the '40s (I still need to crack into my complete set of Unknown) and were revived at Fantastic editor Cele Goldsmith's request in 1959. I've read one or two, and I've enjoyed them, but mostly I know about the contents of the score or so stories set in Lankhmar only second-hand from the reviews of other Journeyers.

So I was quite delighted that the lead novelette in the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction not only features the hulking northman and his slate-swaddled companion, but details their first meeting!

On a dingy avenue in Lankhmar (is there any other kind), the two lay in wait, separately, to waylay a pair of thieves returning from a successful burglary. They are handily successful and find that they are immediately compatible, both being fond of drink, both new to the city, both with comely and vivacious lady loves. At a wine-fueled bash, we learn that Fahfrd's lady, Vlana, was roughly treated by Krovas, head of the local Thieves' Guild. Ivrian, the Mouser's current flame, accuses Fahfrd of cowardice for not taking the robber lord's head, and with that, our newly united duo decide to sally forth tipsily and do just that.

Of course, taking on the entire Guild—and its rat-man sorcerer bodyguard—is not a task to be undertaken lightly…

There's a certain forced quality to this tale, as if Leiber is consciously trying to return to a pulpy histrionic style he has since grown out of. I also take issue with having love interests introduced only to meet a gruesome fate so as to provide dramatic impetus for the heroes.

That said, boy can Leiber paint a lurid picture of a lived-in fantasy world, somewhere in sophistication between the rude settings of Conan and the rarefied towers of Tolkien. His battle scenes are vivid and well drawn, his monsters fresh and intriguing. There's no question but that I raced through the story without pause, eager to find how it resolved.

Four stars.

Books, by James Blish

The books covered this time around include a book of SF poetry, Holding your eight hands, about which Blish says: "If you like poetry and know something about it, this volume will be a pleasant surprise…or perhaps even an unexpected doorway into the art."

Creatures of Light and Darkness, an SFnal rework of Egyptian myth by Roger Zelazny, gets a sour review. "…the displacements from the world of experience involved in myth attempt to explain a world in terms of eternal forces which are changeless; the attempt is antithetical to the suppositions of science fiction, which center around the potentialities of continuous change."

George MacDonald's 1895 book, Lilith has gotten a Ballantine reprint, and Blish says it's worth reading for its influence on Lewis' "Narnia" and Carroll's Alice.

Dan Morgan's The New Minds is the latest in a series, which is essentially bad rehash of good Sturgeon. Blish doesn't like this installment either.

Soulmate, by Charles W. Runyon

What could make Anne, an aging, but still lovely Black Widow, have such an emptiness at the center of her heart? And when she consummates with marriage her seduction of a perfect, wealthy young man, fully intending to murder him for his money, just who is the hunter, and who the prey?

This is a beautifully dark story that, like The Graduate, manages to make an unpraiseworthy character somehow sympathetic. I particularly liked the line: "Each disappointment is the end of an illusion. I thank you, Anne, for a truly educational experience."

Four stars.

In Black of Many Colors, by Neil Shapiro

Cinnabar is Earth's only telepath, kept in cold sleep as a precious tool to be used only in case of emergency. One has come up—the aliens of Beta Lyrae Three are implacably hostile and on the verge of developing spaceflight. Only Cinnabar could possibly make contact and establish a peaceful rapport.

Cinnabar loathes the sharp-edged thoughts of humanity, and she thus has developed a strong death wish. This is mitigated for the first time when she falls in love with the captain of the vessel taking her to Beta Lyrae.

What will win? Her sense of duty (and desire for this to be her fatal swansong) or her desire for companionship? And are the two mutually exclusive?

This really is a lovely tale. In plot, it is not dissimilar to Silverberg's excellent novel, The Man in the Maze, but the execution, story, and cast are quite divergent. The main room for improvement would be to get rid of the somewhat fairy-tale narration that accompanies the first half. It's not necessary, and the story of a telepath should be internal, vivid and alien. I think Shapiro had the skills to write that story (as evidenced by the latter half of the piece, which is better), but perhaps not the confidence.

Four stars.

The Brief, Swinging Career of Dan and Judy Smythe, by Carter Wilson

A handsome young California couple decides to answer an ad for swingers. What seems to be a version of Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice ends in supernatural horror.

It reads like something written for Playboy. Perhaps Hugh rejected it. After all, his magazine is meant to promote, not dissuade, this lifestyle.

Three stars.

The Wizard of Atala, by Richard A. Lupoff

The naval superpower of Atala is threatened by the invincible airships of Catayuna. Only the might of Atala's wizard can stop them; only the pride of that nation's chief admiral, general, and strategist can thwart the sorcerer's mission.

I mostly know Dick Lupoff from his fanzine work (he and his wife won the Hugo in '63. This story takes place either in the far past or the far future—it's one of those tales where the names of familiar places are distorted, but not so much as to be unrecognizable: Yorpa and Afric, for example. Atala may be Atlantis or the Atlantic coast.

It's all kind of fantasy rote with traditional olde-type language, and it's a little tedious in the repetitious telling, but it's not bad.

Three stars.

The Nobel Prize That Wasn't, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor, after regaling us with a tale of the day he seduced a buxom 18-year-old co-ed (apparently sometime last year), finishes explaining how the Periodic Table of Elements was solidified. A fellow named Mosely determined the last piece of the puzzle that was the atomic interior: atomic weight. Using x-rays, he was able to find out exactly how many protons any element's nucleus had (though he didn't know anything about the particles, just that there was something with positive charge inside) and that this number was the unique identifying factor for each atom.

What I find so fascinating about all this is how recent it was. When I was going to high school in the '30s, this fundament of chemistry was taken as read. And yet, just thirty years prior, there was as yet no real proof for the order the elements should be in. It is tremendous what a sea change subatomic theory and Einstein were at the beginning of this century. Will the 21st see such radical changes in understanding of the universe?

Four stars.

They All Ran After the Farmer's Wife, by Raylyn Moore

A down-on-his luck preacher from Ohio ends up as a laborer on a Kansas farm. His only social contacts are the Bible-thumping farmer, his fantastically ugly wife, Bep, and their other employee, a swarthy fellow named Aza who never takes off his socks. When the preacher and the farmer's wife begin an illicit relationship, it turns out that more than a little Scripture is involved in the proceedings.

While Christian myth generally leaves me cold as the basis for a tale, I did appreciate that this story hews away from the horrific, actually concluding with gentleness and redemption. Even the greatest of sinners can be saved with kindness by the honest, is the message.

Four stars.

Here comes the sun

As it turns out, the eclipse is over, and the stellar magazine that is F&SF has returned ablaze. Glad tidings for all. The question now is how long the sun will keep shining.

Is there a literary equivalent of Stonehenge to pray at?

by Gahan Wilson

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Science / Space Race

[February 26, 1970] Made in Japan! (Ohsumi, first Japanese satellite)

February 26, 2025 Kaye Dee Leave a comment

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by Kaye Dee

An aerial view of the Expo 70 site in Osaka

In just three weeks, on 15 March, World Expo 1970 will open in Osaka, Japan, the first time that a world’s fair has been held in Asia. This event is intended to welcome the world to Japan as a celebration of the massive strides the country has made in national re-development since the War. One of Japan’s latest achievements took place only two weeks ago – the launch of its first satellite!

Yes, Japan has now joined the Space Club, as the first Asian nation to put a satellite into orbit. Not only that, but Japan becomes only the fourth country to have launched its own satellite using a home-grown launch vehicle!

The small satellite, named Ohsumi for the peninsula on the island of Kyushu from which it was launched, was lofted on a four-stage Lambda 4S solid-fuel rocket on 11 February. The launch site, known as the Kagoshima Space Centre, is located in Kagoshima Prefecture at the southernmost end of the island of Kyushu, near Uchinoura. It’s been the home of Japan’s space launch activities since 1962.

At this point, you are probably thinking that you’ve never heard anything before about Japanese space activity – and that would be no surprise, as the Western media, unfortunately, pays little attention to Asian nations outside of reporting on conflicts and (supposed) Communist threats. So you might be surprised to know that Japanese interest in space exploration goes back to the mid-1950s.

"The Father of the Space Rocket"

Prof. Hideo Itokawa around 1961

Japan’s equivalent of Wernher von Braun, and the driving force behind its first decade of rocket research, was Professor Hideo Itokawa, whose influence on Japan's space programme has been so profound that he's known as "the father of the space rocket". Born in 1912, Prof. Itokawa studied aeronautical engineering at the University of Tokyo. During the War he designed military aircraft, contributing to the design of the “Hayabusa” (peregrine falcon) fighter plane, known by the Allied designation of “Oscar”.

But with the initial post-War dismantling of the Japanese aviation industry, Prof. Itokawa was forced to seek a new career, and he worked for several years developing electronic medical instruments. On a visit to the United States in 1953, he happened to read a treatise on space medicine and became inspired by the idea of developing a Japanese space programme! On returning to Japan, he joined the newly re-established Aviation Department at the University of Tokyo and commenced research in rocket development.

Prof. Itokawa moved swiftly to engage both university students and Japanese industry in his dream of spaceflight, and by early 1954, solid rocket propellants were under development, and he had formed a rocket research group at the university called AVSA (Avionics and Supersonic Aerodynamics).

From Pencil Rockets to Sounding Rockets

With a small research budget, Prof. Itokawa developed a series of tiny test rockets, which culminated in the “Pencil”. Just 23cm (9.1in) long, 1.8cm (0.71in) in diameter and weighing only 200g (7.01oz), AVSA Pencil rockets were launched horizontally, instead of vertically. The first test launch of a Pencil occurred on 11 March 1955, followed by a public test on 12 April at a firing range in Kokubunji, Tokyo, with observers including government officials and the press.

Prof. Itokawa during the first Pencil rocket tests. A Pencil sits on the floor in front of him, and he is inserting a stick of solid fuel into the base of another rocket

Constantly experimenting and pushing the technology, as Prof. Itokawa’s rockets grew larger the university established a new launch facility at Michikawa Beach, Akita Prefecture, Honshu, facing the Sea of Japan. Rockets were launched here from August 1955 until 1962, when the present Kagoshima site was established.

A 1954 preparatory meeting for the International Geophysical Year (IGY) (1957-1958) had proposed the use of sounding rockets for conducting research into the upper atmosphere. This idea interested the Japanese delegation, and the United States offered to allow Japan to use American sounding rockets. However, the Japanese Ministry of Education, responsible for the national IGY programme, hoped to develop a locally-built sounding rocket.

A newspaper article by Prof. Itokawa in January 1955, on the potential of rapid rocket travel across the Pacific Ocean, had impressed the IGY co-ordinator at the Ministry of Education. He commissioned the AVSA group to develop a sounding rocket capable of carrying scientific instruments into the upper atmosphere.

The newspaper article that attracted the attention of the Ministry of Education. The rocket in the photo was apparently a small paper model built by one of Itokawa's students, carefully photographed to appear like a real test rocket!

The Kappa Sounding Rocket

The IGY organising body had proposed 60-100 kilometres (38- 62 miles) as a minimum research altitude for sounding rockets, so, commencing in 1956, AVSA began a crash programme to develop its “Kappa” sounding rocket, which would be capable of achieving those altitudes using Japanese-developed solid propellants.

A Kappa K-6 sounding rocket launched during the IGY

Rapid development meant that, by June 1958, a Kappa K-6 rocket successfully carried instruments to the target minimum altitude of 60km, conducting observations of upper atmosphere winds, temperature and cosmic rays. By 1960, the K-8 sounding rocket was capable of reaching heights of 435 miles, comparable with many US sounding rockets, and attracting the attention of NASA.

Plans for a National Satellite

1962 was a watershed year for the Japanese space programme, with the decision taken to launch a 30 kilogram (66lb) satellite into orbit within five years. With larger Kappa sounding rockets under development, and plans to turn the Lambda rocket (in development since 1960) into a satellite launch vehicle, the current Kagoshima Space Centre was established for these larger launchers that needed a longer downrange area.
A three-stage K-9 sounding rocket capable of reaching altitudes of over 600 miles

Lambda sounding rockets commenced test flights in 1963. The fourth stage needed to turn the Lambda 3 sounding rocket into the 54 ft Lambda 4S satellite launcher was developed by the Prince Motor Company, which merged with Nissan in 1966. It’s interesting to note that Lambda rockets do not have guidance systems, as they would then have the potential to be converted for offensive military use. This could be interpreted as a violation of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, which prohibits Japan’s involvement in war, and consequently the development of offensive weaponry. I wonder if this will have an impact on the development of larger, more capable Japanese satellite launch vehicles in the future?

In 1964, the University of Tokyo's Institute of Aeronautics and AVSA (which was part of the university's Institute of Industrial Science) were merged into a new body, the Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science (ISAS) attached to the university.

Lambda 4S rocket ready for the first satellite launch attempt Two attempts were made to launch Japan’s first satellite in 1966, but both were unsuccessful due to fourth-stage failures. A third attempt in 1967 failed, as did a fourth in 1969.

During this difficult period, Prof. Itokawa abruptly resigned from ISAS in 1967. The reasons for his departure from the programme he worked so hard to build are not clear. Was he discouraged by the satellite launch failures? I have heard from a WRE colleague who was recently in Japan that there is a rumour he may have resigned in frustration at pressure from the United States for Japan to abandon its launcher development programme and use US vehicles instead. However, I wonder if that can be true, since there has been technological cooperation between Japan and the United States on the Ohsumi project, particularly in the development of highly efficient batteries that do not lose power at high temperatures.

In Orbit at Last

Despite the earlier failures, persistence has paid off, and on the fifth attempt Ohsumi soared into orbit. The launch trajectory successfully employed a “gravity turn manoeuvre” to place the satellite into its elliptical orbit, with an apogee of 3191.4 miles and a perigee of 326.2 miles.

Ohsumi ready for launch. This time for sure!

Intended as a demonstration of technical capability, Ohsumi was essentially built into the nosecone of the rocket. It went into orbit with the fourth stage motor still attached to it (a design concept not unlike that used for Australia’s first satellite, WRESAT). The launcher and satellite together are said to have cost 120 million yen (AUS$298,000).

The small 84lb satellite is about 3 ft long and consists of an roughly conical aluminium instrument capsule, shaped as a 26-sided polygonal prism, attached to the spherical, titanium-cased solid motor. It has two hook-type antennae and four beryllium-copper whip antennae. 5,184 solar cells on the satellite provided power to the batteries. The 24lb instrumented payload includes instruments to measure the ionosphere, gathering data on solar emission, temperature, and density. It also carries engineering testing equipment consisting of a "precise accelerometer", an additional accelerometer, strain gauge-type thermometer, telemetry transmitter, beacon transmitter, pilot transmitter, and a radio beacon transmitter.

Note that the dimensions on this diagram are given in millimetres, not inches

A Short Life

Two and a half hours after launch, mission control at the Kagoshima Space Centre received signals from Ohsumi, confirming that it had completed its first full orbit. However, the mission ended about 15 hours later, on 12 February, during the satellite’s seventh orbit, following a sudden loss of power that ended any radio transmission from the satellite. The cause of the failure is presently unknown. However, although Ohsumi may be “dead”, it is expected to continue in orbit for several decades before it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere.

What Comes Next for Japan in Space?

Ohsumi was only a basic test satellite, and Japanese scientists are said to be planning to launch the nation's first full-scale scientific later this year. Reports are that, by 1975, Japan hopes to be able to able to launch an experimental communications satellite into geostationary orbit, as well as navigation and geodetic satellites. According to Aviation Week and Space Technology: “If successful, and if the funding to support it is forthcoming, [Japan’s] satellite and booster technology will outstrip that of the older programs of western Europe, placing Japan third in line behind the U.S. and the Soviet Union.” It will be exciting to see just how far Japan can develop its space ambitions in the next decade!

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Magazine/Anthology, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 20, 1970] Fun-nee enough… (OSCAR 5 and the March 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

February 20, 2025 Kaye Dee 2 Comments

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

by Kaye Dee

Recently, The Traveller covered the launch of the TIROS-M weather satellite, noting that the rocket’s payload also included a small Australian-made ham radio satellite, OSCAR-5 (Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio), also known as OSCAR-A.

Cover of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre's in-house magazine, marking the launch of ITOS-1/TIROS-M and Australis-OSCAR-5

A New Star in the Southern Cross

It was exciting to be in “Mission Control” at the University of Melbourne when the satellite was launched in the evening (Australian time) on 23 January. You should have heard the cheers! After all, Australis-OSCAR-5 (AO-5), as we call it, is Australia’s second satellite. It’s also the first amateur radio satellite built outside the United States and the first OSCAR satellite constructed by university students – in this case, members of the Melbourne University Astronautical Society (MUAS).

The MUAS student team with the engineering model of Australia's first amateur radio satellite

Radio Hams and Satellite Trackers

Commencing in 1961, the first OSCAR satellite was constructed by a group of American amateur radio enthusiasts. Cross-over membership between MUAS and the Melbourne University Radio Club (MURC) encouraged the students to begin tracking OSCAR satellites, moving quickly on to tracking and receiving signals from many other US and Soviet satellites.

Nimbus satellite image of the western half of Australia received by MUAS for the weather bureau

One of MUAS’ achievements was the first regular reception in Australia of images from TIROS and Nimbus meteorological satellites. By 1964, they were supplying satellite weather images daily to the Bureau of Meteorology, before it established its own receiving facilities.

"How Do We Build a Satellite?"

After tracking OSCARs 3 and 4 in 1965, the MUAS students decided to try building their own satellite. “No one told us it couldn’t be done, and we were too naive to realise how complex it would be to get the satellite launched!”, an AO-5 team member told me at the launch party. MUAS decided to build a small ‘beacon’ satellite which would transmit telemetry data back to Earth on fixed frequencies.

Even before Australia’s first-launched satellite, WRESAT-1, was on the drawing board, the Australis satellite project commenced in March 1966. Volunteers from MUAS, MURC and university staff worked together to design and build the satellite, with technical and financial assistance from the Wireless Institute of Australia and a tiny budget of $600. The Australian NASA representative also gave the project invaluable support. The students acquired electronic and other components through donations from suppliers where possible: the springs used to push the satellite away from the launcher were generously made by a mattress manufacturer in Melbourne. Any other expenses came out of their own pockets!

Carpenter's steel tape was used to make AO-5's flexible antennae, seen here folded in launch configuration. Notice the inch markings on the tape!

AO-5 is a fantastic example of Aussie ‘make-do’ ingenuity. A flexible steel measuring tape from a hardware shop was cut up to make the antennae. The oven at the share house of one team member served to test the satellite’s heat tolerance, and a freezer in the university's glaciology lab was unofficially used for the cold soak. Copper circuit boards were etched with a technique using nail varnish, and a rifle-sight was used to help tune the antennae! Various components, including the transmitters and command system, were flight-tested on the university’s high altitude research balloon flights.

A university lab freezer and hitching a ride with university experiments on US HiBal high altitude balloon flights in Australia used to test the ruggedness of AO-5 components

A Long Wait for Launch

Australis was completed and delivered to Project OSCAR headquarters in June 1967, well before WRESAT’s launch in November that year. Unfortunately, AO-5 then had to wait a few years for a launch to be arranged by the Amateur Radio Satellite Corporation (AMSAT), which now operates the OSCAR project. However, it is surely appropriate that, as OSCAR-5, it finally made it into orbit with a weather satellite.

After launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, AO-5 was placed into a 115-minute orbit, varying in altitude between 880 – 910 miles. This means it will be in orbit for hundreds of years – unlike the short-lived WRESAT.

In Orbit at Last!

Battery-powered, Australis-OSCAR-5 weighs only 39 pounds and carries two transmitters, beaming out the same telemetry signal on the two-metre and 10-metre amateur radio bands. Its telemetry system is sophisticated but designed for simple decoding without expensive equipment. The start of a telemetry sequence is indicated by the letters HI in Morse code, followed by data on battery voltage, current, and the temperature of the satellite at two points as well as information on the satellite's orientation in space from three horizon sensors.

AO-5 includes the first use in an amateur satellite of innovations such as a passive magnetic attitude stabilisation system (which helps reduce signal fading), and a command system to switch it on and off to conserve power. Observations are recorded on special standardised reporting forms that are suitable for computer analysis.

Just 66 minutes after launch, the first signal was detected in Madagascar and soon other hams reported receiving both the two and 10-metre signals on the satellite's first orbit. At “Mission Control” in Melbourne, we were thrilled when MURC members managed to pick up the satellite’s signals! By the end of Australis’ first day of operation, AMSAT headquarters had already received more than 100 tracking, telemetry and reception reports.

A selection of local newspaper cuttings following AO-5's launch. There was plenty of interest here in Australia.

The two-metre signal failed on 14 February, but the 10-metre transmission continues for now. How much longer AO-5’s batteries will last is anybody’s guess, but the satellite has proven itself to be a successful demonstration of the MUAS students’ technical capabilities, and the team is already contemplating a more advanced follow-on satellite project.

This philatelic cover for the ITOS-1/TIROS-M launch, includes mention of AO-5, but the satellite depicted is actually OSCAR-1

by Gideon Marcus

Fantastic emanations on Earth

And now that you've had a chance to digest the latest space news, here's some less exciting (but no less necessary) coverage of the latest issue of F&SF.

by Ronald Walotsky

The Fatal Fulfillment, by Poul Anderson

Well, this is very interesting. You remember that Ellison story that impressed me so much this month? The Region Between, it was called. Well, it has an intriguing genesis. I'll let editor Ed Ferman explain:

Five of science fiction's best storytellers were asked to write a novella beginning from a common prologue (written by Keith Laumer), to be combined in a book called Five Fates. The Anderson story and one by Frank Herbert (coming up soon) will be published in F&SF. We suggest that you look for the book (out in August from Doubleday) in order to catch up with the others: by Keith Laumer, Gordon Dickson and Harlan Ellison.

The prologue, as you may recall, involves a fellow named Douglas Bailey being euthanized. We don't know why he goes there, but he ends up very much dead. In the Ellison story, he goes on to have his soul stuffed in a series of different bodies (five of them described in detail) until he rebels against his puppetmaster and becomes God.

Anderson's story is different.

Bailey in his tale is suffering from insanity brought on by the burgeoning population, stifling technology, and all the other bugaboos of modern society. Each of his fates (five of them! I see a motif developing) involves a different "cure" for his malady. The first was obviously destruction. The second involves radical therapy. A third involves government subsidy. Number four takes place in a post-pandemic world where the remaining 5% of humanity is enlightened to a degree that precludes craziness.

The fifth, well… that explains what's going on. Anderson lays the crumbs such that, if you don't figure it out by the end, you'll at least find the conclusion well set up.

It's not a bad piece, though not nearly as gripping as Ellison's. Moreover, it's one of those that makes you go "why bother" for too long before you realize Poul's actually got a point to his meanderings.

Three stars.

Books , by Gahan Wilson

F&SF's (and Playboy's, and who knows how many other magazine's) illustrator returns to host the book review column. All are collections/anthologies, and none are SFnal (being either horror or mystery in genre). He does spent a good page expressing discomfort at how universally misogynistic the stories in Splinters: A New Anthology of Macabre Modern Fiction are, noting that virtually all the tales feature evil women who get their gruesome comeuppance. He concludes the review by conceding that many of the stories are excellent, and that readers of the macabre will enjoy the volume, but suggests that the next such volume should be misandrist to compensate.

I bring this up because time and again (and again, and again) the Journey has been criticized for just this sort of column—daring to impugn the worth of a work simply because it treats women badly. Indeed, we are often told that "no one cares" about such things.

We do, and obviously others do, too.

The Night of the Eye, by Dennis Etchison

A fellow is driven off the road by Death in a Car. He survives, but upon being driven home from the hospital by his harridan wife, Death reappears.

A nothing story. Not even frightening. One star.

Harvest, by Leo P. Kelley

If you read Joanna Russ' Initiation in last month's issue, then you already know the premise for this similar story: humans from Earth are making planetfall on a remote colony where the settlers' descendants have widely diverged from the original stock.

In this case, the colonists were involuntary emigrés from an overpopulated Earth, and the incoming ship holds the last vestiges of humanity fleeing from an exploded Sun.

I spent the whole time waiting for the author to drop the other shoe—the way humanity on this new world had changed such that they would be repugnant to the newcomers.

It wasn't worth the wait. Two stars.

The Falls of Troy, by L. Sprague de Camp

Did the Troy of The Iliad exist? The answer is a maddening mix of "yes", "no", and "not exactly"—for there were no fewer than nine Troys, all with their unique history and character. F&SF writer and historian, De Camp, offers up a fascinating, if all-to-brief, summary of what we know about the history of the hill towns on Hissarlik.

Invaluable stuff to the amateur classicist. Five stars.

Fun-Nee, by Miriam Allen deFord

Sort of a children's tale, it's all about the importance of tolerance, especially on an alien world where the two races are just different enough to elicit physical revulsion, but close enough to be good friends anyway.

A little simple, and perhaps mawkish, but then, I like happy endings.

Three stars.

The Chameleon, by Larry Eisenberg

A politician with a talent for exactly meeting expectations runs afoul of a focus group with too many conflicting desires.

Short, fun, and to the point.

Three stars.

Bridging the Gaps, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor explains how elements fit in the Periodic Table… without really explaining why. I just don't get chemistry, and he's not making it any easier.

Three stars.

by Gahan Wilson

The Tangled Web of Neil Weaver, by Charles Miller

Pretty typical Satanism/voodoo tale about a college kid on the make who crosses a co-ed coven leader when he tries to bed a young witch. There are no heroes in this admittedly well-told story.

Three stars.

Tuning in

All in all, this is one of those issues that sounds worse than it was. It was diverting enough, just not stellar. Given the low lows we've had, this is perfectly acceptable. Let's just try to up the average next month!

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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Science / Space Race

[January 4, 1970] Word for the Day: ARPANET

January 4, 2025 Vicki Lucas Leave a comment

by Victoria Lucas

OK, kiddies, the word for today is ARPANET. Well, yes, good point, it’s not a word, is it? It’s an acronym jammed into an abbreviation. But a juicy one.

I found out what it means because Mel (my husband) and I have these friends in Orinda, California (a town east of Berkeley, nice place). Sharon is more of a stand-up comedian than a housewife, who uses her housewifery–-and sometimes herself–-as the butt of her jokes. Dick Karpinski is a fuzzy bear of a man who is the first computer programmer I ever met. We don’t get to their place too often, since it’s off our beaten track between SF/Berkeley and Fortuna that we usually run on the weekends and holidays (or when neither of us has an active temp job in the Eureka area).

Richard Karpinski works for the University of California at San Francisco, supporting users of the IBM 360 and other tasks

At a recent visit, Dick was quite excited, and Sharon was complaining about her “three years of back ironing.” I don’t have much to say about the ironing, but once Dick had explained to me the reason for his excitement I admitted to some buoyancy myself. I wonder how you will feel about it.

With its initial transmission in October last year, ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) is the first large-scale, general-purpose computer network to link different kinds of computers together without a direct connection. Not only that, but different kinds of networks are coming online following this one. But who cares, right? I mean who of us has ever even seen a computer?

The IBM 360 with operator

FAR OUT!

Up to now you could only connect the same kind of computers, and then only by special-purpose cables and outlets in the same building, unless you could connect your computer to a "modem” (modulator-de-modulator) that converts digital (computer talk) to analog (telephone signaling) and back again when connected to your telephone line. The same protocols and hardware can connect a computer to “terminals,” boxes that can interact with a computer but do not have the smarts to actually process data. Multiple people could use the same computer at the same time (the miracle of "time sharing" that Ida Moya talked about a few years back, but again, only at the same site or by telephone. No matter what, connections were direct: point to point and dedicated. If you wanted to interact with another computer, you had to go to another terminal hooked up, directly or via modem, to the new machine.

An electronic translator of one type of signal to another, the modem

But what if you wanted to access multiple other computers from a single terminal? What if you wanted your computer to talk to another, farflung computer of a different make (ie connect an IBM to a CDC?) Here’s where Dick had to bring out his yellow pad and start writing and drawing.

Dick draws a box on his pad. “One computer, right?”* he says. “And here’s another” as he draws another box to make #2. Now you could connect a single terminal to any number of computers using a newly developed "protocol" for connection. (A protocol, drawn as lines from that word toward the boxes, is a set of rules or instructions about how to do something, and it’s above a program, which is more of a detailed list of steps to use when doing something.) Rather than using specific hardware, the protocol allows computers to "speak" a common language, over phone-lines lines… regardless of computer make or location!

As Dick, the “Nitpicker Extraordinaire,” might have written at the top of his pad (I’m a little fuzzy about how the conversation progressed), the first set of computers involved in the evolution of this network would have belonged to the US Department of Defense as part of its Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), an almost direct result of the success of Sputnik. When NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Agency) was formed in 1958, most of ARPA’s projects and funding were moved to that group. That left ARPA with high-risk or far-out projects, such as computer networking. I can't tell you which computers are involved, nor the details of the protocol (even if I understood them) because they're classified. The main reason for the ARPA network is to test the survivability of communications in the event of a nuclear war. Because if one big computer is destroyed, someone could just use their terminal to contact a different one to complete a process.

Talk to any computer anywhere, without a telephone

An ARPANET processor

While this exciting technology is limited to the ARPA for the moment, technology tends to spread to civilians eventually. Just think about it! The ARPA network and others like it will make it possible to distribute programs and data widely without printing it out and mailing it. As long as a computer can talk back, you can get and send data from and to it. Even more amazing, the initial transmission speeds showed that messages were being sent to a place 350 miles away 500 times faster than local data was traveling before. It was so fast that the initial speed caused a system crash, followed by a rebuild to handle the velocity, all during the very first transmission. It's not faster than light, but it's a darn sight better than having a computer operator working on far-out national research projects for ARPA fall asleep on his or her keyboard waiting for an answer.

What miracles could you work with a fast, smart, terminal that could connect to any computer in the world? Now that’s exciting!

*To Dick’s other friends. Yes, I know Dick, but I don’t remember any specific conversation like this. Any mistakes or misrepresentations are my responsibility.

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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Magazine/Anthology, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[December 20, 1969] Stars above, stars at hand (January 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

December 20, 2024 Gideon Marcus 7 Comments

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

by Gideon Marcus

Being #2… stinks

On the scene at the launch of Apollo 12, President Nixon assured the NASA technicians that America was #1 in space, and that it wasn't just jingoism—it was true!

Well, even a stopped clock, etc. In fact, all accounts suggest the Soviet space program had some serious setbacks last year, the results of which will be felt through at least to 1971. Schedules got shifted as large rockets were earmarked for purely military service in response to the escalating (now calmed) Sino-Soviet crisis. But the biggest issue was reported in Aviation Weekly last month: apparently, the Soviets lost a Saturn-class booster on the launch pad before liftoff last summer. I hadn't even heard that such a thing was in development! The rocket's loss has set back the USSR's manned space program by at least a year, resulting in tepid non-achievements like their recent triple Soyuz mission rather than the construction of a space station or a trip to the Moon.

This is actually the rocket from the Soviet film The Sky Calls (American title: Battle Beyond the Sun)

It didn't help that the Soyuz pads were occupied during the summer as the Soviets tried to match our lunar efforts. It may well be that their Saturn was rushed to service too soon, and similar gun-jumping may have caused the loss of the Luna 15 sample-return mission.

Speaking of which, in September, the Soviets launched Kosmos 300 and 305. Both of them were heavy satellites that went into the orbit usually used for lunar Zond missions. And then they reentered shortly thereafter…in pieces. It's not certain if these were to be circumlunar flights or retries of Luna 15. Either way, they didn't work out, either.

Meanwhile, the Apollo mission moves blithely along. Apollo 13 will go to the Moon next March to Fra Mauro, a landing site photographically scouted out by the Apollo 12 folks. This chapter of the Space Race is well and truly over, won by the forces of democracy championed by such luminaries as Spiro Agnew.

That's a good rock

Speaking of Apollo 12, you may recall earlier this month I talked about analysis of the Moon rocks brought back by Apollo 11. A similar report has come out about the rocks brought back by Conrad and Bean. Dr. Oliver A. Schaeffer of New York State Univ. at Stony Brook says they are only 2.2 to 2.5 billion years old—1-2 billion years younger than the Armstrong and Aldrin's samples. This means some kind of surface activity was ongoing on the comparatively quiet Moon—meteorite strikes and/or vulcanism, we don't know yet.

NASA astronaut Charles "Pete" Conrad, commander of the Apollo 12 mission, holds two moon rocks he and Alan Bean brought back to Earth. Taken last month at Manned Spacecraft Center's Lunar Receiving Laboratory.

Also, Dr. S. Ross Taylor of Australian National Univ. says the Apollo 12 samples contain about half the titanium as the Apollo 11 rocks and also more nickel, though otherwise, their chemistry is similar. Thus, the Moon is far from homogeneous, and we have just scratched the surface (so to speak) of the mystery that is the Moon. As we get more samples from more sites, a better picture will come together, but it will undoubtedly take time; imagine trying to contemplate all of Earth's geologic diversity from just two short digs?

Holiday Feast

Cover by Mel Hunter

Longtooth, by Edgar Pangborn

Ben Dane is a widower with a bad heart, stranded by a blizzard at his friend Harp's house. When the home is beset by a furry, anthropoid monster, the two give chase. Is it a crazed lunatic? An alien? The Abominable Snowman?

Pangborn really lets you live inside his characters, vividly depicting the Maine land and farmscape as well as the personalities that populate his stories. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the tale's telling, which takes its time, satisfied with the redolence of its scenery. The real problem is the uninspired ending; what we have here, aside from the liberal sprinkling of four-letter words, is a piece that could have come out in Weird Tales thirty years ago.

Three stars.

Books (F&SF, January 1970), by Joanna Russ

Ms. Russ has come into her own as a columnist—her review of Day of the Dolphin was so funny that I was compelled to read it aloud to my wife. She goes on to damn Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron with faint praise, agreeing only with the simple premise that all men have their price. Russ gives highest marks to Jack Vance's Emphyrio, which our Victoria Silverwolf enjoyed.

Indeed, Russ' opinions mirror those of our own staff, though Jason liked Dophin more than Joanna did.

Russ ends her piece with a tepid review of a tepid anthology: Best SF: 1968, edited by Harry Harrison.

A Matter of Time and Place, by Larry Eisenberg

The name "Emmett Duckworth" inevitably elicits a weary sigh, for this series following the offbeat adventures of an inventor are invariably stupid.

Such is the case here where Duckworth is pressed into service by the Pentagon to make a host of ambitious but unworkable weapons. In the end, he discovers that there is a conservation of local entropy: the more domestic disorder in America, the more peaceful the world becomes.

Every scientific assertion in the story is ludicrous. It doesn't even work as farce. One star.

by Gahan Wilson

E Pluribus Solo, by Bruce McAllister

The last bald eagle, locked inside the Smithsonian for its protection, is under attack. A mercenary with a vicious falcon sidekick has been hired to dispatch this American icon. All that stands between them is one overmatched security guard…

This is a gruesome story, and I wasn't sure if I was going to like it, but the end is redeeming.

On the edge of three and four stars. I guess I'll flip it to the latter.

Car Sinister, by Gene Wolfe

This is a genuinely funny piece. A fellow takes his Rambler American to the seedy shop in his village to be serviced. What he doesn't know until too late is that his car has been stud serviced by another vehicle…and his car is now pregnant.

The only failing to this story is that it doesn't end. It just sort of trails off, either too soon or too long after the punchline is delivered. The implied biology of cars is fascinating, though. They seem to be like Gethenians from Left Hand of Darkness: all are capable of giving birth, but they can take on either sexual role.

Four stars.

A Third Hand, by Dean R. Koontz

A genetic freak dubbed Timothy is cooked up in a DoD lab. Armless and legless, and with only one eye, he is nevertheless one of humanity's most gifted members. That's because he has an IQ of 250+ and Gil Hamilton's ability to psionically manipulate small items at close range. Eventually, he is given prosthetic arms and legs to give him a "normal" life—sort of a flip side to McCaffrey's The Ship Who… series (where deformed brains are turned into spaceship control centers).

But that's just setting up the character. The story starts when Timothy witnesses the death of his guitarist buddy over the visiphone at the hands of a notorious crime boss. The handicapped genius applies all of his resources toward bringing the fiend to justice.

Koontz throws a lot of interesting future tech into his story: home printers that reproduce daily photostatted newspapers; androids that uncannily imitate their owners; floating death machines called Hounds. What he doesn't do is anything with his protagonist. Timothy is unique in all ways except mindset, which is not only conventional, but not even particularly brilliant. In the event, his main distinction is his limited telekinesis, and if you've read Niven's "The Organleggers", then you certainly won't get much out of this.

Three stars.

Ride the Thunder, by Jack Cady

Highway 150 is haunted, and all the cargo-haulers know it. And it's because of a mean young cuss called Joe Indian, who runs an old Mack with a load of turkeys, transported in the most inhumane way possible. What's his story, and how is the spectral visitation ended? You'll have to read to the end to find out.

A fine ghost story, by a trucker for truckers, originally published in Overdrive, a trucker mag, in 1967. Four stars.

Bughouse, by Doris Pitkin Buck

Two couples at a personal soirée. One of the husbands suggests that they might all be a little mad, and he proposes to prove it by having them all eat an Oriental bug poison (which should have no effect on humans—unless they're "buggy").

A slight, but interestingly written, piece. Three stars.

The Lunar Honor-Roll, by Isaac Asimov

This month's science article has a touching book-end: Ike's dad apparently lived long enough to experience not only the flight of the first aircraft but also the first lunar mission, passing away a couple of weeks after the flight of Apollo 11. A fan of science fiction, he instilled a love of learning and educating that has served The Good Doctor well. The meat inside the reminiscence is a nice piece on the naming of the Moon's prominent features. Why are so many 16th Century, medieval, and Greek astronomers honored? Why do we have Alps and Apennines on the Moon as well as lakes, seas, and an ocean?

Worth reading. Five stars.

A Delicate Operation, by Robin Scott

Getting a brilliant doctor out of East Germany to freedom in the West is tough at the best of times. A "white" operation, where a double is sent in so the target can escape, is considered unworkable because no suitable man can be found for the job. A "black" op (smuggling out as hidden cargo) is planned, but when the latter fails, it seems all hope is lost. That is, until Dr. Celia Adams, a supremely talented British biologist, takes matters into her own hands. Can she succeed where the cynical, oversexed CIA veteran (the ostensible hero of our story) cannot?

This is a tight, fun story whose ending you'd likely only guess because you know it has to be SFnal given where it was published. Much is made of the East German doctor being gay, which turns out to be fundamental to the plot.

Four stars.

Seasons Greetings!

Well that was a fine repast (even if the two cover authors turned in the lesser works). And we're now up to a two-magazine streak. Will 1970 be the year F&SF truly deserves the Hugo it won in August? That would be something to celebrate, indeed!

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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Science / Space Race

[December 14, 1969] West Germany Joins the Space Race: The Azur Mission

December 14, 2024 Cora Buhlert Leave a comment

by Cora Buhlert

One Large Step

Last month, in the early hours of November 8 to be precise, West Germany joined the ranks of spacefaring nations and became the eighth country to put a satellite in orbit with the launch of Azur, also known as German Research Satellite GSR A, to return radiation data from its vantage hundreds of kilometers above the Earth.

A Scout-B rocket lifts off at Vandenberg — The Scout-B rocket carrying Azur lifts off at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Cheers erupted at the newly established German Space Operations Center in Oberpfaffenhofen, Bavaria, when footage of Azur taking off into orbit aboard a NASA Scout-B rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California was broadcast on the great viewscreen in the control center. The fact that the launch had been delayed due to a malfunction and fuel leak during a test countdown was forgotten. And even more cheers erupted, when a ground station in Johannesburg, South Africa, made the first contact with Azur.

Control Center Viewscreen — The great viewscreen at the German Space Operations Center in Oberpfaffenhofen, Bavaria.

Technicians working at consoles at the German Space Operations Center in Oberpfaffenhofen — Technicians at work at the German Space Operations Center in Oberpfaffenhofen

A Massive Project

Azur weighs 71 kilograms and carries the hefty price tag of eighty million Deutschmarks, which includes the establishment of the German Space Operations Center in Oberpfaffenhofen. The satellite is the result of years of development and cooperation between various companies and agencies. On the administrative side, the West German Ministry of Science, the Deutsche Forschungs- und Versuchsanstalt für Luft- und Raumfahrt (German research and testing agency for air and space travel) and the Gesellschaft für Weltraumforschung (Society for space research) and were all involved, as was NASA who supplied the Scout-B rocket that carried Azur into orbit. The experiments and payload were developed by the Max-Planck-Institut für Aeronomie (Max Planck Institute for aeronomics) and the actual satellite was built by a consortium of West German aerospace companies including Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm GmbH and ERNO Raumfahrttechnik GmbH.

Azur satellite in the EMI test chamber — Azur inside an EMI test chamber

The latter is of particular interest to me, because ERNO Raumfahrttechnik GmbH is based in my hometown of Bremen, a city with a long and illustrious history of aeronautics engineering. That is, the ERNO headquarters are in Bremen, but actual production facilities, where parts of Azur were manufactured, are located in an industrial park in Stuhrbaum, only some four kilometers from where I live. As a matter of fact, I have often driven past the drab ERNO production halls, which – very likely intentionally – give little indication from the outside of the cutting edge technology being developed and manufactured within.

Technicians in yellow labcoats surround the Azur satellite — Azur being assembled.

The Future is Bright… and Blue

Putting a satellite into orbit is a triumph in itself, but Azur also has a research mission beyond purely proving that West Germany can do it. Out of hundreds of suggestions, the Max-Planck-Institut für Aeronomie in the small town of Katlenburg-Lindau selected seven experiments, which are supposed to research cosmic radiation, solar particles and their interaction with the magnetosphere, the Van Allen belt and the aurora borealis. That's also the reason why Azur's orbit crosses the polar regions at an inclination of 103 degrees at a height of between 368 and 1445 kilometres.

Azur satellite on the integration stand — Azur on the integration stand.

One issue was that the satellite designs suggested by NASA proved to be unsuitable for Azur, since its mission would take it across the polar regions, where the external solar panels with a fixed setting would not be able to supply sufficient power to the satellite. So German engineers came up with the solution to cover the entire exterior of the satellite with more than five thousand solar cells. The shimmering blue colour of these solar cells also gave the satellite its name: Azur.

Azur satellite being fitted to a Scout-B rocket. — Azur is being fitted to the Scout-B rocket that will carry it into orbit at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The distinctive blue colour that gave the satellite its name is clearly visible.

Setbacks and Mysteries

The excitement about the successful launch of Azur was somewhat dampened when it turned out that the settings of many of the scientific instruments aboard had been changed and needed to be reset. The team at the control center in Oberpfaffenhofen reset the all the instruments to their correct parameters, only to find them changed again after every circumnavigation.

There were suspicions that a hostile power, most likely the Soviets, had somehow managed to gain access to Azur and were messing with the settings. The solution to the mystery, however, was far from a James Bond movie, even though espionage did turn out to be at fault, albeit unwittingly. For the control center team noticed that the setting changes always happened whenever Azur was above the US west coast and Alaska, areas where there are a lot of radar stations spying on the USSR. Azur picked up the signals broadcast by those radar stations and misinterpreted them as commands. Requiring a command to be repeated two or even three times before an order is executed would have prevented this issue. However, NASA specialists had assured the West German Azur developers that this wasn't necessary.

Another setback occurred last week, when the onboard magnetic data storage tape recorder failed, so that the data collected by Azur can only be broadcast in real time now. Luckily, a network of German and foreign ground stations means that eighty percent of the data can be received anyway, so the failure of the onboard recorder is only a minor inconvenience.

Azur ground station in Northern Finland — One of the Azur ground stations in Northern Finland beyond the Arctic Circle.

Space Research in East and West Germany

Azur is projected to collect and broadcast data for at least one year. And though Azur was West Germany's first step into space, it won't be the last, for the next West German satellite, DIAL-WIKA is expected to launch in only four months, this time via a French Diamant-B rocket in cooperation with the Centre national d’études spatiales.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the iron curtain, East Germany is a partner in the Soviet Interkosmos program and supplied several of the instruments aboard the Interkosmos-1 research satellite which was launched in October.

The Soviet Interkosmos-1 satellite, which includes instruments manufactured in East Germany.

Interkosmos-1 fully extended — Interkosmos-1 with its solar panels fully extended.

"Space is the final frontier", as the opening narration of a popular American TV-show that has yet to air in Germany puts it. Both East and West Germany have taken their first tentative steps across that final frontier. As we enter the new decade, more steps will follow and maybe we will even see a German astronaut (or cosmonaut) in space one day.

Christmas Lights on Lange Straße in Delmenhorst in December 1969 — As Azur races past far overhead, the Lange Straße in the North West German town of Delmenhost is all decked out for the final Christmas of the decade.

Christmas Lights in the Lange Straße in Delmenhorst — Another look at the Christmas lights in the Lange Straße in Delmenhorst.

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Science / Space Race

[December 6, 1969] Here comes the Sun (and Moon) — Orbiting Solar Observatory, Apollo, ESRO, and Explorer 41!

December 6, 2024 Gideon Marcus Leave a comment

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

by Gideon Marcus

With the Apollo missions taking so much of our attention (there were four flights this year), it is understandable that unmanned missions and science have gotten short shrift. I'm going to try to address this oversight now.

Far out!

Do you remember Pioneer 6 (launched Dec. 16, 1965) and Pioneer 7 (launched Aug. 17, 1966)? They are deep space probes designed to observe the Sun from widely different vantage points. In fact, we've been a bit remiss: since '66, two more identical Pioneers have gone up: Pioneer 8 (December 13, 1967) and Pioneer 9 (November 8, 1968). A fifth and final Pioneer was launched August 27, 1969, but its carrier rocket exploded. The loss of that one is pretty bad; whereas the others are all spread out fairly equidistantly around the Sun, more or less as far away from it as the Earth, Pioneer "E" was going to be put in an orbit that kept it close to Earth, where it would be used to give as much as a two-week warning of dangerous flare activity.

Nevertheless, NASA is blazing along with four satellites. Indeed, thanks to the longevity and spread-out positions of Pioneers 6 and 7, they were able to perform an unique experiment. On Nov. 6, the two satellites were 175 million miles apart on a common line with the Sun, and scientists observed the difference in behavior of solar wind particles due to their passage through space in opposite directions. In a similar vein, on Dec. 2, when the spacecraft reached points on a common spiral line leading out from the Sun (the star rotates, so it flings out particles in a spiral rather than linear fashion), scientists measured different kinds of solar particles coming from the same events on the Sun.

We'll have to wait for the journals to publish any papers, but this is the kind of large-scale, long-term science made possible by the Pioneer probes!

Another cool example of Pioneer science

Far in!

While the Pioneers study the Sun far from Earth, there are a host of spacecraft monitoring our home star from Earth orbit. For instance, we haven't talked about the Orbiting Solar Observatories (OSOs) for a while, but there have been six so far. They were the first heavy satellite series to be launched by NASA, providing nearly continuous coverage of the Sun since 1962, in wavelengths we can't observe from Earth because they are blocked by the Earth's atmosphere: ultraviolet, X-Ray, and gamma ray.

Why was the Sun such an early focus? Three major reasons: 1) understanding the dangers posed by flares and their relation to the high energy particles trapped by Earth's magnetic field is critical to ensuring astronaut safety, 2) surveying the Sun and comparing changes on the solar surface with fluctuations of space weather near Earth tell us both about the interactions of the two as well as the nature of both, and 3) the Sun is the closest star at hand, and what we learn about the Sun as a star can be applied to the millions of other stars we can observe.

The revelations OSO have given us are not easily conveyed. It's not like Explorer 1, which discovered the Van Allen Belts—a hitherto unexpected phenomenon—or the TIROS weather satellite, which discovered storms we hadn't even known about. Rather, they give us a huge body of data with which we can refine our understanding of how the Sun works, and also so that we can better predict space weather. What's called "basic research."

OSO 1 operated continuously from March-May 1962, and intermittently on to August 1963, returning data on 75 solar flares—most importantly, what events preceded, succeeded, and coincided with them in many different wavelengths, a fingerprint of an eruption, so to speak.

(ground-taken picture of the Sun flaring)

OSO 2 expanded its coverage to the corona, that bright bit of the Sun you can only see during a lunar eclipse. Its launch was delayed until February 3, 1965 because the original OSO B was damaged in a launch explosion, April 14, 1964, that killed three technicians! Though OSO 2 returned data for nine months, I can't find a single article on the Sun that stemmed from it. There's one on about 20 other stars observed by the satellite, though, and the difficulties of seeing through the Sun's glare to them.

OSO 3, the one that launched March 8, 1967, and not the one that failed to orbit in August 1965, was more successful. It returned interesting solar data, for instance finding solar X-ray sources that weren't flares, determining that the chromosophere (visible surface) didn't necessarily heat up before a flare, and monitoring the change in the solar spectrum over the course of its 28-day rotation.

And the onboard gamma ray experiments told us a lot about the universe. For instance, the torrent of gamma rays streaming in from the universe is highly confined to the galactic plane, and particularly toward the Milky Way's core, which means it must be galactic in origin. OSO 3 also observed X-ray bursts from a star (maybe stars) that isn't the Sun: Scorpius X-1, later determined to be a neutron star, and Lupus XR-1 (which may or may not be the same source—the literature is unclear). The satellite stopped working just last month.

OSO 4 went up October 18, 1967, and was the first OSO to carry an international experiment—a University of Paris device that measures the Sun in the ultraviolet frequency that best shows solar activity ("Lyman-alpha"). Indeed, it was the first OSO to scan the Sun in ultraviolet at all. Also really cool is that its X-ray resolution is such that it could watch flares in X-ray wavelengths as sharply as we could see it on the ground in the visual spectrum, so scientists could make one to one comparisons.

You'll note the use of past tense—the satellite is still in orbit, but its tape storage failed in May 1968, and last month, OSO 4 was ordered into standby mode.

That brings us to the OSOs we haven't covered yet. OSO 5 went up on January 22, 1969, and has the ability to scan the Sun in the X-ray range more quickly and thoroughly. OSO 6 went up August 9. I don't have too much to say about them because it's too early for papers. NASA reports both did their jobs fine, and they're still operating. Like OSO 3 did, they not only study the Sun but also galactic X-ray sources…so stay tuned.

Small satellites are doing their part, too. For instance, Explorer 41, the latest in the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform series, launched June 21 into a high orbit that goes almost halfway to the Moon. The Sun this satellite examined has been unusually quiet, an expected trait of the "solar maximum"—the time in the Sun's 11-year cycle of highest output. On the other hand, low-energy galactic cosmic rays rates fluctuated more than usual, and interplanetary conditions appeared to be more disturbed. The satellite is still operating.

Finally, and only tangentially related to the Sun, there are the missions of Aurorae and Boreas, launched October 3, 1968 and October 10, 1969, respectively under the auspices of the European Space Research Organization (ESRO). They report on the brightness of Earth's aurorae, the composition and temperature of the ionosphere, and the charged particle environment in orbit. The first satellite is still working just fine, but Boreas went into a lower than expected orbit, and it reentered on November 23rd. Still, the mission was deemed successful.

Rocks to dig

Veering back into the manned space program, there was some exciting coverage during the Apollo 12 flight that I didn't have a chance to relate. As Conrad, Bean, and Gordon finish their three weeks in quarantine (joined on Dec. 2 by 11 scientists and technicians who had accidentally been exposed to lunar samples), this is a good time to talk about what we've learned from Moon rocks brought back by the Apollo 11 astronauts.

Walter Cronkite had, as a guest on his programming, Dr. John O' Keefe—a geologist at NASA's Goddard Space Center. The visibly excited O'Keefe stated that the most extraordinary aspect of the Moon rocks is that they are deficient in nickel and cobalt as compared to the Sun, that latter body presumably being representative of the nebula that originally coalesced and formed our solar system.

Why is that significant? Well, the Earth's crust is similarly lacking in nickel and cobalt (and other "precious metals" that dissolve easily in iron, collectively called "siderophiles"). We know Earth has a dense iron core because nothing else would account for the planet's mass with respect to its volume, and also, it explains why the planet has a magnetic field. While our planet was first cooling, it makes sense that the siderophiles melted and mostly sank to the center of the planet.

The Moon has no core—we know this because its density (volume divided by mass) is too low, and it has no appreciable magnetic field. That the Moon's surface rocks correlate to Earth's surface rocks, and because its density appears to be constant from crust to center, that suggests that the Moon was somehow formed from Earth's crust. It is, in fact, a piece of our planet's outer surface that somehow spun off into orbit and formed its own little, low-density world.

What causes this is still unknown. Perhaps the Earth was spinning so fast when it was formed that its middle flew off. Or maybe a rogue planet smashed into the Earth. What we do know is that the composition of the Moon rocks puts paid the hypothesis that the Moon formed separately from and at the same time as Earth, since we'd then expect its crust's composition to either be more like that of the Sun, or for our moon to have a dense core.

We also know that whatever created the Moon happened quite early in Earth's history. The lunar rocks have been dated as 4.6 billion years old. That's very close to the estimated age of the Earth. What I found particularly exciting is that the Moon rocks must be the very oldest rocks we've ever encountered, except maybe for meteorites. That's because erosion and vulcanism are constantly erasing the Earth's surface, and the oldest rocks I know of down here are somewhere around 3 billion years old.

As we continue to explore the cosmos, we shall find more data points with which to create an holistic view of the universe, something that would be impossible were we to stay Earthbound. I am happy that I live in the Space Age, when our scientific knowledge is expanding exponentially. Who knows what new discoveries 1970 will bring!

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction