Tag Archives: NASA

A New Curiosity

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There is a strange looking car parked in the west end of the National Air and Space Museum in downtown Washington, DC. For now, it is only visible behind its security screen from the second floor landing above. From that vantage, the vehicle’s six wheels, robotic arm, mast, and other protrusions are clearly visible. But since this is the Air and Space Museum, it must be more than just a normal car.

Soon the barriers will be gone and the public will be able to view the vehicle up close and personal. And what they will see is a model of the next Mars rover, NASA’s 2011 Mars Science Laboratory. The rover, dubbed “Curiosity” will be launched to Mars later this year and will begin its mission to explore whether places on the Red Planet were ever habitable. Information on the mission can be found at: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/. The rover carries a suite of instruments geared towards understanding conditions on the planet and a full description of the payload can be found at: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/instruments/.

NASA Mars Rover Curiosity at JPL, Side View. The rover for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, named Curiosity, is about 3 meters (10 feet) long, not counting the additional length that the rover's arm can be extended forward. The front of the rover is on the left in this side view. The arm is partially raised but not extended. Rising from the rover deck just behind the front wheels is the remote sensing mast. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The landing site for Curiosity will be one of four final candidate sites all deemed to possess a variety of features suited to evaluating whether Mars could have been habitable in the past. It is expected that NASA will announce the landing site in the coming weeks. Much more information on the landing sites proposed for Curiosity can be found at: http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/index.html.

The model of Curiosity will be on display through Labor Day of this year.

See the model of Curiosity and learn more about its mission at this year’s Mars Day! on July 22.

John Grant is a geologist in the Museum’s Center for Earth and Planetary Studies and co-chair of the Mars Landing site steering committee leading the MSL landing site selection process.

Getting “Enterprise” Ready for Prime Time

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Early on the morning of March 1, 2004, a small band of preservation specialists consisting of Anne McCombs, Steve Kautner, and Ed Mautner walked into the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.  There was but a single artifact in that huge hangar — OV-101, Space Shuttle Test Vehicle, Enterprise.  The hangar was scheduled to open to the public on October 20, 2004. We had eight  months to clean the exterior and interior; repair and repaint damage to the faux tiles that covered the nose, belly, vertical stabilizer, and rudder; then strip and repaint the center fuselage and payload bay doors.  There we stood with buckets of water, gallon jugs of Amway LOC, which was recommended by NASA and their contractor United Space Alliance (USA), boxes of cotton rags, and a few ladders that would only elevate us 3-3.5 meters (10-12 feet) above the ground.  The size and scope of our task was truly daunting as Enterprise was 37 meters (122 feet) long with a wingspan of 24 meters (78 feet) and a vertical stabilizer that topped out at nearly 18 meters (60 feet) above the floor.

Space Shuttle Enterprise

The Space Shuttle "Enterprise" was the first spacecraft to be moved into the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center's James S. McDonnell Space Hangar in 2004.

Enterprise was originally planned to be an orbiter but was never fully outfitted for spaceflight.  In 1977, it served first as a test vehicle atop a modified 747 in a series of drop and glide tests from about 7,620 meters (25,000 feet).  When its primary test programs ended in 1979, it languished and its appearance began to deteriorate.  In 1983 it was refurbished with a fresh coat of paint and new markings for the 1983 Paris Air Show and the 1984 World’s Fair in New Orleans.  NASA transferred Enterprise to the National Air and Space Museum in 1985 where it was stored outdoors for two years and in a non-climate-controlled hangar for 17 years. During this time it became dirty and its paint continued to deteriorate.  After it came to the Museum, Enterprise continued to be a test bed for NASA. They performed launch vibration tests, facility test checks, arresting barrier, and emergency crew egress tests.  These last tests scarred the paint on the forward fuselage and payload bay doors.   Our job was to restore it to its  former pristine appearance.

 

Space Shuttle Enterprise

Space Shuttle "Enterprise" flew into Washington Dulles International Airport on November 16, 1985 atop a modified Boeing 747 carrier aircraft. Using cranes, the "Enterprise" was removed from the top of the 747 and lowered to the tarmac at Dulles on November 17. On December 6 the National Aeronautic and Space Administration transferred title of the "Enterprise" to the National Air and Space Museum at a black tie gala at the airport.

The ladders made the decision of where to start easy — hit the low hanging fruit — landing gear, wheel wells, and the belly.   As the month progressed we received high lift equipment which gave access to most of the top portions of Enterprise. We also received an additional member, Tony Carp, to clean and repair the vertical stabilizer and rudder. Tony also coordinated the removal of the OMS (Orbital Maneuvering System) pods, which were sent back to the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration and Storage Facility for restoration.  Once finished with the exterior, we cleaned the cockpit, payload bay, and aft power plant bay.

Our next task was to scrape and sand off the deteriorated paint on the center fuselage and payload bay doors, an area measuring over 372 square meters (4,000 square feet). We did this from scaffolding erected on June 17th.  This structure enclosed and bridged Enterprise, allowing us to safely reach all of the upper areas. With the clock ticking, additional members were allocated on August 9th to do the final sanding, scraping, and paint prep, which we finished on September 2nd.

 

Space Shuttle Enterprise

The Space Shuttle "Enterprise" surrounded by scaffolding that allowed our collections specialists to safely reach all the upper areas of the spacecraft.

Our donated aerospace paint and primer arrived September 17.  Due to the space hangar’s filtration system and health and safety concerns we had to use rollers and apply the paint between 5:30 p.m. and 6:00 a.m.  PPG-DeSoto, the paint donor, provided an additive that “flowed” the rolled-on paint to give a smooth, sprayed-on appearance.  We finished the prep, priming, and white top coat in the wee hours of September 29.  The scaffolding came down the next day and we were left with just our original team of four plus two part-time volunteers to remove masking; do final clean-up and equipment stowage; touch up many of the polyurethane foam faux tiles; and restore the markings, “United States,” NASA “Worm” logo, and the name Enterprise on the forward payload bay doors.

 

paint

Preservation specialists, Tony Carp (top left) and Bob Weihrauch (bottom right), paint the Space Shuttle "Enterprise" as part of its restoration in 2004.

Long before work began, several curatorial decisions were made. First, Enterprise did not need a full restoration.  It was structurally intact and had no signs of serious corrosion.  So it would be cleaned, signs of corrosion or deterioration noted, and deteriorated paint and markings would be replaced.  The second decision was to return it to its appearance in 1985. To achieve this we carefully traced all of the markings before paint removal began.  When we had sanded through the top layer of paint we discovered earlier markings similar to those of 1985, but with slightly different shape, location, and color shades.  We traced and made notes of these for future reference.  Once repainted, we retraced the markings in pencil then hand-painted them as had been done originally.  While doing this a contract crew was assembling the barriers around Enterprise in preparation for the “Grand Opening” just days away.  We finished clean-up and detailing on October 18, 2004.

While we never let our eyes slip from our target date, there were interesting diversions that made a challenging project pretty enjoyable.  We were tasked to assist NASA and USA in several of their planned visits to inspect or work on Enterprise.  One day, Col. Joe Engle, one of Enterprise’s command test pilots, came to visit his old craft, inquire about our work, and congratulate us on our efforts.  Another highlight was a visit from Col. Pamela Melroy, USAF.  Col. Melroy was an Air Force test pilot and would become a two-mission space shuttle pilot (STS-92 and 112), and mission commander (STS-120). We met her while she was still a member of the Shuttle Columbia accident investigation team. We escorted her through Enterprise and she also expressed pleasure with our efforts.

The Enterprise project was grand in scope; interesting and exciting every day; and very rewarding in terms of personal gratification.  Our small crew worked without a budget, and with limited resources, personnel, and time.  For so many reasons, I recall looking forward to getting in to work on it every day.  It was an exciting environment that literally put us on a stage where the visitors were always viewing us from barriers at the front of the hangar and from the hangar overlook.  And when the scaffolding was assembled, there was the ever-present element of danger.  Everyday, several times a day, we had to free climb 9-12 meters (30-40 feet) straight up the rungs to the platforms next to or over the shuttle.  Once on top, we could attach our safety harness tethers to the scaffold structure. In eight months we had only one injury.  One of our members slipped off the top of the payload bay doors.  Due to the harness and tether, he suffered only a banged knee.  Our constant discussions about safety and the use of fall protection certainly paid dividends.

 

Enterprise

The Space Shuttle "Enterprise," before and after its restoration.

During our days working on Enterprise we received several recurring questions about it from docents and visitors: is it real and did it go into space?  What does it look like inside and will the Museum let visitors walk through it?  Well, it is quite “real.”  It was the first shuttle of the first batch or “block” of three and with the demise of Challenger and Columbia, it is the sole survivor of that block.  Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour constitute the second block of shuttles.  However, as Enterprise was never fully fitted-out to be an orbiter, the payload bay is a maze of structure and framework that poses too many hazards to permit public entry.  The cockpit, bare of instrumentation, is very small and it would be difficult to route the more than one million visitors who might wish to enter it each year. Furthermore, the National Air and Space Museum has not in the past opened accessioned aircraft or spacecraft for public entry due to preservation concerns.  For all of these reasons the Museum decided not to permit access into Enterprise.

 

crew

Left to right: Steve Kautner, Dave Wilson, Bob McLean (background), Ed Mautner (foreground), Bob Weihrauch, Will Lee, Anne Mccombs.

 

Space Shuttle Enterprise

The Space Shuttle "Enterprise" is the centerpiece of the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar of the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center

On the morning of October 19, 2004, members of the press began to arrive to photograph, video, and write about the opening of the John S. McDonnell Space Hangar and its most prominent artifact, the Space Shuttle Enterprise. The public got its first glimpse the following day.  The space hangar and Enterprise were received with praise and excitement by NASA and Museum staff, the media, and the visiting public.  In addition, our small team received one of the two prestigious Peer Awards presented by the Museum for 2004.  Was it a rewarding project? You bet.

Ed Mautner is a preservation specialist in the Collections Division of the National Air and Space Museum.

Reflections on Post-Cold War Issues for International Space Cooperation

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In the 1990s the United States collaborative space policy entered an extended period of transition from the earlier era of Cold War, one in which NASA has been compelled to deal with international partners on a much more even footing than ever before.

Apollo 17

Will the next flag on the Moon be a national flag or one representative of humankind as a whole? This image from Apollo 17 shows the U.S. flag on the Moon, an important symbolic moment for the United States in the Cold War race to the Moon with the Soviet Union. Those times have passed and cooperative efforts are the norm for the future.

This was true for several reasons. U.S. preeminence in space technology was rapidly declining, especially in launcher technology as other nations built their own internal capabilities. This was especially true of the European Space Agency’s superb Ariane launcher. This made it increasingly possible for other nations to “go it alone,” as a vernacular expression states.

U.S. commitment to sustained “preeminence” in space activities also waned and significantly less public monies went into NASA missions. The Clinton administration’s “National Space Policy” of September 29, 1996, for example, abandoned the language of preeminence that had been used since the origins of the space race in the 1950s. In addition, NASA’s budget declined in terms of real dollars every year from 1993 to 2000.

Of international cooperative projects that remained, NASA increasingly acceded to the demands of collaborators to develop critical systems and technologies. This overturned a longstanding policy of not allowing partners onto the critical technological path, something that had been flirted with but not accepted in the Space Shuttle development project.

This was in large measure a pragmatic decision on the part of American officials. Because of the increasing size and complexity of projects, according to former NASA international relations chief Kenneth Pedersen in 1992, more recent projects have produced “numerous critical paths whose upkeep costs alone will defeat U.S. efforts to control and supply them.”

Pedersen added, “It seems unrealistic today to believe that other nations possessing advanced technical capabilities and harboring their own economic competitiveness objectives will be amenable to funding and developing only ancillary systems.”

In addition to these important developments, the rise of competitive economic activities in space has mitigated the prospects for future collaborations. The brutal competition for launch business, the cutthroat nature of space applications, and the rich possibilities for space-based economic activities have created a climate in which international ventures may once again become the exception.

Historian John Krige astutely commented in 1998 that “collaboration has worked most smoothly when the science or technology concerned is not of direct strategic (used here to mean commercial or military) importance. As soon as a government feels that its national interests are directly involved in a field of R&D, it would prefer to go it alone.” He also noted that the success of cooperative projects may take as their central characteristic that they have “no practical application in at least the short to medium term.”

I would add that the sole exception to this perspective might be when nations decide that for prestige or diplomatic purposes it is appropriate to cooperate in space. A superb example of this is the effort beginning in 1992 to bring the Russians into the space station program already underway by a consortium of nations as a means of building stronger ties to Russia in the early post-Cold War era.

One of the key conclusions that we might reach about the course of international cooperation between the United States and its international collaborators in space is that it has been an enormously difficult process. I am reminded of the quote attributed to Wernher von Braun, “we can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.” Even so, cooperative space endeavors have been richly rewarding and overwhelmingly useful, from all manner of scientific, technical, social, and political perspectives.

International Space Station Components

The International Space Station is the most significant international cooperative program in the history of spaceflight. This image shows the components of the station and which nation constructed them.

Kenneth Pedersen observed in 1983, “international space cooperation is not a charitable enterprise; countries cooperate because they judge it in their interest to do so.” For continued cooperative efforts in space to proceed into the twenty-first century it is imperative that those desiring them define appropriate projects and ensure that national leaders judge them as being of interest and worthy of pursuing them in a cooperative manner.

Roger D. Launius is a senior curator in the Space History Division of the National Air and Space Museum.

A Crash Made Famous on TV

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May 10 may ring a bell for fans of the 1970s television show The Six Million Dollar Man.  On that day in 1967, a NASA research aircraft, the wingless M2-F2 lifting body, crashed in the California desert. A film clip of the crash opened the popular weekly show about the gravely injured fictional pilot, Steve Austin, played by Lee Majors.  Thanks to bionic implants, he survived as a cyborg with superhuman strength, speed, and vision, to crusade against injustice.

View TV series intro on YouTube.

The M2-F2 research craft looked more like a boat than an aircraft. NASA was experimenting with wingless flight for a more controlled, more heat-resistant reentry from space. A lifting body derives lift from the shape of the fuselage, rounded on the bottom and flatter on top. Instead of wings, it has vertical stabilizer fins to control its attitude.

The aluminum M2-F2 had an XLR-11 rocket engine. It was carried aloft under the wing of a B-52 bomber to 13,716 m (45,000 ft) altitude. The engine then ignited to carry the craft to 18,288-21,336 m (60,000-70,000 ft) for a gliding descent to a landing. These flights demonstrated that a pilot could fly a wingless vehicle back from space to land like an airplane.

M2-F2

M2-F2 After the Crash in 1967

There was only one serious accident in 12 years of lifting body flights. On its 16th test flight both the M2-F2 and pilot Bruce Peterson were nearly destroyed as the craft flew out of control and then plowed into the ground at 250 miles per hour, tumbling over and over before coming to rest. Peterson had several surgeries but no bionic implants to repair his facial injuries, fractured skull, and loss of one eye. This accident inspired a novel, made-for-television movies, and the weekly prime-time television program.

M2-F3 Lifting Body

M2-F3 Lifting Body, Hanging in Space Hall at the National Air and Space Museum

The M2-F2 was rebuilt as the M2-F3 with a large third vertical stabilizer between the fins. It flew 27 successful test flights in 1970-1972, many of them the same profile as planned for the space shuttle.  This lifting body research helped to demonstrate that landing without power was safe and thus landing engines were not needed on the shuttle.  The M2-F3 (the resurrected M2-F2) hangs in Space Hall in the National Air and Space Museum.

Valerie Neal is in her 20th year as the Shuttle-era human spaceflight curator in the National Air and Space Museum’s Space History Division.

Trajectories of Space Flight

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The rich collections of space artifacts at the National Air and Space Museum provide a remarkable resource for scholars who wish to understand the special place that deep space exploration has held in the imagination of not just Americans but people around the world.  They show the complex interplay between the dreams of spaceflight, the limits to our knowledge of engineering and science, and the clever ways human beings have achieved some—but not all—of those dreams while keeping at least one foot grounded in reality. Here are some examples of space artifacts currently on display, and what they tell us about our future in space.

V-2 Missile

The German V-2 rocket was the world's first large-scale liquid-propellant rocket vehicle, the first long-range ballistic missile, and the ancestor of today's large rockets and launch vehicles.

Werhner von Braun

Dr. Werhner von Braun

Space historians have given a central place to the writings and work of Wernher von Braun, one of the developers of the German V-2 ballistic missile during World War II, who came to the United States after the War and played a significant role in the development of the Saturn rockets, which took human beings to the Moon between 1968 and 1972. Von Braun was both an engineer and a tireless popularizer and promoter of space travel, writing a science fiction novel, magazine articles, and collaborating with Walt Disney on a television series about humanity’s future in space. In these efforts, he sketched a roadmap that became known as the “von Braun Paradigm”—a set of incremental steps that he argued ought to be taken to gain access to the heavens. In its simplest form, he argued for:

  1. the development of a winged, reusable, piloted launch vehicle
  2. which would shuttle crew, supplies, and fuel to and from a space station in Earth orbit
  3. from which would depart crewed missions to the Moon
  4. followed by a manned mission to Mars.

The paradigm held a powerful grip on NASA (founded in 1958) and still lurks behind current plans to return to the Moon and mount a crewed expedition to Mars. The reality of space history shows that it has been modified, abandoned, rediscovered, and modified again over the decades. The first modification came with the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957, which prompted a swift response from the United States. In the desire to get a human being in space quickly, the United States shelved a program to develop winged, piloted spacecraft, extending research being done with aircraft like the X-15. The result was a series of ballistic, wingless “capsules”: Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, with only limited ability to maneuver using aerodynamic forces. But the winged, aerodynamic paradigm did not die: it was resurrected as the space shuttle, first flown in 1981 and piloted to a landing using controls that were an extension of the X-15’s. Current plans call for a return to a ballistic capsule, but there are also plans for commercial access to space with winged vehicles, including the Burt Rutan design for ships that will carry paying passengers at least to the edge of space.

North American X-15

The North American X-15, a rocket-powered research aircraft, bridged the gap between manned flight in the atmosphere and space flight.

Space Shuttle Enterprise

The first Space Shuttle orbiter, Enterprise, is a full-scale test vehicle used for flights in the atmosphere and tests on the ground; it is not equipped for space flight.

SpaceShipOne

SpaceShipOne, the first privately built and piloted vehicle to reach space.

NASA and private companies are now proposing spacecraft of a variety of designs to replace the shuttle, which will be retired soon. Some proposals called for winged, reusable craft, others for ballistic capsules. It will be interesting to see how the “von Braun Paradigm” plays out in the coming years.

Paul Ceruzzi is a curator specializing in aerospace computing and electronics in the Division of Space History at the National Air and Space Museum.