Human Spaceflight
Rovering across the Moon during Apollo 15
Premier of the J-series mission changed the game for Apollo 15 Four hundred miles (640 km) to the north of the Moon’s equator lies a place called Hadley: a small patch of Mare Imbrium at the base of the Apennine Mountains, some of which rise to 4,000 feet (1,200 meters), and a 25-mile (40 km) …
Troubleshooting with a ‘dead’ astronaut
I was an electronic technician for Grumman Aircraft Co. from 1964 through 1978. One of my duties was to operate the Lunar Module cabin during trouble shooting and testing. Back then, the astronauts spent as much time in and around the hardware as we did. One day in the MSOB (Manned Spacecraft Operations Building), I was …
Al Worden on the honor of being an astronaut
“Do you know what they did down on the Moon? What those guys’ primary job was? They picked up rocks and dirt. Now, myself, in lunar orbit…” — Al Worden, Apollo 15 CMP USAF Colonel Alfred Worden served as Command Module Pilot for Apollo 15 – the fourth manned lunar landing mission. He also holds the …
The difference it made: Building a car for the Moon
Neil Armstrong set the first distance record with an impromptu amble to Little West crater. Pete Conrad and Alan Bean exceeded that several times over by circling out and down into Surveyor Crater. Edgar Mitchell still holds the title for longest one, over a mile, made when he and Alan Shepard went looking for Cone …
Suiting up for 50 years of spacewalks
For many millenia, all of humanity had been bound to this terrestrial planet we call Earth, but in 1965 our species took its first steps into the unknown of outer space. Russian Alexey Leonov became the first to conduct a spacewalk in March 1965 , followed several months later by American astronaut Edward White in June 1965. From those first early …
Making house calls to Hubble
Servicing Mission 1 STS-61 Endeavour • December 2-13, 1993 Servicing Mission 1, launched in December 1993, was the first opportunity to conduct planned maintenance on the telescope. In addition, new instruments were installed and the optics of the flaw in Hubble’s primary mirror was corrected. After Hubble’s deployment in 1990, scientist realized that the telescope’s …