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http://www.booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=8985&SectionName=&PlayMedia=No
Anniversaries: Big and small. January 27, 2008—Can you believe this Friday marks five years since Columbia was lost? This week includes a lot of milestones for the people at NASA, and some may be remembered more than others. Today, marks forty one years since the loss of Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee in the so-called "Apollo One Fire". That when a spark of debated origin ignited the pure oxygen atmosphere inside the first Apollo Command capsule meant to fly in space. The three crewmembers died of asphyxiation, not from the flames. Monday marks twenty two years since Teacher-In-Space Christa McAuliffe and her six crewmates where killed when Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in mid-air during launch on January 28, 1986.
So, that leaves Explorer One. Thursday marks fifty years since the launch of America’s first artificial satellite, Explorer One. Visitors to the "rocket garden" Kennedy Space Center Visitors’ Center might by pass the replica of the Juno Rocket that carried Explorer One in 1958. It’s the one with "UE" painted on the side. It was America’s response to Sputnik, the Russian satellite, whose ominous "beep, beep, beep, was audible on radio sets as it sailed over New York, Washington, D.C., and what would become KSC. Brevard County retirees who helped launch Explorer One plan to remember the day but grumble that Explorer One is so far in the past, that many of the local NASA power brokers have better things to do than show up. I write about Sputnik, Challenger, and Columbia in "Final Countdown", and I appreciate everyone who came up to talk about get a copy signed during yesterday’s Air Force Space and Missile Museum Collectibles show in Cocoa. I’m also flattered to report that C-SPAN has scheduled three additional national airings of a talk I gave on the book. The first is Saturday, February 9th, at 8 a.m. Here’s the link to the C-SPAN BookTV page for more information. http://www.booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=8985&SectionName=&PlayMedia=No In case you can’t wait ;), here’s the link to C-SPAN’s video clip. http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=203165-1 More to come-- |
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One remembrance that hits NASA closer to home is this coming Friday when the agency remembers the 5th anniversary of Space Shuttle Columbia, which broke apart and burned up just sixteen minutes shy of landing at KSC’s landing strip. NASA is still bouncing back from that disaster with Space Shuttle Atlantis still stuck on the launch pad with sensor problems that may have been resolved. A final flight readiness review on Wednesday may tell the tale on that.