Yearly Archives: 2011

astronomy, atlantis, musings, NASA, space shuttle

Shuttle Facts and History

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Shuttles are History, But Not Forgotten

Well, shuttle Atlantis has roared into history. And, I find myself, like all the other folks who have watched her lift off, in the position of looking back at 30 years of shuttle missions.

Atlantis on the pad, the day before her final launch. Copyright Carolyn Collins Petersen.

Is this how historians feel as they sift throughmillions of facts about momentous happenings in history? If so, it’s a weird feeling, because as I read through all the facts and figures about the last 30 years of shuttle launches, it does very much feel like the end of a momentous era in the U.S. Space Program.

I’ve been watching shuttle launches for three decades, and it never occurred to me that they’d ever come to an end. Yet, here we are, getting ready for that final launch of space shuttle Atlantis. And, I’ve been doing a little sifting around, watching old launch videos, reading about the accomplishments of the shuttles and their crews, and finding out some really cool and interesting things about these magnificent flying machines.

Did you know that shuttle Atlantis has flown more than 120 million miles in space – and all those before this final mission? She has orbited Earth more than 4,600 times. By the time she comes home from her final trip, Atlantis will have traveled a distance equivalent to 521 times the distance between the Earth and Moon.

Atlantis is the most lightweight of the space shuttle fleet, at 151,315 pounds. Space shuttle Endeavour was three pounds heavier. Every shuttle that left the launch pad had to haul a similar amount of weight plus a payload, pushing against and overcoming the pull of Earth’s gravity to get to space.

Here’s an oddly touching fact: Atlantis is going to space with a man’s wedding ring lost somewhere in her aft crew compartment. According to a report on NASASpaceflight.com, the ring was lost during the servicing flow for the orbiter’s last flight. The report concludes by saying, “While the owner of the ring may have received an ear-bashing from his wife, the engineer can look forward to proudly announcing he was reunited with the space flown ring by Atlantis when she returns to her Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF)… providing she doesn’t take the opportunity to propose to another vehicle whilst on orbit.”

Humans like to give nicknames to the technological marvels they work on. I used to have a sporty little car that I named Tezcatlipoca because it was sleek and black, just like the Aztec jaguar god for which it was named. Well, things are no different for the space shuttles. The people who readied Atlantis for her missions nicknamed the shuttle “Britney”, earned because of her diva-like tendencies during mission preparations.

All of the shuttles have carried scientific/technological payloads. These ranged from experiments in life sciences, materials science, Earth observing studies, astronomy, and classified Department of Defense projects. Atlantis delivered the Magellan spacecraft to Earth orbit and deployment to Venus. It also carried the Compton Gamma-ray Satellite to space, and brought a seven-member crew to complete servicing mission number 4 to the Hubble Space Telescope.

A total of 355 people have flown to space aboard the U.S. space shuttles. Among them have been the first U.S. woman to fly to space (Sally Ride), the oldest (John Glenn, age 77 at the time of his shuttle flight), and astronauts from Israel, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and several other countries. In addition, shuttle missions also ferried such life forms as plant seedlings, insects, shrimp, jellyfish, and rodents in a variety of life-sciences modules to test the effects of low gravity and other conditions.

Space shuttle Columbia flew the longest mission in November 1996. Her combined time on orbit for mission STS-80 was 17 days and 15 hours. In 135 shuttle flights, only two shuttle missions ended in disaster, resulting in the deaths of 14 astronauts. The first was the breakup of 51L, when space shuttle Challenger was destroyed 73 seconds into its launch on January 28, 1986. The second was the destruction of space shuttle Columbia as she disintegrated during her re-entry to the home port on February 1, 2003.

In 30 years, the shuttles have taken us to low-Earth orbit, delivered payloads that extended our eyes to the planets, stars, galaxies, and to the limits of the observable universe. There aren’t too many projects that human kind has taken on that can boast of such achievements. In the days and weeks to come, we will be seeing many tributes to the shuttle program and the people who made it happen. I’m joining in that chorus of praise: “Hail Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Endeavor, and Atlantis!” It’s been an amazing 30 years!

astronomy news, hubble space telescope, NASA, planetary science

A Million Peeks at Space

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Hubble Makes a Milestone Science Observation

This is an artist's concept of the extrasolar planet HAT-P-7b. It is a "hot Jupiter" class planet orbiting a star that is much hotter than our Sun. Hubble Space Telescope's millionth science observation was trained on this planet to look for the presence of water vapor and to study the planet's atmospheric structure via spectroscopy. Planets with orbits inclined nearly edge-on to Earth can be observed passing in front of and behind their stars. This allows for the planetary atmospheres to be studied by Hubble's spectrometers. Hubble's unique capabilities allow astronomers to do follow-up observations of exoplanets to characterize the composition and structure of their atmospheres. Courtesy NASA/ESA/G. Bacon (STScI)

Telescopes and the many different instruments that can be attached to them are made to look at the sky and ferret out the hidden mysteries, open our eyes to dim, distant objects, and reveal a million things we didn’t know were out there. Your backyard telescope can do this — as can the mightiest scopes on — or off — our planet.

The Hubble Space Telescope made its millionth science observation on July 4th, using a special instrument called a spectroscope to study the light from a planet a thousand light-years away. The planet is called HAT-P-7b, and HST was looking for signatures of water vapor in the planet’s atmosphere.

It does this by looking at the atmosphere of the planet as it passes in front of its star. The light from the star shines through the gaseous envelope around the planet, and the spectral fingerprints of “stuff” (like water vapor) that is in that atmosphere will show up in the data taken by the spectrometer.

Hubble is quite well-equipped to search out such signatures, and its successor — the James Webb Space Telescope — will be even better able to do such observations. This is the kind of science that HST was built to do — and it’s the kind of science that really grabs my imagination.  It’s really quite cool to think that a telescope orbiting our planet can peer across a thousand light-years of space and spy out the merest whiff of chemical signatures in the atmosphere of another planet.  THAT is what makes this milestone so very, very cool!

You know what else I find very cool?  Back when HST was in severe trouble because of its mirror problems, there were people who felt that we’d wasted our money, that the telescope was a bungle. One of them was Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, now chair of the Senate Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee.  She even went so far as to call Hubble a “techno-turkey” and I remember to this day seeing the anger on her face as she did it.  I even quoted her in my book about Hubble (Hubble Vision).

Yet, to her credit, she did step up and champion the cause of repairing the telescope. So, I think it’s cool that we have at least one politician who recognizes the value of science and, as she always points out, the value of inspiring children to become stargazers, scientists, astronauts, and engineering professionals.  I’m glad to see that she is celebrating the millionth observation too — we need many, many more to come.

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By the way, I want to thank the folks at TeachStreet for featuring this blog as one of the Featured Astronomy Blogs. I’ve rambled through their website and they have links to a number really fine writers.