This is it. Today is July 20th, 2019. The 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing. To say that I’m excited would be an understatement — it’s just something different to think it’s been 50 years, half a century, since this event. I remember the 25th anniversary well enough (I have a poster related […]
This is a fun one. At the time this is publishing and I’d hope many are reading this article, I’m on my way with a friend to Huntsville, Alabama, to pay a visit to the U.S. Space And Rocket Center! I’ve not been there since 5th grade, which was early 1996 and while I know […]
On September 25th, 1973 the Skylab 3 Command Module splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, bringing an end to the record-setting mission. Clocking in at 59 days, 11 hours flight time, this mission doubled the record for time spent in space on a single flight, the previous record having been set by Skylab 2. This […]
I mention in my previous article about the launch of Skylab 3 that I would hunt for videos related to the mission. Well, sure enough, I quickly found a solid one – Skylab, A Scientific Harvest is a 1974 produced NASA Film on the two month long Skylab 3 mission. The video goes into light […]
On July 28th, 1973, a Saturn 1B rocket launched from Launch Complex 39-B at Kennedy Space Center carrying astronauts Alan Bean, Owen Garriott, and Jack Lousma into orbit for the Skylab 3 mission. This mission was, as you would expect, a direct follow up to the 28 day Skylab 2 mission. Skylab 3 would remain […]
Yesterday, June 22nd, marked the 45th anniversary of the end of the Skylab 2 mission, a 28 day stay on America’s first (and so far, only) space station. As I covered extensively in May, Skylab was heavily damaged during its launch, and the Skylab 2 mission had to be delayed for 10 days while a […]
For 10 days in May of 1973, the world waited as NASA worked hard to prepare a fix to the damaged Skylab space station. Based on the information available, they knew what kind of damage had happened to the station during launch, but without being up there to see it, no one knew quite for […]
When Skylab launched on May 14th, 1973 things looked good from the ground. The Saturn V 1st stage ignited, and like the Apollo launches before it, the vehicle began its flight – Americas first space station was off to what looked like a perfect beginning to its mission. After about 50 seconds or so the […]
45 years ago today, the final Saturn V to fly launched from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center, carrying on it the first (and only) space station for the United States: Skylab (often stylized as “SkyLab”) I absolutely love Skylab. The station itself, how it came to be, and the dramatic story of its […]
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 […]
It’s the 4th of July tomorrow and, being quite honest, I had nothing quite planned to write today or tomorrow. However, to keep up with the spirit of Xadara, my love of space, and in a classic “Happy Birthday America” bit of patriotism, I’ve decided to just flood you with some random rocket launches in […]
January 27th, 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire, an event I’ve written about more than any other single event on this site. For the past 50 years, since the disaster, NASA has pretty much buried it. Unlike Challenger and Columbia, which occurred in 1986 and 2003 respectively, the 1967 deaths of […]
On October 27th, 1961, the first Saturn booster, SA-1 lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 34 on a 15 minute sub-orbital flight to test the booster. This first flight beget a series of 10 Saturn 1 test flights, 9 Saturn 1B flights, and 13 Saturn V flights. Saturn 1 was a […]
48 Years ago today, Apollo 7 launched on the first manned flight of the Apollo Program, and the first manned flight on a Saturn 1B rocket. This mission, a planned 2 week stay in orbit testing the Apollo Command / Service Module system with a crew, was the mission originally planned for Apollo 1. 18 […]
In 1966, as Project Gemini was wrapping up, Project Apollo was starting to, quite literally, get off the ground – Complete Apollo CSM’s began unmanned flights, and the Lunar Module, while delayed quite a bit, was still starting to become a real machine. Everything was looking to be progressing smoothly before the Apollo 1 fire […]