On the tail end of January each year, NASA does its “Day of Remembrance” where they honor the astronauts who have died not just in active missions but also in training accidents, tests, or other situations. Of course, the heavy focus is spent on 3 particular missions: Apollo 1, STS-51L, and STS-107. Apollo 1, as […]
Category: Space
Space Shuttle Challenger Accident Investigation
This video, which was shared in my post last year about Challenger, details the events of the disaster. It explains the root causes of the disaster and takes an extremely detailed look at the 73 second flight of Challenger, the development of the fire plume in the right SRB, and the eventual disintegration of the […]
Apollo 1 News Reports
News spread rather quickly following the fire of Apollo 1. This was back when news really focused on telling the story, rather than on what ratings it will bring in – certainly a different time in media. In any case, many news reports, or snippets from such, are available online. Here are a few more […]
Ad Astra Per Aspera
Apollo 1, 50 Years Later
For The First Time In 50 Years, The Apollo 1 Hatch Is On Display
January 27th, 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire, an event I’ve written about more than any other single event on this site. For the past 50 years, since the disaster, NASA has pretty much buried it. Unlike Challenger and Columbia, which occurred in 1986 and 2003 respectively, the 1967 deaths of […]
EchoStar XIX Atlas V Launch Highlights
Another day, another launch it seems. A United Launch Alliance Atlas V booster (431 configuration) launched the Echostar 19 communications satellite today, marking the 68th Atlas V launch. Normally I would go on waxing poetically about the payload, the booster, and what have you, but this time, there isn’t anything to say that hasn’t been […]
STS-95 Mission Highlights
NASA pushed out quite a few videos following the death of John Glenn. The other day I shared some video of the launch of STS-95, Glenn’s 1998 return to space. There was one video I found during the planning of that article, though, that I didn’t share due to its length, and thought more worthwhile […]
The Launch of STS-95
Godspeed, John Glenn
Project Mercury And You – 1961 Convair Training Film
Ah, project Mercury – the United States “Man In Space” program. Sure, it wasn’t the first to put a man in space, or in orbit (The Soviets would do that with Vostok 1 in 1961) but it was still a necessary step towards what we eventually would accomplish. Of course, anything going into space needs […]
The Soyuz Rocket Turns 50!
With nearly 2000 launches to its name, the Soyuz rocket turns 50 years old today – it’s first launch was on November 28th, 1966, carrying a payload known as Kosmos 133, Kosmos being a universal codename for “unknown” Soviet Satellites. This craft was, in reality, the first test flight of the boosters namesake, the Soyuz […]
GOES-R Is Successfully Launched On An Atlas V Rocket
After some delays due to vehicle issues (which I believe were reported as a “false positive” in an error detection system) and a minor issue with the Eastern Missile Range (Remember, rocket launches are subject to USAF missile range safety protocol), The NOAA/NASA satellite was successfully released from the upper stage of it’s Atlas V […]
Soyuz MS-03 Launch Video And Launch Replays
As promised yesterday, here’s the launch video from yesterdays Soyuz launch to the International Space Station. It was a pretty typical launch, but it’s always amazing to see a rocket launch, and follow the process from being on the ground to 8 minutes later being in Earth orbit. Included is also a launch replay clip […]
Soyuz MS-03 Successfully Launches to the ISS
Today has really been a space heavy day for me, hasn’t it? Today marks the successful launch of Soyuz MS-03, sending another 3 person crew, Oleg Novitskiy, Peggy Whitson, and Thomas Pesquet, to the International Space Station. I don’t have much commentary: not that Soyuz launches are boring (far from it) but there really isn’t […]