Tag Archives: Space Shuttle

Shuttle Service to DC

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Much to the delight of large crowds below, Space shuttle Discovery, mounted atop a NASA 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), made several passes over the Washington, DC area yesterday. Discovery, the first orbiter retired from NASA’s shuttle fleet, completed 39 missions, spent 365 days in space, orbited the Earth 5,830 times, and traveled 148,221,675 miles. NASA will transfer Discovery to the National Air and Space Museum to begin its new mission to commemorate past achievements in space and to educate and inspire future generations of explorers. The ceremony will take place tomorrow, Thursday, April 19th at the Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA.

Here is a selection of photographs from yesterday’s fly-over:

 

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The Shuttle Carrier Aircraft takes off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying Space Shuttle Discovery.

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Space Shuttle Discovery makes a low pass over a crowd at the Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA.

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Space Shuttle Discovery, mounted atop a NASA 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, flies near the U.S. Capitol.

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Space Shuttle Discovery, mounted on the 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, flies near the Smithsonian Castle.

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A young spectator holds a model of space shuttle Discovery, mounted atop a NASA 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), as the actual shuttle flies overhead.


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Space shuttle Discovery, mounted atop a NASA 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), making a low pass over spectators in Virginia.

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Space shuttle Discovery, mounted atop a NASA 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) approaches the runway at Washington Dulles International Airport.

 

Spectators from across the Washington, DC area, NASA employees and Museum staff have contributed thousands of images to the Museum’s Space Shuttle Discovery Flickr group. If you took pictures of Discovery yesterday, please share them with us!

Ivey Doyal is web content manager for the National Air and Space Museum.

Toilet Training

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What is the first question most people ask about spaceflight?  “How do you go to the bathroom in space?” It’s a puzzlement.

The Education staff has decided to seize a teachable moment.  The new Moving Beyond Earth exhibition will feature a full-scale reproduction space shuttle mid-deck, the shuttle’s living quarters. Visitors will be able to open some of the lockers, look out the portal for a heavenly view, and yes, see a reproduction space toilet, or WCS (waste containment system).

 

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Staff from Guard Lee show staff from the Museum how astronauts use a space toilet.

This past week we unpacked the toilet and had training. Why training? Because we plan to roll it out, turn it on, and present short educational programs. We’re expecting  a lot of interest. We know you’re curious.

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Guard Lee staff with the space toilet, or waste containment system.

When we move a lever, the vacuum turns on. In space, astronauts rely on air to do what water does on Earth. Waste is sucked away, compacted, and dried. Of course the whole process is much more complicated than here in Earth. The feet straps (or bar for a standing man) are very important, as are the thigh bars for those sitting. Some models even come with seat belts!  Astronauts do not want to float away while doing their business.

There are male and female funnels, hoses of different sizes, and a can for paper trash. Remember, no flushing takes place. Ensuring a proper seal is crucial and astronauts practice on a toilet with a camera in Houston to perfect their position.

The company that built our WCS cared a great deal about accuracy, down to the NASA logo clearly emblazoned on the side.

And, in case you were wondering, our space shuttle curator Valerie Neal made sure that Space Shuttle Discovery, coming in April to the Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, will be as authentic inside as possible. She asked that the real WCS be re-installed.

Tim Grove is Chief of Education for the Museum in Washington, DC.

Bringing Spaceflight Down to Earth

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Having grown up less than 90 minutes away from the famous Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio, I got the chance at least a few times each summer to see an IMAX movie. I remember the packed seats for the pre-show, everyone clamoring for the best seats right in the middle, but everyone was usually just happy to be escaping the heat for the air conditioned theater. When The Dream Is Alive was released in June 1985, I was just old enough to ride those massive roller coasters, but seeing IMAX films at Cedar Point really left an impression on me: a big impression. Seeing those sweeping views of Earth and space on a gigantic screen made spaceflight seem so real, and utterly amazing.

 

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Figure 1 - The release of the Hubble Space Telescope as seen from the IMAX payload bay camera on STS-31, April 25, 1990.

Perhaps it comes as no surprise then that as soon as I became the Museum’s curator for space cameras about seven years ago, I distinctly remember asking about the chance IMAX cameras might join our collection. Valerie Neal, our curator for the space shuttle, was my target, and her enthusiasm for that possibility mirrored my own. During her time at the Museum, a number of the films premiered here, and she had gotten to know IMAX co-inventor/director/producer Graeme Ferguson and Toni Myers, another IMAX writer/director/producer. She had already started planting the idea of an eventual donation, suggesting to them at each opportunity that the Museum would be really interested in acquiring one of the cameras when they were no longer needed. I even remember anxiously waiting to hear from her the day after Hubble 3D premiered at the Museum in 2010, hoping she had put in another good word for National Air and Space Museum with Toni or Graeme. Valerie’s hard work paid off, and just a last year, we finalized arrangements to bring not one but two IMAX cameras — the two-dimensional in-cabin and payload bay units — into the National Collection.

Carl Walz

Figure 2 - Astronaut Carl Walz with the IMAX in-cabin camera during STS-79, September 1996.

Astronaut Michael Collins, the founding director of the National Air and Space Museum when it opened to the public in 1976, first suggested putting an IMAX camera on the shuttle five years before the first launch. He and Graeme Ferguson, and then Collins’ successor as Museum director Walter Boyne, nurtured the idea along until NASA granted approval in 1983. The partnership between IMAX Corporation, the Museum, NASA, and sponsor Lockheed Corporation was so successful that five more jointly-produced films followed The Dream is Alive. These films effectively brought spaceflight down to Earth as an immersive experience for audiences around the world.

Jennifer Levasseur is a museum specialist in the Division of Space History and curator for the Museum’s collection of space cameras and astronaut personal equipment.

Valerie Neal, also in the Division of Space History, is the space shuttle curator.

“How the Shuttle Got Its Wings”

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“How the Shuttle Got Its Wings” is a brand new interactive theater program the Museum is presenting this summer in the Moving Beyond Earth exhibition. We are fortunate that the Smithsonian family includes Discovery Theater, a theater group that focuses on young audiences. We approached them more than a year ago about creating a program highlighting the space shuttle program, especially for the Moving Beyond Earth stage.  The show finally debuted in mid-July and our timing couldn’t have been better. The successful mission of shuttle Atlantis several weeks ago closes the book on the space shuttle story. The topic has been all over the news and many of our visitors want to talk about it. The program is presented four times daily to enthusiastic audiences who want to reminisce about the shuttle era.

 

How the Shuttle Got its Wings

Actor Jennifer Joyner presents “How the Shuttle Got its Wings”

The 20-minute program starts with an excerpt from President Nixon’s 1972 speech announcing the development of “an entirely new type of space transportation system… it will revolutionize transportation into near space by routinizing it.” Routine, reusable, safe, and affordable… four words we repeat often in the program. Those were the goals for the shuttle. The story unfolds through the eyes of an aerospace engineer. We chose that character because the story is about the shuttle itself — its various components, its design, and its role.

The program is based heavily on the Moving Beyond Earth exhibition script (currently in development), which focuses on the space shuttle era. The second phase of the exhibition, opening in 2012, will feature fascinating models of what the shuttle could have looked like, a life-sized shuttle mid-deck that visitors can explore, and many objects flown in space and just recently de-accessioned by NASA.

 

How the Shuttle Got its Wings

Actor Calvin McCullough presents "How the Shuttle Got its Wings."

We worked with the Discovery Theater staff to ensure that the program is highly participatory. Younger ages enjoy helping to put pieces of a shuttle together and representing the different roles the shuttle has played over the years… delivery truck, space bus, service station, science laboratory, and international project. Older visitors enjoy remembering major accomplishments of each orbiter. The program ends with the question: Did the shuttle program meet the criteria set for it? Routine, reusable, safe, and affordable. The audience gets to vote. Our goal is to send audiences away thinking about this one-of-a-kind vehicle and its role in the history of American technology.

What do you think? Did the shuttle program meet the criteria?

The Museum continues to experiment with different ways to engage our visitors and educate people about our collections and research.  This experiment with theater has been well received.  If you haven’t seen the program, it runs daily through August 21 and then a few weekend dates after that. Check the website for times.

Tim Grove is Chief of Education for the National Air and Space Museum’s National Mall Building.

Space Shuttle: The End of An Era

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I had my first glimpse of the end of the shuttle era in April, three months before Atlantis touched down from the final shuttle mission. Discovery had just completed its last flight, and I had an opportunity to visit Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) Bay 3, which for years had been Discovery’s home for between-mission servicing. Discovery did not return to Bay 3 after STS-133, moving instead into Bay 1 for post-flight work.

Servicing home of Discovery

Servicing home of Discovery

 

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Badge Board, normally filled with badges of workers on duty in the Orbiter Processing Facility

I noticed the difference immediately. The empty slots on the badge board on the wall leading to the entrance signaled that no one was at work inside. The check-in desk was vacant, with only a few papers strewn about. The central space normally filled by Discovery and three stories of surrounding work platforms was an empty cavern. With work stands and protective pads stowed to the side, tool boxes closed and locked, computers idled, the hangar and its warren of work areas normally humming with activity stood eerily silent. OPF3 felt suddenly abandoned.  It reminded me of Pompeii.

 

Idled orbiter servicing bay

Idled orbiter servicing bay

Closed buildings and the wrenching loss of employees who spent most of their careers working on the space shuttle are perhaps the most poignant signs of the end of an era that changed the character of spaceflight. The space shuttle made spaceflight seem a more routine, normal part of our nation’s activity. It enabled the United States and its partner nations to make near-Earth orbit a home and workplace.

To fulfill its variety of missions, the versatile space shuttle required crews with more skills and abilities than piloting, thus opening opportunities for scientists, engineers, women, and people of color to join a demographically more diverse astronaut corps. The space shuttle democratized and internationalized human spaceflight. It enabled the growth of new disciplines in microgravity science—biological and physical sciences that explored the fundamental nature of anything in an environment without the dominant influence of gravity.

The last three missions flown in 2011 prompted much commentary about the legacy of the shuttle era. No doubt the evaluation will continue for some time. But in the empty Orbiter Processing Facility, I spotted one authentic assessment scrawled on a whiteboard, probably by someone soon to be out of work:   “Goodbye people. It’s been awesome!”

 

Whiteboard

“Goodbye people. It’s been awesome!”

Valerie Neal is the space shuttle curator in the Space History Division of the National Air and Space Museum.