The final space shuttle flight is slated to launch on Friday.
By PATRICK ROWAN
It’s a big deal no matter how you slice it. If Atlantis takes off as scheduled on Friday, it will be the final flight of NASA’s 30-year old Space Transportation System.
When the well-seasoned craft touches down at 220 m.p.h. some 12 days later, a significant era in the history of space exploration will come to an end.
Were it not for that, this column would be about Neptune completing its first orbit of the sun since its discovery in 1846, and NASA’s plan to ease the Dawn probe into orbit around 300 mile-wide Vesta – the second largest asteroid – later this month.
But the Atlantis flight is just too important, and on too many levels.
Designated STS-135 – this is the 135th shuttle flight since Columbia first took off for space on April 12, 1981. It is sure to receive much media attention, and deservedly so.
The shuttle program has dominated human space flight for most of the space age, which is now more than half a century old. It has carried well over 800 passengers to orbit. Retrospectives and speculation about what the demise of the shuttle program means for the future of human space flight will surely follow.
What will ultimately happen is unclear, but in the near term, NASA will be buying seats on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft to get astronauts to the International Space Station, and contracting private U.S. companies to deliver cargo to the ISS. It won’t be easy, but neither was flying the shuttle – the most complex craft ever built.
My late father fostered in me a keen interest in astronomy and space exploration, so I began paying attention to this stuff at an early age. Perusing his issues of Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine near the end of the “space race” of the late 1960s and early 1970s, I learned of NASA’s plans to build a reusable “space plane” for carrying humans, satellites, and other cargo into orbit.
Less than a decade later, I was working for the Springfield Science Museum at their wonderful planetarium. I recall describing to a reporter how the shuttle would be the first “space truck”, and also the first manned craft to lift off like a rocket, but land like a plane. It all felt so futuristic.
A full-scale shuttle that was never intended for space travel had already flown five atmospheric tests (gliding and landing) in 1977, this after “Star Trek” enthusiasts famously and successfully campaigned to get that first ship named Enterprise in honor of the television series’ fictitious starship.
But then came the real deal – Columbia. Painted virgin white for its maiden voyage, it jumped up off the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center, quickly rolled over to the east, and shot off into orbit like a high-performance sports car. Seeing this on TV was a revelation, and stood in stark contrast to the lumbering lift-offs of the towering Apollo-era Saturn V rockets.
There had been no practice runs. This was the first time the shuttle flew, and it was with a crew of two. The brave pilots were John Young and Robert Crippen. They sat in ejection seats (removed after the first few shuttle flights) identical to those found on the legendary Lockheed SR-71 "Blackbird" reconnaissance aircraft. This was truly new and exciting.
There’s not much I wouldn’t give to be in Florida for lift-off on Friday, but I cannot complain.
In July 1985 I got to see Challenger up close and personal – right from the base of the launch pad – just two days before its scheduled launch. On launch day, I was at a VIP viewing area a mere three miles from the pad... the closest allowed. There, I came across space enthusiast John Denver, and merrily recorded the occasion with my Pentax K-1000.
Sunlight glinted off the cockpit windows as everyone waited under clear blue skies. Conditions were perfect. To my dismay, at about T-minus two minutes, I discovered my camera was out of film! While fumbling to rewind the exposed roll of Ektachome 200 film and thread a new one, a great white plume rose silently from the pad… and then stopped.
A dozen seconds passed before the thunderous roar rattled eardrums… then that too abruptly halted. There was a collective moan. My first reaction, and that of others around me, was of disappointment, although it soon dawned on some of us how dangerous a situation the astronauts could be in, and we looked on in trepidation.
The main engines had fired up, but at T-minus 3 seconds – just before the solid rocket boosters were to be lit (the point of “no return” in a lift-off sequence) – everything just shut down. A malfunction in one of the three main engines caused the automatic shutdown of the rest, aborting the take-off.
I was back home in Western Massachusetts when Challenger finally lifted off about two weeks later. Less than six minutes into that flight, the center main engine shut down. Two minutes later, the crew over-road a potentially fatal automatic shutdown of a second main engine, and managed to enter a lower than planned orbit.
Challenger flew again in October of that year, but on its next flight the Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight killing all seven crew members, including schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. That was on Jan. 28, 1986.
Tragedy struck again on Jan. 16, 2003, when Columbia disintegrated on entry over the southern United States killing all seven on board. This prompted the Bush administration to call for an end to shuttle flights and direct NASA to plan a new heavy launch vehicle capable of returning humans to the moon and beyond. The resulting Constellation program was canceled by the Obama aAdministration, and debate rages over the future role of the U.S. in space.
If Atlantis is visible over our part of the world during this final mission, it will be our last chance to directly witness the shuttle in action.
I feel fortunate to have caught some amazing views over the years, including one from the roof of my Pioneer Valley home one dusk about 20 years ago. Following an unusual dusk trajectory up the East Coast, the Shuttle appeared minutes after launch as a point of light to the east rapidly moving north. To my astonishment, binoculars revealed the fan-shaped exhaust plume from the main engines still propelling the shuttle to orbit!
More recently, while watching a pass in dark skies from my front yard, I noticed a cloud trailing the usual point of light. Rubbing my eyes, I looked again… but it was still there, moving right along with the shuttle. Was this debris of some kind? Was I witnessing something bad?
Rushing inside to check the web, I found the explanation amusing: It was a dump of human waste… illuminated by sunlight just like the shuttle itself.
Another time, my wife, Clara, and I awaited an early evening double pass of the shuttle and the now-prominent International Space Station. When some neighbors pulled into their driveways, I told them about the anticipated pass and they ended up joining us for what turned out to be an unusually spectacular sight.
The dusk sky was a stunning deep transparent blue when the space station appeared in the west right on cue. About 20 degrees behind it was the shuttle which had undocked just a few hours earlier. These crisp, bright points of light were two occupied spacecraft in tandem orbit 200 miles above our heads, and it was breathtaking.
We all shifted from one yard to another to keep them in view until they disappeared behind trees four minutes later. When it was over, our neighbors thanked us for the experience, remarking on how beautiful it was.
It is easy to find out when and where to look. There are numerous internet calculators, but my favorite is at spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings
As of this writing, it is not clear if or when sightings are possible for greater Springfield, but if the opportunity arises, don’t miss it. It’s your last chance. Be sure to alert those around you as well. I for one, hope I haven’t seen my last pass.
Find rise and set times for the sun and moon, and follow ever-changing celestial highlights in the Skywatch section of the Weather Almanac in The Republican and Sunday Republican.