Danger, Will Robinson!

It has been a month and a half since the space shuttle Columbia plunged to Earth in a fireball. It was a painful reminder that we can’t control everything about human spaceflight. It may turn out that no company or person is to blame for this terrible accident, but that hasn’t stopped the fingerpointing among contractors and posturing among members of Congress and the Senate. I hope that we figure out what happened and I hope that we retain our understanding that these things happen and that space is not a benign environment.

In 1986 we watched as the second big tragedy of American spaceflight occurred — the loss of the Challenger. I was at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, watching the launch in Von Karman auditorium along with dozens of Voyager mission scientists and science writers who had gathered for the final press conference of the Voyager 2/Uranus encounter.

It was a searing tragedy, perhaps all the more spectacular because our space program hadn’t been touched by death since the Apollo 1 disaster in 1967.

There have been other losses throughout the decades of our exploration of space. Of course the Russians have lost cosmonauts — learning along with us the price we pay to rise above our planet and look to the stars. What comforts me is that we continue to strive outward from our planet. Indeed, sometimes I think that space exploration is our best and brightest hope for the future of the human race. The tragedies of the past set the bar higher for us in the future — but there’s no doubt we learn from them and keep on going.

So, with that, I salute the space heroes who have fallen during our first tentative steps outward. Sure there’s danger out there. But it’s inherent in any new endeavor. I believe that every one of our lost astronauts and cosmonauts would want us to keep the faith in space exploration as a lasting monument to the price they paid to give humanity a chance to leap for the stars.

Jovian Cat

Over the years we have been privileged to share our lives with a collection of cats. Our first was Calicat, dropped on our doorstep in Denver at the height of a blizzard. She was pregnant, which was probably the reason for her being abandoned. A month or so later she gave birth to three kittens, of which our long-beloved cat Larry was one. Larry and Calicat are both gone now, and have been succeeded by Pixel and Miranda.

Jovian Pixel

What all these cats have in common is that they became involved in supervising my writing. Pixel is quite interested in my latest planetarium show script (about Hubble Space Telescope science), and shows her support by sprawling across my desk, holding books open (by laying on them), and bringing toys for me to play with when she’s sure that I’ve been in front of the computer too long.

Not long ago I was looking at some HST Jupiter images and began messing around them in PhotoShop. Inspiration struck and I came up with this picture of a Jovian-eyed Pixel.

Well, if you’re Jovian-minded these days and the weather is cooperating in your neck of the woods, you can catch a glimpse of the real thing shining between the constellations Leo and Gemini. Where I live (New England) it’s nearly straight overhead at 10 p.m.

For a chart to help you find Jupiter, go to SkyAndTelescope.com and click on their interactive star chart. It will ask you a few questions to help determine your location on Earth and then display your personalized chart.

Astro Folks: Dr. Al Hibbs

Back when I was a wet-behind-the-ears science writer covering my first big “space event” I found myself out at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory covering the Voyager 2 encounter of the planet Saturn. This was in 1981, a couple of years after the landmark Cosmos television series came out. I was all excited about meeting and greeting the scientists who were Carl Sagan’s colleagues in planetary science, and also jazzed about finally getting to see how these farflung spacecraft were controlled.

One of the people I met during Encounter week was a fellow named Al Hibbs. He was the “Voice of JPL” — and that week was acting as the mission “explainer” during the NASA TV broadcasts.

It was a crazy week. Along with all the fabulous images streaming back from Voyager 2, mission team members had to deal with a cranky spacecraft. Among other things, it developed problems with its camera and photopolarimeter scan platform and we (along with the rest of the world) watched as the scientists and engineers fiddled with a fix in real time. One day I got to talking to Al and he offered to take me on a tour of the “mission control” area and watch as he did a broadcast. I jumped at the chance and I’m glad I did. Not just because of the behind-the-scenes look at how a big spacecraft mission was controlled, but because I got a chance to meet one of NASA’s scientists up close and personal.

Al had worked as a research engineer at NASA beginning in 1950. He was (at various times) chief of the Research and Analysis Section, the Space Sciences Division, and manager of the Transportation Technology Office. He was also the system designer of the first U.S. satellite, Explorer I.

He told me about all the missions where he’d served as the Lab’s “voice” — the Surveyor lunar missions, the Mariner flybys of Mars and Venus: the famous Viking landings on Mars, and the one I was covering — the Voyager mission to the outer planets. He was really good at explaining the complex maneuvers the spacecraft was undergoing, and the ricochet orbital path it was taking from planet to planet.

After his broadcast we went over to the JPL cafeteria to get a soft drink. As we sat there watching people come and go, I asked Al what he did for relaxation. He said that he liked to go scuba diving and he launched off on a story about how he learned to dive and where his favorite spots were. He told me that when he retired he was going to go diving in some really remote spots and search for a species of sea life called the tunicates.

I knew what they were, vaguely, and asked him what the most unusual was that he’d seen. He told me that it didn’t matter — he just loved to look at all of them. With a twinkle in his eye, he leaned across the table and said in a sort of laughing and dramatic half-whisper, “You see Carolyn, you could say that I palpitate for tunicates.”

I’ve always remembered that line, coming from a man who had played such a pivotal role in the space community, and whose work had been so helpful in my understanding of planetary exploration. He’d given me a glimpse of “undersea” space, too.

Al Hibbs died on February 24, 2003 at the age of 78. He was a kind and thoughtful man and a veritable font of wisdom. To me he symbolized the can-do attitude that characterized NASA in the days when I was growing up watching Moon launches and Apollo missions on TV. More and more men and women of Al’s generation are passing on — leaving the rest of us somehow poorer for their loss, but richer for having known them.

RIP Al Hibbs.