Space History for March 3

Note: We record the IP address from which subscriptions are entered to help prevent SPAM abuses.

1703
Died, Robert Hooke, experimental scientist, inventor, astronomer (discovered the first known binary star)

1838
Born, George William Hill, mathematician, astronomer (three-body problem, four-body problem)

1843
Congress appropriated $30,000 "to test the practicability of establishing a system of electro-magnetic telegraphs" by the US.

1847
Born, Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish inventor. In addition to his work in telecommunications, he also was responsible for important advances in aviation and hydrofoil technology.

1863
President Abraham Lincoln approved the charter for the US National Academy of Sciences.

1885
American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) was incorporated.

1902
M Wolf discovered asteroid #482 Petrina.

1906
A Kopff discovered asteroid #589 Croatia.

1915
The US National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the predecessor of NASA, was founded.

1916
M Wolf discovered asteroid #819 Barnardiana.

1921
K Reinmuth discovered asteroid #948 Jucunda.

1924
K Reinmuth discovered asteroids #1018 Arnolda and #1019 Strackea; and V Albitzkij discovered asteroid #1071 Brita.

1927
K Reinmuth discovered asteroid #1182 Ilona.

1929
S Arend discovered asteroid #1633 Chimay.

1935
Y Vaisala discovered asteroid #1947 Iso-Heikkila.

1942
Born, Vladimir V Kovolyonok, USSR cosmonaut (Soyuz 25, 29/31, T-4)

1943
Y Vaisala discovered asteroids #2204 Lyyli, #2333 Porthan and #2502 Nummela.

1946
Born, James C Adamson, Warsaw New York, Lt Col US Army/NASA astronaut (STS 28, STS 43)
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/adamson-jc.html

1949
Born, Bonnie J Dunbar, Sunnyside Washington, PhD/astronaut (STS 61-A, 32, 50, 71)

1949
Born, James S Voss, Cordova Alabama, Major US Army/astronaut (STS 44, 53, 69)

1951
Born, S Yemelyanov, cosmonaut

1951
M Itzigsohn discovered asteroid #1688 Wilkens.

1953
Born, Aleksandr Viktorovich Borodin, Russia, cosmonaut

1955
Goethe Link Observatory discovered asteroid #2026 Cottrell.

1959 17:11:00 GMT
NASA launched Pioneer 4, the first US spacecraft to fly by the Moon and the first to go into Solar orbit.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=1959-013A

1969 16:00:00 GMT
NASA launched Apollo 9 into Earth orbit, the first crewed Lunar Module test.
Apollo 9, launched 9 March 1969, was the third crewed Apollo flight and the first crewed flight to include the Lunar Module (LM). The crew was Commander James McDivitt, Command Module (CM) pilot David Scott, and LM pilot Russell Schweickart. The primary objective of the mission was to test all aspects of the Lunar Module in Earth orbit, including operation of the LM as an independent self-sufficient spacecraft and performance of docking and rendezvous manuevers. The goal was to simulate maneuvers which would be performed in actual lunar missions. Other concurrent objectives included overall checkout of launch vehicle and spacecraft systems, crew, and procedures. A multispectral photographic experiment was also performed.

On 7 March at 13:03 UT, the LM ("Spider"), carrying McDivitt and Schweickart, separated from the CSM ("Gumdrop"). It was put into a circular orbit about 20 km higher than the CSM. The LM descent stage was jettisoned and for the first time in space the ascent stage engine was fired, lowering the LM orbit to 16 km below and 120 km behind the CSM. A simulated rendezvous of the LM returning from a lunar mission with the orbiting CSM culminated in docking at 19:02 UT. The crew transferred back to the CSM, The LM ascent stage (1969-018C) was jettisoned and its ascent engine was commanded to fire to fuel depletion, into an Earth orbit of 235 x 6970 km. The LM ascent stage orbit decayed on 23 October 1981, the LM descent stage (1969-018D) orbit decayed 22 March 1969. The remaining four days of the Apollo 9 flight included more orbital manuevers and a landmark tracking exercise. All systems on all spacecraft worked nearly normally during the mission, and all primary objectives were accomplished.

Apollo 9 splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean on 13 March 1969 after a mission elapsed time of 241 hrs, 0 mins, 54 secs. The splashdown point was 23 deg 15 min N, 67 deg 56 min W, 180 miles east of Bahamas and within sight of the recovery ship USS Guadalcanal. The Apollo 9 Command Module is on display at the San Diego Aerospace Museum in San Diego, California.

The Apollo program included a large number of uncrewed test missions and 12 crewed missions: three Earth orbiting missions (Apollo 7, 9 and Apollo-Soyuz), two lunar orbiting missions (Apollo 8 and 10), a lunar swingby (Apollo 13), and six Moon landing missions (Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17). Two astronauts from each of these six missions walked on the Moon, the only humans to have set foot on another solar system body (as of 2005). Total funding for the Apollo program was approximately $20,443,600,000, an average bill of only about $100 per person for the population of the United States at the time.


NASA photo
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=1969-018A
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=1969-018A

1971
C U Cesco and A Samuel discovered asteroid #1867 Deiphobus.

1972 01:49:00 GMT
NASA launched Pioneer 10 toward Jupiter and Aldebaran, the first mission to the outer solar system.
Pioneer 10 was launched 3 March 1972. This mission was the first to be sent to the outer solar system and the first to investigate the planet Jupiter, after which it followed an escape trajectory from the solar system. The spacecraft achieved its closest approach to Jupiter on 3 December 1973, when it flew over the cloud tops at a distance of approximately 2.8 Jovian radii (about 200,000 km - 130,000 miles). As of 1 January 1997 Pioneer 10 was at about 67 AU from the Sun near the ecliptic plane and heading outward from the Sun at 2.6 AU/year and downstream through the heliomagnetosphere towards the tail region and interstellar space. This solar system escape direction is unique because the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft (and the Pioneer 11 spacecraft) are heading in the opposite direction towards the nose of the heliosphere in the upstream direction relative to the inflowing interstellar gas. The spacecraft is heading generally towards the red star Aldebaran, which forms the eye of Taurus (The Bull). The journey over a distance of 68 light years to Aldebaran will require about two million years to complete. Routine tracking and project data processing operatations were terminated on 31 March 1997 for budget reasons. Occasional tracking continued later under support of the Lunar Prospector project at NASA Ames Research Center with retrieval of energetic particle and radio science data. The last successful data acquisitions through NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) occurred on 3 March 2002, the 30th anniversary of Pioneer 10's launch date, and on 27 April 2002. The spacecraft signal was last detected, from a distance of 82 AU from the Sun, on 23 January 2003 after an uplink was transmitted to turn off the last operational experiment, the Geiger Tube Telescope (GTT), but lock-on to the sub-carrier signal for data downlink was not achieved. No signal at all was detected during a final attempt on Feb. 6-7, 2003. Pioneer Project staff at NASA Ames then concluded that the spacecraft power level had fallen below that needed to power the onboard transmitter, so no further attempts would be made.

See also http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=1972-012A
See also http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/pioneer/PNhome.html


NASA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_10

1981
S J Bus discovered asteroid #3059.

1987
T Niijima and T Urata discovered asteroid #3686.

2002 03:31:00 CST (GMT -6:00:00)
NASA STS 109 astronauts grappled the Hubble Space Telescope to retrieve it for the fourth HST servicing mission.
STS 109 was launched 1 March 2002 as the fourth Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission. Its crew performed a total of five spacewalks on five consecutive days to service and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope. Grunsfeld and Linnehan conducted the mission's first, third and fifth EVAs; while Newman and Massimino performed the second and fourth spacewalks. Currie operated the shuttle's robot arm to assist the spacewalkers, as Carey and Altman documented the EVA activities with video and still images.

The spacewalks installed new solar arrays, a new camera, a new Power Control Unit, a Reaction Wheel Assembly and an experimental cooling system for Hubble. The crew accumulated a total of 35 hours, 55 minutes of EVA time. Through STS 109, a total of 18 spacewalks have been conducted during the four Shuttle missions to service Hubble, for a total of 129 hours, 10 minutes by 14 different astronauts.

STS 109 ended on 12 March 2002 when Columbia landed at Kennedy Space Center after a 10 day, 22 hour, 10 minute mission.

The flight crew for STS 109 was: Scott Altman, Commander; Duane Carey, Pilot; Nancy Currie, Mission Specialist 1; John Grunsfeld, Mission Specialist 2; Rick Linnehan, Mission Specialist 3; Mike Massimino, Mission Specialist 4; Jim Newman, Mission Specialist 5.


NASA photo STS109-E-5014 (3 March 2002)
http://www.spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/archives/sts-109/index.html

This newsletter and its contents are
Copyright © 2006-2010 by The L5 Development Group.  All rights reserved.
 - Publication, in part or in whole, requires previous written permission.
 - Academic or personal-use citations must refer to http://L5Development.com
   as their source.
Thank you for your cooperation.

Space History Department
Resources
The L5 Development Group Home Page

The L5 Development Group Keyword Access System