sic itur ad astra

Cray 2 Supercomputer for the Numerical Aerodynamic Simulator at the NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View California.

The Apollo Soyuz Test Project Saturn IB launch vehicle thundered away from KSC’s Launch Complex 39B at 3:50 p.m. today. Aboard the Apollo Command Module were ASTP Astronauts Thomas Stafford, Vance Brand and Donald Slayton. The astronauts will rendezvous and dock with a Soyuz spacecraft, launched this morning from the Baikonur launch facility in the Soviet Union, carrying Soviet cosmonauts Aleksey Leonov and Valeriy Kubasov. The first international crewed spaceflight was a joint U.S.-U.S.S.R. rendezvous and docking mission. The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, or ASTP, took its name from the spacecraft employed: the American Apollo and the Soviet Soyuz. The three-man Apollo crew lifted off from Kennedy Space Center aboard a Saturn IB rocket on July 15, 1975, to link up with the Soyuz that had launched a few hours earlier. A cylindrical docking module served as an airlock between the two spacecraft for transfer of the crew members.

The replacement of fins on the Apollo Soyuz Test Project S1B launch vehicle continued at KSC today. The decision to replace all of the fins was made when small hairline stress corrosion cracks were discovered in holddown fittings. Replacement of the fins is not expected to delay move of the launch vehicle to the launch pad on March 24. ASTP, the joint U.S./USSR space mission is scheduled for mid-July.

Saturn 501 - Apollo Saturn V liftoff from Complex 39A at 7 a.m. 9 November 1967 at Kennedy Space Center, Florida

Marine helicopter has astronaut Virgil I. Grissom in harness and is bringing him up out of the water. The Liberty Bell 7 spacecraft has just sunk below the water. His Mercury-Redstone 4 launch was the second in the U.S. manned space effort.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower visits Cape Kennedy.

Soviet Space Station and Shuttle In the mid-1980s,

Moscow announced plans to have a large, permanently manned space station orbiting the Earth in the 1990s. They launched MIR, the core vehicle of a modular space station, in February 1986. The Soviets planned to use the space shuttle orbiter, then in development, to carry payloads and assist in the assembly of the space station.

HOTOL in flight

Dramatically reflected by the waters of the extensive lagoonal sysem adjacent to Launch Pad A, the Space Shuttle, the world’s first reusable space vehicle, is lighted by spotlights and the setting sun on the evening prior to Flight Readiness Firing of the orbiter Columbia’s main engines. The 20-second firing was a milestone procedure in flight preparation of the world’s first reusable space vehicle.

NASA/Mercury capsule No. 13 atop MA-6 with egress facility extended to capsule on Pad 14 on the Cape Canaveral Missile Test Annex.

After arrival at Cape Canaveral Missile Test Annex, (Skid Strip), President John F. Kennedy (left) is welcomed by a Color Guard. Dr. Kurt Debus is at right. The President is touring Complex 37, CCMTA.

The May 18 [1969 - ed] launch date for the Apollo 10 mission is now little more than a month away for its prime crew, shown here at Complex 39’s Pad B. From left are Thomas P. Stafford, commander; John W. Young, command module pilot; and Eugene A. Cernan, lunar module pilot. Visible through the girders of the Mobile Service Structure is the launch vehicle which will hurl them toward the Moon in a mission that is to carry Stafford and Cernan to within 50,000 feet of the lunar surface.

A view of the Earth appears over the lunar horizon as the Apollo 11 Command Module comes into view of the Moon before astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin Jr. leave in the Lunar Module, Eagle, to become the first men to walk on the Moon’s surface.

[The first post to this blog was the famous earthrise from Apollo 8 - ed]

The tracking board and consoles are seen inside the Mission Control Center during the early Gemini flights. The Mercury Mission Control Center in Florida played a key role in the United States’ early spaceflight program. Located at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the original part of the building was constructed between 1956 and 1958, with additions in 1959 and 1963. The facility officially was transferred to NASA on Dec. 26, 1963, and served as mission control during all the Project Mercury missions, as well as the first three flights of the Gemini Program, when it was renamed Mission Control Center.