#l��nasa

[lonestarflight]

Reference guide of all the external changes made to the Space Shuttle Orbiter Challenger (OV-099) during her lifetime.

Date: 1983-1985

Documents by Alfonso X Moreno: link

[nocternalrandomness]

The "Challenger Seven"

STS-51-L was the 25th mission of NASA's Space Shuttle program and the final flight of Space Shuttle Challenger. Just 73 seconds after launch, Challenger broke apart killing all seven crew members.

[wikipediapictures]

Elephant Island by Landsat 8

“When explorer Ernest Shackleton and the crew of Endurance lost their ship to crushing pack ice in the Weddell Sea in 1915, their chances of survival seemed dim. The 28 men spent months drifting on ice floes and traversing the Southern Ocean in small lifeboats until they finally spotted land. The hunk of rock and ice was not the welcoming refuge they hoped for, but it was enough.

Shackleton and the crew of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition landed on the mountainous, ice-covered island today known as Elephant Island. Some say Elephant Island got its name from the sighting of elephant seals along its shores; others suggest it comes from its appearance as an elephant head. But Shackleton’s captain claimed it was a nickname given by the crew: ‘Hell-of-an-Island.’

The image above shows a rare, cloud-free view of the remote island on December 13, 2020, as captured by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8. The highest points, Mount Pendragon (970 meters or 3,200 feet) and Mount Elder (945 meters or 3,100 feet), are located on the southern side. In the center, Endurance glacier collects most of the ice flowing in the southeast direction.

Elephant Island is located about 250 kilometers (150 miles) northeast of the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Geologically, the island is part of the Scotia Plate, which was formed from continental fragments that once formed a land bridge between South America and Antarctica. The rocky island is comprised of green and blue phyllites, blueschists, and greenschists along the coast and in ridges.

Elephant Island has few plants or animals, save for some seals and gentoo and chinstrap penguins. Although it is in a prime location for observing whales, the island is not well visited and has remained relatively under-studied due to its remoteness and difficult terrain.

Shackleton and his crew initially landed on the eastern coast at Cape Valentine, but falling rocks and the proximity to the sea made it difficult to set up safe campsites. In fact, much of the island’s coastline consists of cliffs with steep slopes rising more than 100 meters (330 feet) in places. Crew member Frank Wild scouted more stable ground to the west, with lower elevation but also more glaciers. The team set up camp, naming the site Point Wild.

Shackleton realized their chances of getting rescued from Elephant Island by passing ships were low, so he and five crewmates took a lifeboat to look for help, leaving Wild in charge.

The remaining crew built makeshift huts by resting their two remaining lifeboats upside down on rocks. To combat the perpetual darkness, they made lamps out of sardine tins, used surgical bandages for wicks, and burned seal blubber oil. Four and a half months later, Shackleton and crew returned with a ship and rescued all 22 men. King George V recognized Wild’s leadership as ‘instrumental in maintaining their courage and hope.’

Today, the island hosts one small research station occupied during the summer. At Point Wild, a monument was erected to honor the crew and their experience on the island.

[Author: NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Kasha Patel.]” - via Wikimedia Commons

[celestialdaily]

The celestial object of the day is CoRoT-7b!

This exoplanet completes an orbit around its star in only 20 hours. Because of its proximity, the temperature reaches 2,000°C on the day-side and -200°C on the night-side.

It's thought that the harsh climate evaporates its surface rock, forming a thin atmosphere (1% of Earth's) of sodium, oxygen, and silicon monoxide. These may rain as minerals like spinel, enstatite, and corundum from the daylight side

[elspethdixon]

Major Robert Lawrence: The Man Selected to Be America’s First Black Astronaut

Though his untimely death meant he never flew above the von Kármán line (the official requirement for members of the US armed services to be awarded astronaut wings), Maj. Robert Lawrence (October 2, 1935 – December 8, 1967)  was the first African-American selected for any national space program.

Bob Lawrence, a Test Pilot at Edwards in the mid-1960s, graduated from TPS Class 66B and was immediately selected as a member of the third group of aerospace research pilots for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) program with three of his TPS classmates. Not only was he a superb test pilot, he also held a PhD in physical chemistry from The Ohio State University (the only MOL pilot with a Doctorate). Colleagues described him as a “super guy”... brilliant, humble, and charming. The MOL was a joint project of the Air Force and the National Reconnaissance Office to obtain high-resolution photographic imagery of adversaries during the American Cold War.

At the press conference announcing the selection of the MOL Group 3 pilots, Maj Lawrence laughed when asked “Will you have to sit in the back seat of the capsule?” He was also asked if his selection was historic for race relations in the United States. His humble answer was characteristic: “No, I don't think so. It's another one of those things that we look forward to in civil rights -- normal progression.”  He said that he had faced problems like other black people, but “Perhaps I have been more fortunate than the others in the opportunities.”

MOL was a classified United States Air Force & National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) project to put a series of mini-space stations in low-polar orbit to conduct advanced surveillance during the Cold War. The stations would launch on Titan IIIs, be occupied by 2-man crews for 30 days, then return in Gemini capsules. A test flight was successfully launched in 1966, but the program was canceled in 1969 by the incoming Nixon administration. When the program was cancelled, the MOL astronauts transferred to NASA and became part of the Shuttle program. Had he lived, there is little doubt Bob Lawrence would have joined them, piloting one of the first Space Shuttle missions of the 1980s.

Tragically, his contributions to spaceflight ended too soon. On 8 Dec 1967, while teaching another test pilot the low-L/D (steep descent glide) landing technique that was later used for Space Shuttle landings, Lawrence was killed in an F-104 crash at Edwards AFB.  During the steep approach to the lakebed runway, Maj Harvey Royer initiated the flare too late and the F-104 impacted the runway hard, collapsing the main gear and causing the F-104 to skid and roll down the runway. Royer survived the ejection with major injuries; Lawrence was killed due to the delay in the rear-seat ejection sequence. Ironically, Lawrence had indeed been sitting in the back just as the reporter had joked - not because of his race, but because the back seat of the aircraft is where the (more senior, in a position of authority) instructor pilot sits.

Thirty years after his tragic death, on 8 Dec 1997, Robert Lawrence Jr’s name was engraved on the Space Mirror Astronaut Memorial at Kennedy Space Center. In 2017 on the fiftieth anniversary of his death, NASA honored Maj Lawrence once more, with his former classmates and MOL astronauts sharing memories of his flying skills, brilliance, intelligence, courage, and character. Former NASA Administrator and four-time shuttle astronaut Charles Bolden, who benefitted from the shuttle landing flare technique that Robert Lawrence developed at Edwards AFB, remarked at the ceremony:

“He was the First--but definitely not the Last!”

Lawrence (front row, third from the left) was a member of USAF TPS class 66B. He was the 809th alumni to graduate from the school, and the first black man to do so. In this class photo, he poses with his classmates in front of an F-104, the same model of aircraft he was killed in.

Lawrence (far left) taking notes in class (photo taken from the USAF TPS 35 anniversary yearbook).

Bob Lawrence and his wife Barbara pose with classmates and their spouses at Test Pilot School graduation.

[thepastisalreadywritten]

7 February 2024

—

Bruce McCandless II (born Byron Willis McCandless; June 8, 1937 – December 21, 2017) was an American Navy officer and aviator, electrical engineer, and NASA astronaut.

On 7 February 1984, during the first of his two Space Shuttle missions, he completed the first untethered spacewalk by using the Manned Maneuvering Unit.

[lonestarbattleship]

Martin Titan III-L

"The Titan III-L series was a Martin Marietta concept (late 1960’s into early 1970’s) for a heavy lift derivative of the Titan IIIC launch vehicle. The core would be increased in diameter from 10 feet to 15, and the number of liquid propellant rocket engines increased from two to four. Additionally, the vehicle could be given two, four or six solid rocket motors (Titan III-L2, Titan III-L4, Titan III-L6). The Titan III-L6 concept was considered as a first stage booster for the Space Shuttle.

The Titan III-L2 had enough lift capacity to launch an Apollo-derived capsule and service module, providing an alternative to the Saturn IB for space station logistics and crew transfer."

source

[kencall]

Possibly the most terrifying space photograph ever taken on February 7, 1984 . NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless floats untethered 320ft from his spacecraft using only his nitrogen-propelled, hand controlled backpack called a Manned Manoeuvring Unit (MMU) to keep him alive. Photo was taken by Robert L. "Hoot"Gibson pilot of the shuttle Challenger using a Hasselblad camera.

In the close up photo Astronaut Bruce McCandless II, one of two STS-41B mission specialists participating in a historic spacewalk is a few meters away from the cabin of the Earth-orbiting space shuttle Challenger in this 70mm frame using a Hasselblad Camera. This spacewalk represented the first use of the MMU which provided greater mobility than that afforded previous spacewalkers who had to use restrictive tethers. Robert L. Stewart later tried out the MMU McCandless is using here, and the two of them tested another similar unit two days later. Inside the spacecraft were astronauts Vance D. Brand, commander; Robert L. Gibson, pilot; and Ronald E. McNair, mission specialist.

Image Credit: NASA

[hylianengineer]

[ID: Mark Watney in the Hab, telling the camera "I'm gonna have to science the shit out of this." End ID]

People who don’t want to read The Martian in case the science is too complicated should be informed that it contains the lines “The best way to store the ingredients of water is to make them be water”, “It is of course dangerous to set off an explosive device on a spacecraft”, and “If I cut a hole in the wall of the hab, the air won’t stay inside any more”.

[lonestarflight]

Astronaut Russell Schweickart photographed during EVA

"Astronaut Russell L. Schweickart, lunar module pilot, stands in 'golden slippers' on the Lunar Module porch during his extravehicular activity on the fourth day of the Apollo 9 Earth-orbital mission. This photograph was taken from inside the Lunar Module 'Spider'. The Command and Service Modules were docked to the LM. Schweickart is wearing an Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU). Inside the "Spider" was astronaut James A. McDivitt, Apollo 9 crew commander. Astronaut David R. Scott, command module pilot, remained at the controls of the Command Module, 'Gumdrop.'"

Date: March 6, 1969

NASA ID: AS09-19-2994, AS09-19-2983, AS09-20-3094

[michaelgabrill]

Oral History with Mary L. Cleave 1947 2023

A veteran of two space flights, Dr. Cleave served as a mission specialist on STS-61B and STS-30.  She went on to join NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and worked in the Laboratory for Hydrospheric Processes as the Project Manager for SeaWiFS, an ocean color sensor which is monitoring vegetation globally.  Dr. Cleave next served as […] from NASA https://ift.tt/JQEtaFo

[kwistowee]

TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE l APRIL 2024

ALFREDO JUÁREZ | RAMI ASTRO | JOSHUA INTINI | KENDALL RUST | DERAN HALL | KUZCOKHANDA | TREVOR MAHLMANN | OTHINGSTODO | NASA | STEVEN RATNIK

[mygrowingcollection]

Henry L. Richter

[without-ado]

Storm cloud over Texas l Laura Rowe NASA APOD

[bobonnes]

TIMELAPSE DU FUTUR : Un Voyage vers la Fin des Temps

Une vidéo réalisé par Melodysheep, qui nous montre sur une échelle de temps exponentielle ce qu’il pourrait advenir de notre monde et de tout les mondes connus et hypothétiques. Tendrement, Bobonnes.

[leapingmonkeys]

Telescopes Illuminate the Christmas Tree Cluster