July 2019 will mark 50 years since the Apollo 11 mission, certainly one of the greatest achievements of humanity. While many fans of space history may be planning their own little anniversary events and the like, YouTube user lunarmodule5 has something a little better in store: a video series covering the entire mission, from pre-launch […]
Today marks an amazing 28 years since the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, one of the premier tools in our study of the origins of the universe. Orbiting the Earth well above the light altering effects of the bulk of the atmosphere, Hubble was placed in a unique position to spend days, weeks, months, […]
In keeping up with the recent anniversary of the launch of Apollo 6, I’m sharing this film from 1968 going over general operations at Kennedy Space Center, specifically in preparation for the Apollo 6 launch. It’s produced more like a proper film than many of the other NASA films from the 60’s I’ve shown here. […]
Early in the morning of April 4th, 1968, on launch pad 39-A at the Kennedy Space Center, the second Saturn V rocket to fly was launched. This mission was Apollo 6 – another unmanned test of the Saturn V and the Apollo Command-Service module, much the same as the Apollo 4 mission in November of […]
The past week, before its demise in the atmosphere over the South Pacific Ocean, Tiangong-1 was, naturally, the subject of quite a bit of news coverage. Of course, that meant commentary from the peanut gallery, as they say – everyone decided to toss out a comment, or a question. While some were intelligent, many just […]
Something I like about the Internet is how quickly people will update you when information is out of date or incorrect. In this case, I have been following what sources I could on Tiangong-1 when someone on twitter alerted me that it had already been confirmed to have re-entered, in this case, at 5:16PM Pacific […]
By the time most people read this, the event will already have happened and I will have my follow-up article on the subject, but for now, this is still worth writing about. UPDATE: It re-entered at 8:16 PM Central Daylight Time – https://www.xadara.com/tiangong-1-is-gone/ Tiangong-1 is now estimate by the European Space Agency to re-enter sometime […]
On March 27th, 1968, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, the first human in space, died in a plane crash during what would be otherwise a very routine training flight. This in an of itself would be, and is, a tragedy in the history of humanities achievements in space, but the events surrounding this crash, and Gagarin’s life […]
Back in October I gave a status update on Tiangong-1, China’s first Space Station, and how, since the end of crewed operations, contact and control of the station has been lost. Well, we are approaching the final week or so of the stations time in orbit, and the situation hasn’t changed – it’s still out […]
Earlier today on March 21st, 2018 Soyuz MS-08 launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan carrying a new crew of 3, Oleg Artemyev, Andrew J. Feustel, and Richard R. Arnold, to the International Space Station. The Soyuz spacecraft is taking the 2 day route, as opposed to the 6 hour rendezvous and docking method used during optimal […]
On March 17th, 1958 the United States Navy successfully launched a satellite in its Vanguard program, Vanguard 1. This was the same type of rocket and payload as in the failed Vanguard TV-3 incident that embarrassed the United States back in December of 1957, and another test in February 1958 which also ended in failure. […]
I know, I’m behind on just about everything, but I didn’t want to pass up a chance to show a good old Soyuz launch – this one from back on February 13th carrying Progress MS-08 to the International Space Station for a standard resupply mission. It successfully docked 2 days later on February 15th. All […]
On the morning of February 1st, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia was set to return from it’s 28th mission, STS-107. At 7:59 AM Central time the orbiter disintegrated on re-entry due to damage it had sustained on its left wing during launch on January 16th. In this article, I tell the story from my perspective. […]
The Columbia Disaster February 1st, 2003 7:59 AM Central Standard Time OV-102, Columbia, Disintegrates over Central Texas Total loss of vehicle and crew 15 Years Ago Rick D. Husband William C. McCool David M. Brown Kalpana Chawla Michael P. Anderson Laurel B. Clark Ilan Ramon
In the late evening, just an hour before midnight on January 31st, 1958, the United States launched it’s first satellite – Explorer 1. Explorer 1 was our answer to Sputnik 1 and 2. At least, it was our successful answer – our previous attempt, Vanguard TV3, ended in a very famous disastrous failure barely leaving […]