1.
Federal government of the United States
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The Federal Government of the United States is the national government of the United States, a republic in North America, composed of 50 states, one district, Washington, D. C. and several territories. The federal government is composed of three branches, legislative, executive, and judicial, whose powers are vested by the U. S. Constitution in the Congress, the President, and the courts, including the Supreme Court. The powers and duties of these branches are defined by acts of Congress. The full name of the republic is United States of America, no other name appears in the Constitution, and this is the name that appears on money, in treaties, and in legal cases to which it is a party. The terms Government of the United States of America or United States Government are often used in documents to represent the federal government as distinct from the states collectively. In casual conversation or writing, the term Federal Government is often used, the terms Federal and National in government agency or program names generally indicate affiliation with the federal government. Because the seat of government is in Washington, D. C, Washington is commonly used as a metonym for the federal government. The outline of the government of the United States is laid out in the Constitution, the government was formed in 1789, making the United States one of the worlds first, if not the first, modern national constitutional republics. The United States government is based on the principles of federalism and republicanism, some make the case for expansive federal powers while others argue for a more limited role for the central government in relation to individuals, the states or other recognized entities. For example, while the legislative has the power to create law, the President nominates judges to the nations highest judiciary authority, but those nominees must be approved by Congress. The Supreme Court, in its turn, has the power to invalidate as unconstitutional any law passed by the Congress and these and other examples are examined in more detail in the text below. The United States Congress is the branch of the federal government. It is bicameral, comprising the House of Representatives and the Senate, the House currently consists of 435 voting members, each of whom represents a congressional district. The number of each state has in the House is based on each states population as determined in the most recent United States Census. All 435 representatives serve a two-year term, each state receives a minimum of one representative in the House. There is no limit on the number of terms a representative may serve, in addition to the 435 voting members, there are six non-voting members, consisting of five delegates and one resident commissioner. In contrast, the Senate is made up of two senators from each state, regardless of population, there are currently 100 senators, who each serve six-year terms
2.
Pasadena, California
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Pasadena /ˌpæsəˈdiːnə/ is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of 2013, the population of Pasadena was 139,731. Pasadena is the ninth-largest city in Los Angeles County, Pasadena was incorporated on June 19,1886, becoming one of the first cities be incorporated in what is now Los Angeles County, the only one being incorporated earlier being its namesake. It is one of the cultural centers of the San Gabriel Valley. The city is known for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game, the original inhabitants of Pasadena and surrounding areas were members of the Native American Hahamog-na tribe, a branch of the Tongva Nation. They spoke the Tongva language and had lived in the Los Angeles Basin for thousands of years, Tongva dwellings lined the Arroyo Seco in present day Pasadena and south to where it joins the Los Angeles River and along other natural waterways in the city. The native people lived in thatched, dome-shape lodges and they lived on a diet of acorn meal, seeds and herbs, venison, and other small animals. They traded for fish with the coastal Tongva. They made cooking vessels from steatite soapstone from Catalina Island, the trail has been in continuous use for thousands of years. An arm of the trail is still in use in what is now known as Salvia Canyon. When the Spanish occupied the Los Angeles Basin they built the San Gabriel Mission and renamed the local Tongva people Gabrielino Indians, today, several bands of Tongva people live in the Los Angeles area. The Rancho comprised the lands of todays communities of Pasadena, Altadena, before the annexation of California in 1848, the last of the Mexican owners was Manuel Garfias who retained title to the property after statehood in 1850. Garfias sold sections of the property to the first Anglo settlers to come into the area, Dr. Benjamin Eaton, the father of Fred Eaton, much of the property was purchased by Benjamin Wilson, who established his Lake Vineyard property in the vicinity. Wilson, known as Don Benito to the local Indians, also owned the Rancho Jurupa and was mayor of Los Angeles and he was the grandfather of WWII General George S. Patton, Jr. and the namesake of Mount Wilson. Berry was an asthmatic and claimed that he had his best three nights sleep at Rancho San Pascual, to keep the find a secret, Berry code-named the area Muscat after the grape that Wilson grew. To raise funds to bring the company of people to San Pascual, Berry formed the Southern California Orange and Citrus Growers Association and sold stock in it. The newcomers were able to purchase a portion of the property along the Arroyo Seco and on January 31,1874. As a gesture of good will, Wilson added 2,000 acres of then-useless highland property, at the time, the Indiana Colony was a narrow strip of land between the Arroyo Seco and Fair Oaks Avenue
3.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
4.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
5.
NASA
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President Dwight D. Eisenhower established NASA in 1958 with a distinctly civilian orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29,1958, disestablishing NASAs predecessor, the new agency became operational on October 1,1958. Since that time, most US space exploration efforts have led by NASA, including the Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station. Currently, NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches. NASA shares data with various national and international such as from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite. Since 2011, NASA has been criticized for low cost efficiency, from 1946, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics had been experimenting with rocket planes such as the supersonic Bell X-1. In the early 1950s, there was challenge to launch a satellite for the International Geophysical Year. An effort for this was the American Project Vanguard, after the Soviet launch of the worlds first artificial satellite on October 4,1957, the attention of the United States turned toward its own fledgling space efforts. This led to an agreement that a new federal agency based on NACA was needed to conduct all non-military activity in space. The Advanced Research Projects Agency was created in February 1958 to develop technology for military application. On July 29,1958, Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, a NASA seal was approved by President Eisenhower in 1959. Elements of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and the United States Naval Research Laboratory were incorporated into NASA, earlier research efforts within the US Air Force and many of ARPAs early space programs were also transferred to NASA. In December 1958, NASA gained control of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA has conducted many manned and unmanned spaceflight programs throughout its history. Some missions include both manned and unmanned aspects, such as the Galileo probe, which was deployed by astronauts in Earth orbit before being sent unmanned to Jupiter, the experimental rocket-powered aircraft programs started by NACA were extended by NASA as support for manned spaceflight. This was followed by a space capsule program, and in turn by a two-man capsule program. This goal was met in 1969 by the Apollo program, however, reduction of the perceived threat and changing political priorities almost immediately caused the termination of most of these plans. NASA turned its attention to an Apollo-derived temporary space laboratory, to date, NASA has launched a total of 166 manned space missions on rockets, and thirteen X-15 rocket flights above the USAF definition of spaceflight altitude,260,000 feet. The X-15 was an NACA experimental rocket-powered hypersonic research aircraft, developed in conjunction with the US Air Force, the design featured a slender fuselage with fairings along the side containing fuel and early computerized control systems
6.
California Institute of Technology
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The California Institute of Technology is a private doctorate-granting university located in Pasadena, California, United States. The vocational and preparatory schools were disbanded and spun off in 1910, the university is one among a small group of Institutes of Technology in the United States which is primarily devoted to the instruction of technical arts and applied sciences. Caltech has six divisions with strong emphasis on science and engineering, managing $332 million in 2011 in sponsored research. Its 124-acre primary campus is located approximately 11 mi northeast of downtown Los Angeles, first-year students are required to live on campus, and 95% of undergraduates remain in the on-campus House System at Caltech. Although Caltech has a tradition of practical jokes and pranks. The Caltech Beavers compete in 13 intercollegiate sports in the NCAA Division IIIs Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, Caltech is frequently cited as one of the worlds best universities. There are 112 faculty members who have elected to the United States National Academies. In addition, numerous faculty members are associated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as well as NASA, according to a 2015 Pomona College study, Caltech ranked number one in the U. S. for the percentage of its graduates who go on to earn a PhD. Caltech started as a school founded in Pasadena in 1891 by local businessman and politician Amos G. Throop. The school was known successively as Throop University, Throop Polytechnic Institute, the vocational school was disbanded and the preparatory program was split off to form an independent Polytechnic School in 1907. At a time when research in the United States was still in its infancy, George Ellery Hale. He joined Throops board of trustees in 1907, and soon began developing it and he engineered the appointment of James A. B. Scherer, a literary scholar untutored in science but a capable administrator and fund raiser, scherer persuaded retired businessman and trustee Charles W. Gates to donate $25,000 in seed money to build Gates Laboratory, the first science building on campus. In 1910, Throop moved to its current site, arther Fleming donated the land for the permanent campus site. The promise of Throop attracted physical chemist Arthur Amos Noyes from MIT to develop the institution and assist in establishing it as a center for science, with the onset of World War I, Hale organized the National Research Council to coordinate and support scientific work on military problems. This institution, with its able investigators and excellent research laboratories, through the National Research Council, Hale simultaneously lobbied for science to play a larger role in national affairs, and for Throop to play a national role in science. During the course of the war, Hale, Noyes and Millikan worked together in Washington on the NRC, subsequently, they continued their partnership in developing Caltech. Under the leadership of Hale, Noyes and Millikan, Caltech grew to prominence in the 1920s
7.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory Science Division
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The Jet Propulsion Laboratory Science Division investigates physical and chemical processes on the Earth, in the Solar System, and throughout the universe. Explorations of space and terrestrial processes lead to understanding of the universe, methods for accomplishing scientific work pertaining to the nature of the Earth, the Solar System, the galaxy, etc. are addressed in the JPL Science Division. Techniques in both physical and life sciences are utilized and these are significant issues related to NASAs mission. Theoretical and experimental studies are conducted which lead to new missions and they are engaged in the development of new instrumentation and in the analysis of data, publishing new scientific knowledge, and in the communication of that knowledge to the general public. Not all science at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is contained within the Science Division, approximately 30% of JPL scientists are embedded in other divisions. This is accomplished by developing multidisciplinary capabilities in engineering, science, research in space science, as well as advancing technologies, produces the ability to implement missions for NASA
8.
Robotic spacecraft
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A robotic spacecraft is an uncrewed spacecraft, usually under telerobotic control. A robotic spacecraft designed to make scientific research measurements is called a space probe. Many space missions are more suited to telerobotic rather than crewed operation, due to lower cost, in addition, some planetary destinations such as Venus or the vicinity of Jupiter are too hostile for human survival, given current technology. Outer planets such as Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are too distant to reach with current crewed spaceflight technology, many artificial satellites are robotic spacecraft, as are many landers and rovers. The first robotic spacecraft was launched by the Soviet Union on 22 July 1951, four other such flights were made through the fall of 1951. The first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, was put into a 215-by-939-kilometer Earth orbit by the USSR) on 4 October 1957, on 3 November 1957, the USSR orbited Sputnik 2. Weighing 113 kilograms, Sputnik 2 carried the first living animal into orbit, since the satellite was not designed to detach from its launch vehicles upper stage, the total mass in orbit was 508.3 kilograms. In a close race with the Soviets, the United States launched its first artificial satellite, Explorer 1, into a 193-by-1, 373-nautical-mile orbit on 31 January 1958. Explorer I was a 80. 75-inch long by 6. 00-inch diameter cyllynder weighing 30.8 pounds, compared to Sputnik 1, a 58-centimeter sphere which weighed 83.6 kilograms. Explorer 1 carried sensors which confirmed the existence of the Van Allen belts, on 17 March 1958, the US orbited its second satellite, Vanguard 1, which was about the size of a grapefruit, and remains in a 360-by-2, 080-nautical-mile orbit as of 2016. Nine other countries have successfully launched satellites using their own vehicles, France, Australia, Japan and China, the United Kingdom, India, Israel, Iran. In spacecraft design, the United States Air Force considers a vehicle to consist of the mission payload, the bus provides physical structure, thermal control, electrical power, attitude control and telemetry, tracking and commanding. JPL divides the system of a spacecraft into subsystems. These include, This is the backbone structure. It, provides overall mechanical integrity of the spacecraft ensures spacecraft components are supported and can withstand launch loads This is sometimes referred to as the command, components in the telecommunications subsystem include radio antennas, transmitters and receivers. These may be used to communicate with stations on Earth. The supply of power on spacecraft generally come from photovoltaic cells or from a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. Other components of the subsystem include batteries for storing power and distribution circuitry that connects components to the power sources, spacecraft are often protected from temperature fluctuations with insulation
9.
NASA Deep Space Network
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It also performs radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe, and supports selected Earth-orbiting missions. DSN is part of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, similar networks are run by Europe, Russia, China, India, and Japan. DSN currently consists of three deep-space communications facilities placed approximately 120 degrees apart around the Earth and they are, the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex outside Barstow, California. Each facility is situated in semi-mountainous, bowl-shaped terrain to shield against radio frequency interference. All DSN antennas are steerable, high-gain, parabolic reflector antennas, the antennas and data delivery systems make it possible to, acquire telemetry data from spacecraft. Perform Very Long Baseline Interferometry observations, measure variations in radio waves for radio science experiments. Monitor and control the performance of the network, the antennas at all three DSN Complexes communicate directly with the Deep Space Operations Center located at the JPL facilities in Pasadena, California. In the early years, the control center did not have a permanent facility. It was a setup with numerous desks and phones installed in a large room near the computers used to calculate orbits. In July 1961, NASA started the construction of the permanent facility, the facility was completed in October 1963 and dedicated on May 14,1964. In the initial setup of the SFOF, there were 31 consoles,100 closed-circuit television cameras, currently, the operations center personnel at SFOF monitor and direct operations, and oversee the quality of spacecraft telemetry and navigation data delivered to network users. Tracking vehicles in space is quite different from tracking missions in low Earth orbit. Deep space missions are visible for long periods of time from a portion of the Earths surface. These few stations, however, require huge antennas, ultra-sensitive receivers, Deep space is defined in several different ways. According to a 1975 NASA report, the DSN was designed to communicate with spacecraft traveling approximately 16,000 km from Earth to the farthest planets of the solar system. JPL diagrams state that at an altitude of 30,000 km and this definition means that missions to the Moon, and the Earth–Sun Lagrangian points L1 and L2, are considered near space and cannot use the ITUs deep space bands. Other Lagrangian points may or may not be subject to rule due to distance. NASA was officially established on October 1,1958, to consolidate the separately developing space-exploration programs of the US Army, US Navy, the DSN was given responsibility for its own research, development, and operation in support of all of its users
10.
Mars Science Laboratory
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Mars Science Laboratory is a robotic space probe mission to Mars launched by NASA on November 26,2011, which successfully landed Curiosity, a Mars rover, in Gale Crater on August 6,2012. The overall objectives include investigating Mars habitability, studying its climate and geology, the rover carries a variety of scientific instruments designed by an international team. MSL successfully carried out the most accurate Martian landing of any spacecraft, hitting a small target landing ellipse of only 7 by 20 km. In the event, MSL achieved a landing 2.4 km east and 400 m north of the center of the target and this location is near the mountain Aeolis Mons. The rover mission is set to explore for at least 687 Earth days over a range of 5 by 20 km, the total cost of the MSL project is about US$2.5 billion. Mars rovers include Sojourner from the Mars Pathfinder mission and the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit, Curiosity is about twice as long and five times as heavy as Spirit and Opportunity, and carries over ten times the mass of scientific instruments. The MSL mission has four scientific goals, Determine the landing sites habitability including the role of water, the study of the climate and it is also useful preparation for a future manned mission to Mars. This data would be important for a manned mission. The MSL spacecraft includes spaceflight-specific instruments, in addition to utilizing one of the rover instruments—Radiation assessment detector —during the spaceflight transit to Mars. MSL EDL Instrument, The MEDLI projects main objective is to measure aerothermal environments, sub-surface heat shield material response, vehicle orientation, the MEDLI instrumentation suite was installed in the heatshield of the MSL entry vehicle. The acquired data will support future Mars missions by providing measured atmospheric data to validate Mars atmosphere models, MEDLI instrumentation consists of three main subsystems, MEDLI Integrated Sensor Plugs, Mars Entry Atmospheric Data System and the Sensor Support Electronics. Each computers memory includes 256 KB of EEPROM,256 MB of DRAM and this compares to 3 MB of EEPROM,128 MB of DRAM, and 256 MB of flash memory used in the Mars Exploration Rovers. The RCE computers use the RAD750 CPU operating at 200 MHz, the RAD750 CPU is capable of up to 400 MIPS, while the RAD6000 CPU is capable of up to 35 MIPS. Of the two computers, one is configured as backup, and will take over in the event of problems with the main computer. The rover has an Inertial Measurement Unit that provides 3-axis information on its position, the rovers computers are constantly self-monitoring to keep the rover operational, such as by regulating the rovers temperature. Activities such as taking pictures, driving, and operating the instruments are performed in a sequence that is sent from the flight team to the rover. The rovers computers function on VxWorks, an operating system from Wind River Systems. Once landed, the applications were replaced with software for driving on the surface, communications, Curiosity is equipped with several means of communication, for redundancy
11.
Mars Exploration Rover
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NASAs Mars Exploration Rover mission is an ongoing robotic space mission involving two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, exploring the planet Mars. It began in 2003 with the sending of the two rovers, MER-A Spirit and MER-B Opportunity—to explore the Martian surface and geology, both rovers outlived their planned missions of 90 Martian solar days by far. MER-A Spirit was active until 2010, the success of the two MERs led to another mission, sending a bigger rover Curiosity in 2012. The missions scientific objective was to search for and characterize a wide range of rocks, the mission is part of NASAs Mars Exploration Program, which includes three previous successful landers, the two Viking program landers in 1976 and Mars Pathfinder probe in 1997. The total cost of building, launching, landing and operating the rovers on the surface for the initial 90-sol primary mission was US$820 million, since the rovers have continued to function beyond their initial 90 sol primary mission, they have each received five mission extensions. The fifth mission extension was granted in October 2007, and ran to the end of 2009, the total cost of the first four mission extensions was $104 million, and the fifth mission extension is expected to cost at least $20 million. However, the dust storms lifted, allowing them to resume operations, on May 1,2009, during its fifth mission extension, Spirit became stuck in soft soil on Mars. This mode would enable Spirit to assist scientists in ways that a mobile platform could not, in recognition of the vast amount of scientific information amassed by both rovers, two asteroids have been named in their honor,37452 Spirit and 39382 Opportunity. The mission is managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which designed, built, the search for evidence of habitability, taphonomy, and organic carbon on the planet Mars is now a primary NASA objective. The scientific objectives of the Mars Exploration Rover mission are to, Search for and characterize a variety of rocks, in particular, samples sought include those that have minerals deposited by water-related processes such as precipitation, evaporation, sedimentary cementation, or hydrothermal activity. Determine the distribution and composition of minerals, rocks, and soils surrounding the landing sites, determine what geologic processes have shaped the local terrain and influenced the chemistry. Such processes could include water or wind erosion, sedimentation, hydrothermal mechanisms, volcanism, perform calibration and validation of surface observations made by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter instruments. This will help determine the accuracy and effectiveness of various instruments that survey Martian geology from orbit, Search for iron-containing minerals, and to identify and quantify relative amounts of specific mineral types that contain water or were formed in water, such as iron-bearing carbonates. Characterize the mineralogy and textures of rocks and soils to determine the processes that created them, Search for geological clues to the environmental conditions that existed when liquid water was present. Assess whether those environments were conducive to life, the MER-A and MER-B probes were launched on June 10,2003 and July 7,2003, respectively. The launch vehicles were integrated onto pads right next to other, with MER-A on CCAFS SLC-17A. The dual pads allowed for working the 15- and 21-day planetary launch periods close together, the last possible day for MER-A was June 19,2003. NASAs Launch Services Program managed the launch of both spacecraft, the probes landed in January 2004 in widely separated equatorial locations on Mars
12.
Opportunity (rover)
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Opportunity, also known as MER-B or MER-1, is a robotic rover active on Mars since 2004. Opportunity has continued to move, gather scientific observations, and report back to Earth for over 50 times its designed lifespan, as of January 17,2017, the rover had traveled 43.79 kilometres. This date was mission time of Sol 4615, mission highlights include the initial 90 sol mission, finding extramartian meteorites such as Heat Shield Rock, and over two years studying Victoria crater. It survived dust-storms and reached Endeavour crater in 2011, which has described as a second landing site. C. The scientific objectives of the Mars Exploration Rover mission are to, Search for and characterize a variety of rocks, in particular, samples sought will include those that have minerals deposited by water-related processes such as precipitation, evaporation, sedimentary cementation or hydrothermal activity. Determine the distribution and composition of minerals, rocks, and soils surrounding the landing sites, determine what geologic processes have shaped the local terrain and influenced the chemistry. Such processes could include water or wind erosion, sedimentation, hydrothermal mechanisms, volcanism, perform calibration and validation of surface observations made by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter instruments. This will help determine the accuracy and effectiveness of various instruments that survey Martian geology from orbit, Search for iron-containing minerals, identify and quantify relative amounts of specific mineral types that contain water or were formed in water, such as iron-bearing carbonates. Characterize the mineralogy and textures of rocks and soils and determine the processes that created them, Search for geological clues to the environmental conditions that existed when liquid water was present. Assess whether those environments were conducive to life, during the next two decades, NASA will continue to conduct missions to address whether life ever arose on Mars. The search begins with determining whether the Martian environment was ever suitable for life, life, as we understand it, requires water, so the history of water on Mars is critical to finding out if the Martian environment was ever conducive to life. Although the Mars Exploration Rovers do not have the ability to detect life directly, the primary surface mission for Opportunity was planned to last 90 sols. The mission has received several extensions and has been operating for 4821 days since landing, an archive of weekly updates on the rovers status can be found at the Opportunity Update Archive. Its sampling allowed NASA scientists to make hypotheses concerning the presence of hematite, following this, it was directed to travel across the surface of Mars to investigate another crater site, Endurance crater, which it investigated from June – December 2004. Subsequently, Opportunity examined the site of its own heat shield and discovered an intact meteorite, now known as Heat Shield Rock. From late April 2005 to early June of that year, Opportunity was perilously lodged in a sand dune, over a six-week period Earth-based physical simulations were performed to decide how best to extract the rover from its position without risking a permanent immobilization of the valuable vehicle. Successful maneuvering a few centimeters at a time eventually freed the rover and it experienced some mechanical problems with its robotic arm. In late September 2006, Opportunity reached Victoria crater and explored along the rim in a clockwise direction, in June 2007 it returned to Duck Bay, its original arrival point, in September 2007 it entered the crater to begin a detailed study
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Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
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Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is a multipurpose spacecraft designed to conduct reconnaissance and exploration of Mars from orbit. The US$720 million spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin under the supervision of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The mission is managed by the California Institute of Technology, at the JPL, in La Cañada Flintridge, California, for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington and it was launched August 12,2005, and attained Martian orbit on March 10,2006. In November 2006, after five months of aerobraking, it entered its science orbit. It paves the way for future spacecraft by monitoring Mars daily weather and surface conditions, studying potential landing sites, MROs telecommunications system will transfer more data back to Earth than all previous interplanetary missions combined, and MRO will serve as a highly capable relay satellite for future missions. One of two missions considered for the 2003 Mars launch window, the MRO proposal lost against what became known as the Mars Exploration Rovers. The orbiter mission was rescheduled for launch in 2005, and NASA announced its name, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. MRO is modeled after NASAs highly successful Mars Global Surveyor to conduct surveillance of Mars from orbit, early specifications of the satellite included a large camera to take high resolution pictures of Mars. Garvin, the Mars exploration program scientist for NASA, proclaimed that MRO would be a microscope in orbit, the satellite was also to include a visible-near-infrared spectrograph. On October 3,2001, NASA chose Lockheed Martin as the contractor for the spacecrafts fabrication. By the end of 2001 all of the instruments were selected. There were no major setbacks during MROs construction, and the spacecraft was moved to John F. Kennedy Space Center on May 1,2005 to prepare it for launch, MRO science operations were initially scheduled to last two Earth years, from November 2006 to November 2008. One of the main goals is to map the Martian landscape with its high-resolution cameras in order to choose landing sites for future surface missions. The MRO played an important role in choosing the site of the Phoenix Lander. The initial site chosen by scientists was imaged with the HiRISE camera, after analysis with HiRISE and the Mars Odysseys THEMIS instrument a new site was chosen. Mars Science Laboratory, a highly maneuverable rover, also had its landing site inspected, the MRO provided critical navigation data during their landings and acts as a telecommunications relay. MRO is using its onboard scientific equipment to study the Martian climate, weather, atmosphere, and geology, in addition, MRO was tasked with looking for the remains of the previously lost Mars Polar Lander and Beagle 2 spacecraft. Beagle 2 was found by the orbiter at the beginning of 2015, after its main science operations are completed, the probes extended mission is to be the communication and navigation system for landers and rover probes
14.
Dawn (spacecraft)
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Dawn is a space probe launched by NASA in September 2007 with the mission of studying two of the three known protoplanets of the asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres. It is currently in orbit about its second target, the dwarf planet Ceres, Dawn entered Vesta orbit on July 16,2011, and completed a 14-month survey mission before leaving for Ceres in late 2012. Dawn entered Ceres orbit on March 6,2015, and is predicted to remain in orbit perpetually after the conclusion of its mission, NASA considered, but decided against, a proposal to visit a third target. The Dawn mission is managed by NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with components contributed by European partners from the Netherlands, Italy. It is the first NASA exploratory mission to use ion propulsion, previous multi-target missions using conventional drives, such as the Voyager program, were restricted to flybys. The first working ion thruster was built by Harold R. Kaufman in 1959 at NASAs Glenn Research Center in Ohio, the thruster was similar to the general design of a gridded electrostatic ion thruster with mercury as its propellant. Suborbital tests of the engine followed during the 1960s, and in 1964 the engine was tested on a flight aboard the Space Electric Rocket Test 1. It successfully operated for the planned 31 minutes before falling back to Earth and this test was followed by an orbital test, SERT-2, in 1970. In addition to the ion thruster, among the other technologies validated by the DS1 was the Small Deep Space Transponder,26 proposals were submitted to the Discovery Program solicitation, with budget initially targeted at 300 million USD. Three semi-finalists were downselected in January 2001 for a design study, Dawn, Kepler. In December 2001 NASA selected the Kepler and the Dawn mission for the Discovery program, both missions were initially selected for a launch in 2006. The status of the Dawn mission changed several times, the project was cancelled in December 2003, and then reinstated in February 2004. On March 2,2006, Dawn was again cancelled by NASA, the spacecrafts manufacturer, Orbital Sciences Corporation, appealed NASAs decision, offering to build the spacecraft at cost, forgoing any profit in order to gain experience in a new market field. NASA then put the cancellation under review, and on March 27,2006, in the last week of September 2006, the Dawn missions instrument payload integration reached full functionality. Although originally projected to cost US$373 million, cost overruns inflated the final cost of the mission to US$446 million in 2007, christopher T. Russell was chosen to lead the Dawn mission team. Ceres and Vesta were chosen as two contrasting protoplanets, the first one apparently wet and the dry, whose accretion was terminated by the formation of Jupiter. The two bodies provide a bridge in scientific understanding between the formation of planets and the icy bodies of the Solar System, and under what conditions a rocky planet can hold water. Dawn is the first mission to study a dwarf planet, arriving at Ceres a few months before the arrival of the New Horizons probe at Pluto in July 2015, Ceres comprises a third of the total mass of the asteroid belt
15.
Ceres (dwarf planet)
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Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt that lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Its diameter is approximately 945 kilometers, making it the largest of the planets within the orbit of Neptune. The 33rd-largest known body in the Solar System, it is the dwarf planet within the orbit of Neptune. Composed of rock and ice, Ceres is estimated to approximately one third of the mass of the entire asteroid belt. Ceres is the object in the asteroid belt known to be rounded by its own gravity. From Earth, the apparent magnitude of Ceres ranges from 6.7 to 9.3, Ceres was the first asteroid discovered, by Giuseppe Piazzi at Palermo on 1 January 1801. It was originally considered a planet, but was reclassified as an asteroid in the 1850s after many other objects in similar orbits were discovered. Ceres appears to be differentiated into a core and icy mantle. The surface is probably a mixture of ice and various hydrated minerals such as carbonates. In January 2014, emissions of water vapor were detected from several regions of Ceres and this was unexpected, because large bodies in the asteroid belt typically do not emit vapor, a hallmark of comets. The robotic NASA spacecraft Dawn entered orbit around Ceres on 6 March 2015, pictures with a resolution previously unattained were taken during imaging sessions starting in January 2015 as Dawn approached Ceres, showing a cratered surface. Two distinct bright spots inside a crater were seen in a 19 February 2015 image, on 11 May 2015, NASA released a higher-resolution image showing that, instead of one or two spots, there are actually several. In October 2015, NASA released a true portrait of Ceres made by Dawn. In February 2017, organics were reported to have been detected on Ceres in Ernutet crater, Johann Elert Bode, in 1772, first suggested that an undiscovered planet could exist between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Kepler had already noticed the gap between Mars and Jupiter in 1596, the pattern predicted that the missing planet ought to have an orbit with a semi-major axis near 2.8 astronomical units. Although they did not discover Ceres, they found several large asteroids. One of the selected for the search was Giuseppe Piazzi. Before receiving his invitation to join the group, Piazzi discovered Ceres on 1 January 1801 and he was searching for the 87th of the Catalogue of the Zodiacal stars of Mr la Caille, but found that it was preceded by another
16.
4 Vesta
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Vesta, minor-planet designation 4 Vesta, is one of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, with a mean diameter of 525 kilometres. It was discovered by the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers on 29 March 1807 and is named after Vesta, Vesta is the second-most-massive and second-largest body in the asteroid belt after the dwarf planet Ceres, and it contributes an estimated 9% of the mass of the asteroid belt. It is slightly larger than Pallas, though more massive. Vesta is the last remaining rocky protoplanet of the kind that formed the terrestrial planets, numerous fragments of Vesta were ejected by collisions one and two billion years ago that left two enormous craters occupying much of Vestas southern hemisphere. Debris from these events has fallen to Earth as howardite–eucrite–diogenite meteorites, Vesta is the brightest asteroid visible from Earth. Its maximum distance from the Sun is slightly greater than the distance of Ceres from the Sun. NASAs Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around Vesta on 16 July 2011 for an exploration and left orbit on 5 September 2012 en route to its final destination. Researchers continue to examine data collected by Dawn for additional insights into the formation, Heinrich Olbers discovered Pallas in 1802, the year after the discovery of Ceres. He proposed that the two objects were the remnants of a destroyed planet and these orbital intersections were located in the constellations of Cetus and Virgo. Olbers commenced his search in 1802, and on 29 March 1807 he discovered Vesta in the constellation Virgo—a coincidence, because Ceres, Pallas, and Vesta are not fragments of a larger body. Because the asteroid Juno had been discovered in 1804, this made Vesta the fourth object to be identified in the region that is now known as the asteroid belt, the discovery was announced in a letter addressed to German astronomer Johann H. Schröter dated 31 March. Gauss decided on the Roman virgin goddess of home and hearth, Vesta was the fourth asteroid to be discovered, hence the number 4 in its formal designation. The name Vesta, or national variants thereof, is in use with two exceptions, Greece and China. In Greek, the name adopted was the Hellenic equivalent of Vesta, Hestia, in English, in Chinese, Vesta is called the hearth-god star, 灶神星 zàoshénxīng, in contrast to the goddess Vesta, who goes by her Latin name. Upon its discovery, Vesta was, like Ceres, Pallas, the symbol representing the altar of Vesta with its sacred fire and was designed by Gauss. In Gausss conception, this was drawn, in its modern form, after the discovery of Vesta, no further objects were discovered for 38 years, and the Solar System was thought to have eleven planets. However, in 1845, new asteroids started being discovered at a rapid pace and it soon became clear that it would be impractical to continue inventing new planetary symbols indefinitely, and some of the existing ones proved difficult to draw quickly. That year, the problem was addressed by Benjamin Apthorp Gould, who suggested numbering asteroids in their order of discovery, thus, the fourth asteroid, Vesta, acquired the generic symbol ④
17.
Juno (spacecraft)
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Juno is a NASA space probe orbiting the planet Jupiter. It was built by Lockheed Martin and is operated by NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, after completing its mission, Juno will be intentionally deorbited into Jupiters atmosphere. Junos mission is to measure Jupiters composition, gravity field, magnetic field, Juno is the second spacecraft to orbit Jupiter, after the nuclear powered Galileo orbiter, which orbited from 1995 to 2003. For Juno, however, the three largest solar array wings ever deployed on a planetary probe play an role in stabilizing the spacecraft as well as generating power. The mission had previously referred to by the backronym Jupiter Near-polar Orbiter. Juno is sometimes called New Frontiers 2 as the mission in the New Frontiers program, but is not to be confused with New Horizons 2. Juno was selected in 2005 as the next New Frontiers mission after New Horizons, the desire for Jupiter was strong in the years prior to this, but there had not been any approved missions. The flagship-level Europa Jupiter System Mission was in the works in the early 2000s, Juno completed a five-year cruise to Jupiter, arriving on July 5,2016. The spacecraft traveled a distance of roughly 2.8 billion kilometers to reach Jupiter. The spacecraft was designed to orbit Jupiter 37 times over the course of its mission and this was originally planned to take 20 months. Junos trajectory used a gravity assist speed boost from Earth, accomplished by an Earth flyby in October 2013, the spacecraft performed an orbit insertion burn to slow it enough to allow capture. It was expected to make three 53-day orbits before performing another burn on December 11 that would bring it into a 14-day polar orbit called the Science Orbit. Due to an issue in the main engine, the December 11 burn was cancelled. During the science mission, infrared and microwave instruments will measure the radiation emanating from deep within Jupiters atmosphere. These observations will complement previous studies of its composition by assessing the abundance and distribution of water and this data will provide insight into Jupiters origins. Juno will also investigate the convection that drives natural circulation patterns in Jupiters atmosphere, other instruments aboard Juno will gather data about its gravitational field and polar magnetosphere. The Juno mission was planned to conclude in February 2018, after completing 37 orbits of Jupiter, the probe was then intended to be de-orbited and burn up in Jupiters outer atmosphere, to avoid any possibility of impact and biological contamination of one of its moons. Juno was launched atop the Atlas V at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the Atlas V used a Russian-designed and -built RD-180 main engine, powered by kerosene and liquid oxygen
18.
Jupiter
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Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a giant planet with a mass one-thousandth that of the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants, the other two giant planets, Uranus and Neptune are ice giants. Jupiter has been known to astronomers since antiquity, the Romans named it after their god Jupiter. Jupiter is primarily composed of hydrogen with a quarter of its mass being helium and it may also have a rocky core of heavier elements, but like the other giant planets, Jupiter lacks a well-defined solid surface. Because of its rotation, the planets shape is that of an oblate spheroid. The outer atmosphere is visibly segregated into several bands at different latitudes, resulting in turbulence, a prominent result is the Great Red Spot, a giant storm that is known to have existed since at least the 17th century when it was first seen by telescope. Surrounding Jupiter is a faint planetary ring system and a powerful magnetosphere, Jupiter has at least 67 moons, including the four large Galilean moons discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. Ganymede, the largest of these, has a greater than that of the planet Mercury. Jupiter has been explored on several occasions by robotic spacecraft, most notably during the early Pioneer and Voyager flyby missions and later by the Galileo orbiter. In late February 2007, Jupiter was visited by the New Horizons probe, the latest probe to visit the planet is Juno, which entered into orbit around Jupiter on July 4,2016. Future targets for exploration in the Jupiter system include the probable ice-covered liquid ocean of its moon Europa, Earth and its neighbor planets may have formed from fragments of planets after collisions with Jupiter destroyed those super-Earths near the Sun. Astronomers have discovered nearly 500 planetary systems with multiple planets, Jupiter moving out of the inner Solar System would have allowed the formation of inner planets, including Earth. Jupiter is composed primarily of gaseous and liquid matter and it is the largest of the four giant planets in the Solar System and hence its largest planet. It has a diameter of 142,984 km at its equator, the average density of Jupiter,1.326 g/cm3, is the second highest of the giant planets, but lower than those of the four terrestrial planets. Jupiters upper atmosphere is about 88–92% hydrogen and 8–12% helium by percent volume of gas molecules, a helium atom has about four times as much mass as a hydrogen atom, so the composition changes when described as the proportion of mass contributed by different atoms. Thus, Jupiters atmosphere is approximately 75% hydrogen and 24% helium by mass, the atmosphere contains trace amounts of methane, water vapor, ammonia, and silicon-based compounds. There are also traces of carbon, ethane, hydrogen sulfide, neon, oxygen, phosphine, the outermost layer of the atmosphere contains crystals of frozen ammonia. The interior contains denser materials - by mass it is roughly 71% hydrogen, 24% helium, through infrared and ultraviolet measurements, trace amounts of benzene and other hydrocarbons have also been found
19.
NuSTAR
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It was successfully launched on 13 June 2012, having previously been delayed from 21 March due to software issues with the launch vehicle. After its primary mission of 2 years it is now in a 2-year mission extension to 2016, NuSTARs predecessor, the High Energy Focusing Telescope, was a balloon-borne version that carried telescopes and detectors constructed using similar technologies. In February 2003, NASA issued an Explorer Program Announcement of Opportunity, in response, NuSTAR was submitted to NASA in May, as one of 36 mission proposals vying to be the tenth and eleventh Small Explorer missions. In November, NASA selected NuSTAR and four other proposals for a five-month implementation feasibility study, in January 2005, NASA selected NuSTAR for flight pending a one-year feasibility study. The program was cancelled in February 2006 as a result of cuts to science in NASAs 2007 budget, on 21 September 2007 it was announced that the program had been restarted, with an expected launch in August 2011, though this was later delayed to June 2012. The principal investigator is Fiona A. Harrison of the California Institute of Technology, NuSTARs major industrial partners include Orbital Sciences Corporation and ATK Space Components. NASA contracted with Orbital Sciences Corporation to launch NuSTAR on a Pegasus XL rocket for 21 March 2012 and it had earlier been planned for 15 August 2011,3 February 2012,16 March 2012, and 14 March 2012. After a launch meeting on 15 March 2012, the launch was pushed back to allow time to review flight software used by the launch vehicles flight computer. The launch was conducted successfully at 16,00,37 UTC on 13 June 2012 about 117 nautical miles south of Kwajalein Atoll, the Pegasus rocket was dropped from the L-1011 Stargazer aircraft. On 22 June 2012 it was confirmed that the 10 m mast was fully deployed, unlike visible light telescopes – which employ mirrors or lenses working with normal incidence – NuSTAR has to employ grazing incidence optics to be able to focus X-rays. For this two conical approximation Wolter telescope design optics with 10.15 metres focal length are held at the end of a long deployable mast, each focusing optic consists of 133 concentric shells. One particular innovation enabling NuSTAR is that these shells are coated with depth-graded multilayers, with NuSTARs choice of Pt/SiC and W/Si multilayers, the coatings were applied by a group at the Danish Technical University. The shells were assembled, at the Nevis Laboratories of Columbia University, using graphite spacers machined to constrain the glass to the conical shape. There are 4680 mirror segments in total, there are five spacers per segment, since the epoxy takes 24 hours to cure, one shell is assembled per day – it took four months to build up one optic. Each focusing optic has its own focal plane module, consisting of a solid state cadmium zinc telluride pixel detector surrounded by a CsI anti-coincidence shield, one detector unit — or focal plane — comprises four detectors, manufactured by eV Products. CZT detectors are state-of-the-art room temperature semiconductors that are efficient at turning high energy photons into electrons. The electrons are digitally recorded using custom Application Specific Integrated Circuits designed by the NuSTAR Caltech Focal Plane Team, each pixel has an independent discriminator and individual X-ray interactions trigger the readout process. On-board processors, one for each telescope, identify the row and column with the largest pulse height, the event time is recorded to an accuracy of 2 μs relative to the on-board clock
20.
Spitzer Space Telescope
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The Spitzer Space Telescope, formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility, is an infrared space telescope launched in 2003. It is the fourth and final of the NASA Great Observatories program, the planned mission period was to be 2.5 years with a pre-launch expectation that the mission could extend to five or slightly more years until the onboard liquid helium supply was exhausted. This occurred on 15 May 2009, without liquid helium to cool the telescope to the very low temperatures needed to operate, most of the instruments are no longer usable. All Spitzer data, from both the primary and warm phases, are archived at the Infrared Science Archive, in keeping with NASA tradition, the telescope was renamed after its successful demonstration of operation, on 18 December 2003. Unlike most telescopes that are named after famous deceased astronomers by a board of scientists, the contest led to the telescope being named in honor of astronomer Lyman Spitzer, who had promoted the concept of space telescopes in the 1940s. Spitzer wrote a 1946 report for RAND Corporation describing the advantages of an extraterrestrial observatory, the US$720 million Spitzer was launched on 25 August 2003 at 05,35,39 UTC from Cape Canaveral SLC-17B aboard a Delta II 7920H rocket. It follows a heliocentric instead of orbit, trailing and drifting away from Earths orbit at approximately 0.1 astronomical unit per year. The primary mirror is 85 centimeters in diameter, f/12, made of beryllium and was cooled to 5.5 K, by the early 1970s, astronomers began to consider the possibility of placing an infrared telescope above the obscuring effects of Earths atmosphere. Anticipating the major results from an upcoming Explorer satellite and from the Shuttle mission, long-duration spaceflights of infrared telescopes cooled to cryogenic temperatures. Earlier infrared observations had been made by both space-based and ground-based observatories, ground-based observatories have the drawback that at infrared wavelengths or frequencies, both the Earths atmosphere and the telescope itself will radiate strongly. Additionally, the atmosphere is opaque at most infrared wavelengths and this necessitates lengthy exposure times and greatly decreases the ability to detect faint objects. It could be compared to trying to observe the stars at noon, previous space observatories were launched during the 1980s and 1990s and great advances in astronomical technology have been made since then. Most of the early concepts envisioned repeated flights aboard the NASA Space Shuttle and this approach was developed in an era when the Shuttle program was expected to support weekly flights of up to 30 days duration. A May 1983 NASA proposal described SIRTF as a Shuttle-attached mission, several flights were anticipated with a probable transition into a more extended mode of operation, possibly in association with a future space platform or space station. SIRTF would be a 1-meter class, cryogenically cooled, multi-user facility consisting of a telescope, the first flight was expected to occur about 1990, with the succeeding flights anticipated beginning approximately one year later. By September 1983 NASA was considering the possibility of a long duration SIRTF mission, Spitzer is the only one of the Great Observatories not launched by the Space Shuttle, as was originally intended. However, after the 1986 Challenger disaster, the Centaur LH2–LOX upper stage, the mission underwent a series of redesigns during the 1990s, primarily due to budget considerations. This resulted in a smaller but still fully capable mission that could use the smaller Delta II expendable launch vehicle
21.
Small Solar System body
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A Small Solar System Body is an object in the Solar System that is neither a planet, nor a dwarf planet, nor a natural satellite. The term was first defined in 2006 by the International Astronomical Union, all other objects, except satellites, orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as Small Solar System Bodies. These currently include most of the Solar System asteroids, most Trans-Neptunian Objects, comets and this encompasses all comets and all minor planets other than those that are dwarf planets. Except for the largest, which are in equilibrium, natural satellites differ from small Solar System bodies not in size. The orbits of satellites are not centered on the Sun, but around other Solar System objects such as planets, dwarf planets. Some of the larger small Solar System bodies may be reclassified in future as dwarf planets, the orbits of the vast majority of small Solar System bodies are located in two distinct areas, namely the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt. These two belts possess some internal structure related to perturbations by the planets, and have fairly loosely defined boundaries. Other areas of the Solar System also encompass small bodies in smaller concentrations and these include the near-Earth asteroids, centaurs, comets, and scattered disc objects
22.
Space Flight Operations Facility
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Space Flight Operations Facility is a control room and related communications equipment areas at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. NASAs Deep Space Network is operated from this facility, the SFOF has monitored and controlled all interplanetary and deep space exploration for NASA and other international space agencies since 1963. The facility also acted as a communications facility for Apollo missions. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1985 and is on the National Register of Historic Places, public tours are available with advanced planning. In the early years, the control center of the Deep Space Network did not have a permanent facility. It was a setup with numerous desks and phones installed in a large room near the computers used to calculate orbits. In July 1961, NASA started the construction of the permanent facility, the facility was completed in October 1963 dedicated on May 14,1964. In the initial setup of the SFOF, there were 31 consoles,100 closed-circuit television cameras, as of 2012, there were 22 spacecraft monitored from this facility. Depending on the operations of the spacecraft, they were scheduled to be online for 1 to 10 hours at a time, the facility also process the signal from Voyager 1 at about 11 billion miles from Earth
23.
National Historic Landmark
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A National Historic Landmark is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Of over 85,000 places listed on the countrys National Register of Historic Places, a National Historic Landmark District may include contributing properties that are buildings, structures, sites or objects, and it may include non-contributing properties. Contributing properties may or may not also be separately listed, prior to 1935, efforts to preserve cultural heritage of national importance were made by piecemeal efforts of the United States Congress. The first National Historic Site designation was made for the Salem Maritime National Historic Site on March 17,1938. In 1960, the National Park Service took on the administration of the data gathered under this legislation. Because listings often triggered local preservation laws, legislation in 1980 amended the procedures to require owner agreement to the designations. On October 9,1960,92 properties were announced as designated NHLs by Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton, more than 2,500 NHLs have been designated. Most, but not all, are in the United States, there are NHLs in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Three states account for nearly 25 percent of the nations NHLs, three cities within these states all separately have more NHLs than 40 of the 50 states. In fact, New York City alone has more NHLs than all but five states, Virginia, California, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, there are 74 NHLs in the District of Columbia. Some NHLs are in U. S. commonwealths and territories, associated states, and foreign states. There are 15 in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and other U. S. commonwealths and territories,5 in U. S. -associated states such as Micronesia, over 100 ships or shipwrecks have been designated as NHLs. About half of the National Historic Landmarks are privately owned, the National Historic Landmarks Program relies on suggestions for new designations from the National Park Service, which also assists in maintaining the landmarks. A friends group of owners and managers, the National Historic Landmark Stewards Association, works to preserve, protect, if not already listed on the National Register of Historic Places, an NHL is automatically added to the Register upon designation. About three percent of Register listings are NHLs, american Water Landmark List of U. S
24.
Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory
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The Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, was a research institute created in 1926, at first specializing in aeronautics research. In 1930, Hungarian scientist Theodore von Kármán accepted the directorship of the lab, under his leadership, work on rockets began there in 1936. GALCIT was the first—and from 1936 to 1940 the only—university-based rocket research center, based on GALCITs JATO project at the time, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was established under a contract with the United States Army in November 1943. In 1961 the GALCIT acronym was retained while the name changed to Graduate Aeronautical Laboratories at the California Institute of Technology, Daniel Guggenheim and his son, Harry Guggenheim established the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics on June 16,1926. It was the Guggenheims who, along with Caltech president Robert Andrews Millikan, convinced von Kármán to emigrate to the United States, frank J. Malina began part-time work at the GALCIT ten-foot wind tunnel, the Southern California Cooperative Wind Tunnel. In 1935 he became a Graduate Assistant in the lab, in early 1936, with the aid of a graduate assistant to von Kármán, William Bollay, Malina and two rocket enthusiasts -- Jack Parsons and Edward S. Forman—began the GALCIT Rocket Research Project. They were soon joined by two GALCIT graduate students, Tsien Hsue-shen and A. M. O, in October they tested for the first time their gaseous oxygen - methyl alcohol rocket motor. They used an area of the Arroyo Seco on the edge of Pasadena. After a series of tests, they tested the motor in that location for the last time in January 1937, in March, Weld Arnold, then an assistant in the Astrophysical Laboratory at Caltech, joined the group as a photographer. Tests of a motor that used nitrogen dioxide as the oxidizer were conducted in the GALCIT lab, a misfire of that motor gained the project the nickname, The Suicide Squad. During 1938 Smith went to work for Douglas Aircraft, Arnold left Caltech for New York. Tsien devoted more of his time to completing his doctorate, Malina, Parsons and Forman continued with the project. In early 1939, the National Academy of Sciences provided $1,000 to von Kármán and this JATO research was the first rocket research to receive financial support from the U. S. government. In 1942, Rolf Sabersky was hired to work in design on the Southern California Cooperative Wind Tunnel under Mark Serrurier. In 1943 the Army Air Forces asked GALCIT to study the use of rockets to propel long-range missiles. In response, Malina and Tsien wrote a report dated 20 November 1943, von Kármán added a cover memorandum, signing it as Director, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but as far as Caltech was concerned JPL did not yet formally exist. In early 1944 the United States Army asked GALCIT to develop missiles for use, which led to the development of the Private, Corporal. The Army Ordnance Corps established the ORDCIT Project, and JPL/GALCIT was formally organized to carry out this work
25.
Arroyo Seco (Los Angeles County)
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The Arroyo Seco, meaning dry stream in Spanish, is a 24. 9-mile-long seasonal river, canyon, watershed, and cultural area in Los Angeles County, California. The area was explored by Gaspar de Portolà who named the stream Arroyo Seco as this canyon had the least water of any they had seen, during this exploration he met the Chief Hahamog-na of the Tongva Indians. The watershed begins at Red Box Saddle in the Angeles National Forest near Mount Wilson in the San Gabriel Mountains, as it enters the urbanized area of the watershed, the Arroyo Seco stream flows between La Cañada Flintridge on the west and Altadena on the east. Just below Devils Gate Dam, the stream passes underneath the Foothill Freeway, at the north end of Brookside Golf Course the stream becomes channelized into a flood control channel and proceeds southward through the golf course. The Arroyo Seco goes through Pasadena, where it passes the Rose Bowl Stadium as it goes through Brookside Park. The Arroyo Seco stream, which is fed by a watershed of 46.7 square miles, helps to replenish the Raymond Basin, an aquifer underlying Pasadena that provides about half of the local water supply. This arroyo is one of two streams that capture rainfall and storm water in Pasadena, the other being Eaton Wash on the eastern side of the city. The Arroyo Seco then passes under the Ventura Freeway and the Colorado Street Bridge, the channel continues along the western boundary of South Pasadena, then into northeast Los Angeles flowing southeast of the Verdugo Mountains and Mount Washington. The Arroyo Seco then proceeds through the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Highland Park, Hermon, Montecito Heights and it ends at the confluence with the Los Angeles River near Elysian Park, north of Dodger Stadium and Downtown Los Angeles. The Arroyo Seco Parkway, or Pasadena Freeway, runs parallel to the channelized Arroyo Seco from South Pasadena to the Los Angeles River, above Devils Gate, the rapids of the Arroyo Seco are positioned so that the falls make a beating, laughing sound. In Tongva-Gabrieliño traditional narratives, this is attributed to a wager made between the river and the coyote spirit, the Arroyo Seco was one of the Los Angeles River tributaries explored by Gaspar de Portola in the late summer and fall of 1770. He named the stream Arroyo Seco, for of all the canyons he had seen, during this exploration he met the Chief Hahamog-na near Millard Canyon, at the settlement later known as Hahamongna - California. This band of the Tongva Indians would end up gathered into the fold of the San Gabriel Mission and with other bands, the Arroyo Seco region can be considered by historical accounts as the birthplace of Pasadena. After the 1820s secularization of the Missions, the area to the east of the Arroyo was the Mexican land grant of Rancho San Pascual, present-day Pasadena. Manuel Garfias was the grantee of the Rancho and its longest early resident and his adobe house was on the east ridge of the Arroyo, in present-day South Pasadena. However, the deep and seasonally flooded Arroyo presented a barrier to easy travel, stories of four and five hours just crossing the chasm, whether exaggerated or not, abounded in Pasadena history. The first recorded American to live in the Upper Arroyo was simply known as Old Man Brunk, brunks cabin stood at a large bend in the canyon, roughly where the Forest Service housing is today. It was said he left San Francisco for that towns good, dating back to the original Tongva residents of the area, the Arroyo Seco canyon has always served as a major transportation corridor
26.
Frank Malina
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Frank Joseph Malina was an American aeronautical engineer and painter, especially known for becoming both a pioneer in the art world and the realm of scientific engineering. Malina was born in Brenham, Texas, franks formal education began with a degree in mechanical engineering from Texas A&M University in 1934. The formal goal was development of a sounding rocket, Malina and five associates became known at Caltech as the Suicide Squad because of their dangerous experiments when testing rocket motor designs. Malinas group was forced to move their operations away from the main Caltech campus into the more remote Arroyo Seco and this site and the research Malina was conducting would later become the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Malina served as the second Director of JPL, in 1939, the Société astronomique de France awarded Malina the Prix dAstronautique for his contribution to the study of interplanetary travel and astronautics. In 1942, von Kármán, Malina and three other students started the Aerojet Corporation, by late 1945, Malinas rockets had outgrown the facility at Arroyo Seco, and his tests were moved to White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Here, the projects Wac Corporal sounding rocket was the first U. S. rocket to break the 50-mile altitude mark, Malinas passing interest in the Communist Party and labor activism while he was a graduate student in the 1930s had also attracted the attention of the FBI. He moved to France and joined the fledgling United Nations as secretariat of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, in 1951, Malina became head of UNESCOs division of scientific research. Two years later, Malina left UNESCO to pursue an interest in kinetic art, in 1952, at the height of the Red Scare, Malina was indicted for having failed to list his Communist Party membership on an old security questionnaire from Caltech. He was declared a fugitive, to be arrested if and when he returned to the United States, the Leonardo Journal is still published as of 2015 as a project of Leonardo/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology. Frank Malina died in 1981 in Boulogne Billancourt, near Paris and his widow Marjorie Duckworth Malina died in 2006. Their sons Roger and Alan Malina live and work in France, GALCIT Qian Xuesen Malina, Frank Joseph. Frank Malina On Line Archive Biography at the Wayback Machine Frank Malina timeline Leonardo Journal JPL history MG Lord, astro Turf, The Private Life of Rocket Science. Includes a detailed account of Malinas post-JPL life, by a scholar who had access to his FBI file Propulsion –– The documentary, Huffington Post
27.
Qian Xuesen
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Qian Xuesen or Hsue-Shen Tsien was a Chinese engineer who contributed to aerodynamics and rocket science. Recruited from MIT, he joined Theodore von Karmans group at Caltech, later he returned to China as Qian Xuesen and made important contributions to Chinas missile and space program. During the Second Red Scare in the 1950s, the United States government accused Tsien of communist sympathies, in 1950, despite protests by his colleagues, he was stripped of his security clearance. Tsien decided to return to China, but was detained at Terminal Island near Los Angeles, after spending five years under virtual house arrest, in 1955 Tsien was released in exchange for the repatriation of American pilots captured during the Korean War. He left the United States in September 1955 on the American President Lines passenger liner SS President Cleveland, upon his return, Tsien helped lead the Chinese nuclear weapons program. Additionally, Qians work led to the development of the Dongfeng ballistic missile, for his contributions, he became known as the Father of Chinese Rocketry, nicknamed the King of Rocketry. In 1957, in recognition of his achievements, Qian was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tsien was the cousin of mechanical engineer Hsue-Chu Tsien, who was involved in the aerospace industries of China and the United States, his nephew is Roger Y. Tsien, the 2008 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, named after him are Asteroid 3763 Qianxuesen and the ill-fated space ship Tsien in the science fiction novel 2010, Odyssey Two. Qian Xuesen was born in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province,180 km southwest of Shanghai and he left Hangzhou at the age of three when his father obtained a post in the Ministry of Education in Beijing. Qian graduated from The High School Affiliated to Beijing Normal University and attended Chiao Tung University, later known as Shanghai Jiao Tong University, there, he received a degree in mechanical engineering with an emphasis on railroad administration. He interned at Nanchang Air Force Base, while at MIT he was called Hsue-Shen Tsien. He was influenced by the methods of American engineering education, especially its focus on experimentation and this was in contrast to the contemporary approach practiced by many Chinese scientists, which emphasized theoretical elements rather than hands-on experience. Tsiens experiments included plotting of pitot pressures using mercury-filled manometers, shortly after arriving at Caltech in 1936, Tsien became fascinated with the rocketry ideas of Frank Malina, other students of von Kármán, and their associates, including Jack Parsons. Along with his students, he was involved in rocket-related experiments at the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at Caltech. Around the university, the dangerous and explosive nature of their work earned them the nickname Suicide Squad and this led to Private A, which flew in 1944, and later the Corporal, the WAC Corporal, and other designs. S. Space program was being quizzed by the father of the future Chinese space program, during this time, he also worked on designing an intercontinental space plane. His work would inspire the X-20 Dyna-Soar, which itself would later influence the development of the American Space Shuttle, Tsien married Jiang Ying, a famed opera singer and the daughter of Jiang Baili and his wife, Japanese nurse Satô Yato. The elder Jiang was a military strategist and adviser to Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek, shortly after his wedding, Tsien returned to America to take up a teaching position at MIT. Jiang Ying would join him in December 1947
28.
Jack Parsons (rocket engineer)
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John Whiteside Jack Parsons was an American rocket engineer and rocket propulsion researcher, chemist, and Thelemite occultist. Associated with the California Institute of Technology, Parsons was one of the founders of both the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Aerojet Engineering Corporation. He invented the first rocket engine to use a castable, composite rocket propellant, born in Los Angeles, Parsons was raised by a wealthy family on Orange Grove Avenue in Pasadena. Inspired by science fiction literature, he developed an interest in rocketry in his childhood, in 1939 the GALCIT Group gained funding from the National Academy of Sciences to work on Jet-Assisted Take Off for the U. S. military. Following American entry into World War II, in 1942 they founded Aerojet to develop and sell their JATO technology, after a brief involvement with Marxism in 1939, Parsons converted to Thelema, the English occultist Aleister Crowleys new religious movement. In 1941, alongside his first wife Helen Northrup, Parsons joined the Agape Lodge, at Crowleys bidding, he replaced Wilfred Talbot Smith as its leader in 1942 and ran the Lodge from his mansion on Orange Grove Avenue. Parsons was expelled from JPL and Aerojet in 1944 due to the Lodges infamy and allegedly illicit activities and he and Hubbard continued the procedure with Marjorie Cameron, whom Parsons married in 1946. After Hubbard and Sara defrauded him of his savings, Parsons resigned from the O. T. O. Amid the climate of McCarthyism, he was accused of espionage, in 1952, Parsons died at the age of 37 in a home laboratory explosion that attracted national media attention, the police ruled it an accident, but many associates suspected suicide or assassination. Although academic interest in his career was originally negligible, in subsequent decades historians came to recognize Parsons contributions to rocket engineering. S. He has been the subject of biographies and fictionalized portrayals. Marvel Whiteside Parsons was born on October 2,1914, at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. His parents, Ruth Virginia Whiteside and Marvel H. Parsons, had moved to California from Massachusetts the previous year and their son was his fathers namesake, but was known in the household as Jack. The marriage broke down soon after Jacks birth, when Ruth discovered that his father had numerous visits to a prostitute. Parsons father returned to Massachusetts after being exposed as an adulterer. Parsons father later joined the forces, reaching the rank of major, and married a woman with whom he had a son named Charles. Although she retained her ex-husbands surname, Ruth started calling her son John, Jack was surrounded by domestic servants. Having few friends, he lived a childhood and spent much time reading, he took a particular interest in works of mythology, Arthurian legend
29.
JATO
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JATO, is a type of assisted take-off for helping overloaded aircraft into the air by providing additional thrust in the form of small rockets. The term JATO is used interchangeably with the term RATO, for rocket-assisted take-off, early experiments using rockets to boost gliders into the air were conducted in Germany in the 1920s, and later both the Royal Air Force and the Luftwaffe introduced such systems in World War II. After firing, the rocket was released from the back of the plane to fall into the water, the task done, the pilot would fly to friendly territory if possible or parachute from the plane, hopefully to be picked up by one of the escort vessels. Over two years the system was only employed nine times to attack German aircraft with eight kills recorded for the loss of a single pilot. The use of reaction-assisted takeoff methods became especially important late in the war when the lengths of usable runways were severely curtailed due to the results of Allied bombing. A parachute pack at the front of the motors exterior housing was used to slow its fall after being released from the plane. Two prototypes of the Heimatschützer versions of the Me 262 were built and test flown, in late 1941 von Kármán and his team attached several 50-pound thrust, solid fuel Aerojet JATOs to a light Ercoupe plane, and Army Captain Homer Boushey took off on test runs. On the last run they removed the propeller, attached six JATO units under the wings, and Boushey was thrust into the air for a short flight, both armed services used solid fuel JATO during the war. As the take-off thrust of jet engines has grown, JATO has fallen from favor and it is still used, however, when heavily-laden aircraft need to take off from short runways or when operating in Hot and high conditions. The US Air Force used a modified Republic F-84, designated EF-84G, the Soviet VVS used a modified MiG-19 fighter, designated SM-30, launched from a special launcher, and using a nearly identical solid-fueled rocket booster design to that of the EF-84G. The F-100 and F-104 were also used for zero-length launch experiments, the JATO Junior was an attempt by Aerojet Engineering to introduce smaller JATO units to small commercial aircraft, but was blocked by the U. S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics. The Boeing 727 had provision for Aerojet JATO assist for use in hot, the JATO Rocket Car is an urban legend that relates the story of a car equipped with JATO units that is later found smashed into a mountainside. This story is given as an example of a Darwin Award, it appears to be apocryphal. The legend has been examined several times on the Discovery Channel show MythBusters, for the first attempt, in a 2003 pilot episode, the crew replicated the scene and the thrust of the JATO with some commercially available amateur rocket motors. The car did go very fast, outrunning the chase helicopter, but nowhere near the 300 mph reported in the original story, and failed to become airborne. The myth was revisited in 2007, using a different configuration of rockets in an attempt to make the car fly, the myth was again revisited in 2013 in the 1st Episode of Mythbusters Series 12 - as a celebration for the 10th year on air. A JATO-equipped 1958 Dodge Coronet car on the El Mirage dry lake was used for a TV advertisement to demonstrate the power of their total contact brakes and this was broadcast during The Lawrence Welk Show in the late 1950s. Notes Video of the Heinkel He 111 fitted with Walters rocket boosters Birth of JATO, popular Science, July 1946, pp. 74–75
30.
MGM-5 Corporal
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The MGM-5 Corporal missile was a nuclear-armed tactical ground to ground missile. It was the first guided weapon authorized by the United States to carry a nuclear warhead, a guided tactical ballistic missile, the Corporal could deliver either a nuclear fission or high-explosive warhead up to a range of 75 nautical miles. The first U. S. Army Corporal battalion was deployed in Europe in 1955, six U. S. battalions were deployed and remained in the field until 1964, when the system was replaced by the solid-fueled MGM-29 Sergeant missile system. The Corporal was first developed at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico and it came out of the project ORDCIT series of rockets developed by the Army and the forerunner to Caltechs Jet Propulsion Laboratory. After being sold to the United Kingdom in 1954, it became the first U. S. guided missile destined for service in a country to be used by a foreign power. For what was the front line of defense, the Corporal missile was notoriously unreliable. For guidance, it employed commands sent through a reworked World War II-era radar system, until 1955, its in-flight accuracy was less than 50%, with only modest improvements thereafter. The first year of British test firings in 1959 yielded a success rate of only 46%, guidance consisted of a complex system of internal and ground guidance. During the initial phase, inertial guidance kept the missile in a vertical position. The ground guidance system was a modified SCR584 pulse tracking radar which measured the missiles azimuth and elevation and this information was sent to an analog computer which calculated the trajectory and any necessary correction to hit the target. A Doppler radar was used to measure the velocity and this information was also used in the trajectory calculation. The Doppler radar was used to send the final range correction. Transponder beacons were used in the missile to provide a return signal, in Germany, frequent unannounced Alerts were performed—necessitating assembling all personnel and moving vehicles and missiles to a pre-assigned assembly point. From there the battalion would move to a launch site—usually somewhere in a remote forest—set up the missile on its launcher and this was not a trivial operation as these electronic systems were all vacuum tubes. A mock firing would be performed and the battalion would be gone as soon as possible in order to not be a target of counter-battery fire. The deployment in the field during an Alert was amazingly swift due to the trained crews. Live-fire training for Germany- based US Forces took place at Fort Bliss, missiles were fired toward designated target coordinates in the Atlantic Ocean. Radar on St Kilda, Scotland scored successful firings, frequently, Soviet fishing trawlers would intrude into the target area
31.
MGM-29 Sergeant
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The MGM-29 Sergeant was an American short-range, solid fuel, surface-to-surface missile developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The missiles were built by Sperry Utah Company, activated by the US Army in 1962 to replace the MGM-5 Corporal, it was deployed in Europe and South Korea by 1963, carrying the W52 nuclear warhead or alternatively one of high explosives. A biological warhead, the M210, was standardized but not procured, and there was also a chemical variant and it was replaced by the MGM-52 Lance and the last US Army battalion was deactivated in 1977. It avoided the Corporals liquid-fuel-handling drawbacks, but still requiring extensive setup and checkout before launch, more advanced missiles, such as the contemporary Blue Water and later Lance, would reduce setup time. The Sergeant had a takeoff thrust of 200 kilonewtons, a weight of 4,530 kilograms, a diameter of 790 millimetres, a length of 10.52 metres. The Sergeant missile had a range of 40 kilometres
32.
Aerobee
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The Aerobee rocket was a small unguided suborbital sounding rocket used for high atmospheric and cosmic radiation research in the United States in the 1950s. Research utilizing V-2 rockets after World War II produced valuable results concerning the nature of cosmic rays, the spectrum. The limited supply and the expense of assembling and firing the V-2 rockets led to the development of a low cost sounding rocket to be utilized for scientific research, the Aerobee drastically reduced the cost of a single research mission. It was built by Aerojet General, the company began work in 1946 and test fired the first complete Aerobee from the White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico on November 24,1947. It reached an altitude of 34.7 miles, the rocket was two stage with a solid-fuel boost and a nitric acid/aniline sustainer. The rockets could reach around 230 km, instrumentation usually provided constant telemetry and was recovered by parachute. For accurate pointing special gimbal mounts were developed, Aerobees were launched from 53 m tall launch towers to provide the necessary stability until the rockets gained enough speed for their fins to be effective in controlling attitude. Launch towers were built at the White Sands Missile Range, Churchill Rocket Research Range, Wallops Flight Facility, the Aerobee could take a 68 kg payload to an altitude of 130 km. The first instrument-carrying Aerobee was the A-5, launched on March 5,1948 from White Sands, carrying instruments for cosmic radiation research, when the last Aerobee flew at White Sands in 1958, around 165 had been successfully fired at that location. Variants of the Aerobee were launched in 1968 and 1969 for research relating to the Apollo program, the Aerojet engineers also developed the Aerobee-Hi. A total of 1,037 Aerobees were launched from all locations,4,335 lb Payload weight. 150-500 lb Thrust. 4X4100 lbf Duration.52.7 s Impulse.864,000 lbf s NAR designation. 4 X T18,000 In Men into Space, a 1960 tie-in novel by Murray Leinster for the TV series of the same name, Ed McCauley makes the first manned suborbital spaceflight in the nose-cone of an Aerobee
33.
White Sands Missile Range
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White Sands Missile Range is a United States Army military testing area of almost 3,200 sq mi in parts of five counties in southern New Mexico. Just seven days later, the first atomic bomb test, code named Trinity was exploded at Trinity Site, designated historic sites on WSMR land include, Trinity Site, Selected in November 1944 for the Trinity nuclear test conducted on 16 July 1945. White Sands V-2 Launching Site, A V-2 static test firing was 15 March 1946, the White Sands Test Center headquartered at the WSMR Post Area has branches for Manned Tactical Systems & Electromagnetic Radiation and conducts missile testing and range recovery operations. White Sands Hall of Fame, which inducts members such as the first range commander, Col. Harold Turner,1972 DoD Centers for Countermeasures, which evaluate precision guided munitions and other devices in electronic counter- and counter-countermeasures environments. 1963 NASA White Sands Test Facilitys ground station for Tracking and Data Relay Satellites, the North Oscura Peak facility of the AFRL Directed Energy Directorate 1930, Robert Goddard began rocket testing in New Mexico. 1940s, When the range was formed, ranchers land was leased and, in the 1970s, 1941-12, Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range established near the West Texas Bombardier Triangle. 1941-12, Executive Order No.9029 canceled grazing leases on the newly established Alamogordo Bombing, 1942-07, Goddards rocket research group moved from Roswell, New Mexico, to Annapolis, Maryland. 1944-02, War Department and the Corps of Engineers Ordnance Department teams looked for a US missile test site, 1945-07-13, McDonald Ranch House, Manhattan Project location for the final assembly of the prototype Fat Man plutonium bomb. 1945-07-16, Trinity test of the bomb, the first nuclear weapon tested in the world. 1945-02-20, The Secretary of War approved establishment of WSPG, 1945-04-01, The first Private F launch was at WSPG. 1945-06-25, WSPG construction began with drilling of water wells, 1945-07, First of 300 railroad cars of German V-2 components began to arrive at Las Cruces, New Mexico. 1945-09, The blockhouse at Army Launch Area 1 was completed, 1945-09-16, First WAC Corporal test firing. 1945-11, GE contractors began to identify, sort, and reassemble V-2 components in Building 1538,1946,35 of the Operation Paperclip scientists from Germany were working at WSPG. 1946-05-26, The 4th U. S. V-2 launch was tracked by two AN/MPQ-2 stations,1946 summer, New WSPG quarters were completed and the Medical Detachment and 3 batteries moved from Ft Bliss. 1946-09, First static firing of a Nike missile was at WSPG,1947, A merging of military areas established the New Mexico Joint Guided Missile Test Range. 1947-11-14, The USAFs Alamogordo Guided Missile Test Base on the range had its first GAPA missile launch, 1948-05 to 1949-4, First six flight attempts for the Project Bumper two-stage V-2 SRBM/WAC Corporal two-stage research vehicles as the worlds first high-speed multistage rockets to be launched. 1949, German scientists transferred from New Mexico to Alabama 1949-07, 1951-07, The AGMTB became a sub-base of Floridas Air Force Missile Test Center until 31 August 1952. 1951-08-22, Broomstick Scientists in a unit of the 9393 Technical Service Unit conducted their first launch, 1952-05, An additional 40 mi ×117 mi was set aside for the Alamogordo bombing range, White Sands proving ground, and the Fort Bliss antiaircraft range
34.
Edwards Air Force Base
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Edwards Air Force Base is a United States Air Force installation in southern California, located approximately 22 miles northeast of Lancaster and 15 miles east of Rosamond. It operates the U. S. Air Force Test Pilot School and is home to NASAs Armstrong Flight Research Center, previously known as Muroc Air Force Base, Edwards AFB is named in honor of Captain Glen Edwards. Edwards became a test pilot in 1943 and spent much of his time at Muroc Army Air Field, on Californias high desert and he died in the crash of a Northrop YB-49 flying wing near Muroc AFB on 5 June 1948. The base is next to Rogers Dry Lake, an endorheic salt pan whose hard dry lake surface provides a natural extension to Edwards runways. This large landing area, combined with excellent year-round weather, makes the good for flight testing. The lake is a National Historic Landmark, the base has played a significant role in the development of virtually every aircraft to enter the Air Force inventory since World War II. Almost every United States military aircraft since the 1950s has been at least partially tested at Edwards, the Wing also oversees the base’s day-to-day operations and provides support for military, federal civilian, and contract personnel assigned to Edwards AFB. 412th Operations Group. There are eight flight test squadrons under the 412th Operations Group with as many as 20 aircraft assigned to each, the 412 OS flies an average of 90 aircraft with upwards of 30 different aircraft designs. It also performs more than 7,400 missions on an annual basis and they provide the tools, talent and equipment for the core disciplines of aircraft structures, propulsion, avionics and electronic warfare evaluation of the latest weapon system technologies. The Project and Resource Management Divisions provide the foundation for the program management of test missions. 412th Civil Engineer Division 412th Maintenance Group 412th Medical Group 412th Mission Support Group U. S, the comprehensive curriculum of Test Pilot School is fundamental to the success of flight test and evaluation. There are a vast array of organizations at Edwards that do not fall under the 412th Test Wing and these units do everything from providing an on-base grocery store to testing state-of-the-art rockets. The 31st Test and Evaluation Squadron provides Air Combat Command personnel to support combined test, established in 1917, it is one of the oldest units of the United States Air Force. The Desert Pirates are part of the 53d Test and Evaluation Group, Nellis AFB, Nevada, the 31st is staffed with a mixture of operations, maintenance and engineering experts who plan and conduct tests, evaluate effectiveness and suitability, and influence system design. The squadrons personnel are integrated into the B-1, B-2, B-52, Global Hawk, MQ-9 and their results and conclusions support Department of Defense acquisition, deployment and employment decisions. AFOTEC Detachment 5 is responsible for conducting the operational test and evaluation of USAF aircraft, certification by Detachment 5 is required in advance prior to new aircraft prior to AFMC full rate production and combat fielding decisions. During 1978 and 1979, an AFFTC test pilot and a pair of flight test engineers were engaged in testing with Lockheeds low-observable technology demonstrator. The successful conduct of tests led immediately to the development of the F-117A Nighthawk
35.
Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex
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The Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, commonly called the Goldstone Observatory, is located in the Mojave Desert near Barstow in the U. S. state of California. Operated by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administrations Jet Propulsion Laboratory, its purpose is to track. It is named after Goldstone, California, a nearby gold-mining ghost town, the complex includes the Pioneer Deep Space Station, which is a U. S. National Historic Landmark. The current communications complex is one of three in the NASA Deep Space Network, the others being the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex and the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex. Five large parabolic antennas are located at the Goldstone site to handle the workload, the antennas function similarly to a home satellite dish. The radio frequencies used for communication are in the microwave part of the radio spectrum, S band, X band. In addition to receiving radio signals from the spacecraft, the antennas transmit commands to the spacecraft with high power radio transmitters powered by klystron tubes. A major goal in the design of the station is to reduce interference with the weak incoming downlink radio signals by natural, the remote Mojave Desert location was chosen because it is far from manmade sources of radio noise such as motor vehicles. The RF front ends of the receivers at the dishes use ruby masers. It is commonly believed that the first American satellite, Explorer 1, was confirmed to be in orbit by the use of the phrase Goldstone has the bird. However, Goldstone was not in operation at the time of Explorer 1, others claim that the actual phrase was Gold has it. Incorrectly identifying Gold as a tracking station at Earthquake Valley, east of Julian. In fact, Gold Station was located at the Air Force Missile Test Center in Florida, the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex conducts tours of its facility and museum to middle and high schools, as well as individuals interested in visiting. The DSS14, Mars telescope is specifically quoted in the webcomic Wondermark, episode 881 In which a Standard is Questioned
36.
Apollo Lunar Module
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After completing its mission, the LM was discarded. It was capable of only in outer space, structurally and aerodynamically it was incapable of flight through the Earths atmosphere. The Lunar Module was the first manned spacecraft to operate exclusively in the vacuum of space. It was the first, and to date only, crewed vehicle to land on an object in the solar system other than the Earth. Six such craft successfully landed on the Moon between 1969 and 1972, a seventh provided propulsion and life support for the crew of Apollo 13 when their CSM was disabled by an oxygen tank explosion en route to the Moon. The LMs development was plagued with problems which delayed its first unmanned flight by about ten months, despite this, the LM eventually became the most reliable component of the Apollo/Saturn space vehicle, the only component never to suffer a failure that significantly affected a mission. The total cost of the LM for development and the produced was $21. 3B in 2016 dollars. At launch, the Lunar Module sat directly beneath the Command/Service Module with legs folded, there it remained through earth parking orbit and the Trans Lunar Injection rocket burn to send the craft toward the Moon. Soon after TLI, the SLA opened and the CSM separated, turned around, came back to dock with the Lunar Module, during the flight to the Moon, the docking hatches were opened and the LM Pilot entered the LM to temporarily power up and test its systems. Throughout the flight, he performed the role of an engineering officer, at this point, the engine was started again for Powered Descent Initiation. During this time the crew flew on their backs, depending on the computer to slow the crafts forward, Control was exercised with a combination of engine throttling and attitude thrusters, guided by the computer with the aid of landing radar. During the braking phase altitude decreased to approximately 10,000 feet, during final approach, the vehicle pitched over to a near-vertical position, allowing the crew to look forward and down to see the lunar surface for the first time. Finally the landing began, approximately 2,000 feet uprange of the targeted landing site. Beginning with Apollo 14, increased LM fuel was available for the powered descent and landing, by using the CSM engine to achieve the 50. After the spacecraft undocked, the CSM raised and circularized its orbit for the remainder of the mission. When ready to leave the Moon, the LM would separate the descent stage and fire the ascent engine to back into orbit. After a few course correction burns, the LM would rendezvous with the CSM and dock for transfer of the crew, having completed its job, the LM was separated and sent into solar orbit or to crash into the Moon. The Lunar Module was designed after NASA chose to reach the Moon via Lunar Orbit Rendezvous instead of the ascent or Earth Orbit Rendezvous methods
37.
Wernher von Braun
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He was one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany, where he was a member of the Nazi Party and the SS. In his twenties and early thirties, von Braun worked in Germanys rocket development program, following the war, von Braun worked for the United States Army on an intermediate-range ballistic missile program before his group was assimilated into NASA. In 1975, he received the National Medal of Science and he continued insisting on the human mission to Mars throughout his life. Wernher von Braun was born on 23 March 1912 in the town of Wirsitz, in the Posen Province. He was the second of three sons and he belonged to a noble family, inheriting the German title of Freiherr. His father, conservative civil servant Magnus Freiherr von Braun, served as a Minister of Agriculture in the Reich Cabinet during the Weimar Republic, Von Braun had an older brother, Sigismund, and a younger brother, also named Magnus. After Wernher von Brauns Lutheran confirmation, his mother gave him a telescope, the family moved to Berlin in 1915 where his father worked at the Ministry of the Interior. He was taken into custody by the police until his father came to collect him. Wernher von Braun was an amateur pianist who could play Beethoven. He learned to both the cello and the piano at an early age and at one time wanted to become a composer. He took lessons from the composer Paul Hindemith, the few pieces of von Braun’s youthful compositions that exist are reminiscent of Hindemith’s style. Beginning in 1925, von Braun attended a school at Ettersburg Castle near Weimar. There he acquired a copy of By Rocket into Planetary Space by rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth, in 1928, his parents moved him to the Hermann-Lietz-Internat on the East Frisian North Sea island of Spiekeroog. Space travel had always fascinated von Braun, and from then on he applied himself to physics and mathematics to pursue his interest in rocket engineering. In 1930, he attended the Technische Hochschule Berlin, where he joined the Spaceflight Society, in spring 1932, he graduated from the Technische Hochschule Berlin, with a diploma in mechanical engineering. His early exposure to rocketry convinced him that the exploration of space would require far more applications of the current engineering technology. He also studied at ETH Zürich, although he worked mainly on military rockets in his later years there, space travel remained his primary interest. In 1930, von Braun attended a presentation given by Auguste Piccard, after the talk the young student approached the famous pioneer of high-altitude balloon flight, and stated to him, You know, I plan on traveling to the Moon at some time
38.
Army Ballistic Missile Agency
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The Army Ballistic Missile Agency was formed to develop the US Armys first large ballistic missile. The agency was established at Redstone Arsenal on 1 February 1956, Medaris with Wernher von Braun as technical director. The Redstone missile was the first major project assigned to ABMA, the Redstone was a direct descendant of the V-2 missile developed by the von Braun team in Germany during World War II. Von Braun continued work on the design for what became the Jupiter-C IRBM and this was a three-stage rocket, which, by coincidence, could be used to launch a satellite in the Juno I configuration. In September 1956, the Jupiter-C was launched with a 30-lb dummy satellite and it was generally believed that the ABMA could have put a satellite into orbit at that time, had the US government allowed ABMA to do so. A year later, the Soviets launched Sputnik 1, when the Vanguard rocket failed, a Redstone-based Jupiter-C launched Americas first satellite, Explorer 1, on 31 January 1958. Redstone was later used as a vehicle in Project Mercury. Redstone was also deployed by the U. S. Army as the PGM-11, studies began in 1956 for a replacement for the Redstone missile. Initially called the Redstone-S, the name was changed to MGM-31 Pershing, in early 1958, NACAs Stever Committee included consultation from the ABMAs large booster program, headed by Wernher von Braun. Von Brauns Group was referred to as the Working Group on Vehicular Program, General Medaris was placed in command of AOMC and BG John A. Barclay took command of ABMA. On 1 July 1960, the AOMC space-related missions and most of its employees, facilities, Wernher von Braun was named MSFC director. BG Richard M. Hurst took command of ABMA from May 1960 until December 1961 when both ABMA and ARGMA were abolished and the remnants were folded directly into AOMC, in 1962, AOMC was restructured into the new US Army Missile Command. Medaris is credited with stating that if rockets had biblical names, the V-2 would be called Adam
39.
Redstone Arsenal
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Many of these units are moving due to decisions by the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission. The Redstone Arsenal CDP had a population of 1,946 as of the 2010 census, the base contains a government and contractor workforce that averages 36,000 to 40,000 personnel daily. The team first worked on ballistic missiles, starting with V-2 rocket derivatives before moving on to a series of larger designs. Many of their tests were carried out at White Sands Missile Range, in late 1956 the Army was relieved of most of its ballistic missiles in favor of similar weapons operated by the US Air Force. The German design team was spun off to become part of the newly founded NASA. Redstone served as the site for space launch vehicle design into the 1960s. Redstone Arsenal is located at 34°41′03″N 86°39′15″W, according to the U. S. Census Bureau, the Redstone CDP has a total area of 7.8 square miles, all land. Redstone Arsenal contains extensive wetland areas associated with the Tennessee River and several local springs, a total of 651 prehistoric archaeological sites were recorded on Redstone Arsenal to date. At least 22 have components dating to the Paleo-Indian period, the Paleo-Indian projectile point called the Redstone Point was named after Redstone Arsenal where it was first identified. Euroamerican settlers began to establish homesteads on the land that is now Redstone Arsenal by the first decade of the 19th century, prior to the Civil War, the landscape was dominated by several large plantations, the remains of which survive as archaeological sites. The land played a role during the Civil War with activity limited to the posting of pickets along the Tennessee River bank. Following the war, many of the plantations were increasingly divided into smaller parcels owned by small farmers. By the start of the 20th century, many of the farms were owned by absentee owners, with the land being worked by tenants, the remains of hundreds of tenant and sharecropper houses still dot the landscape around the installation. As part of the leading to U. S. involvement in World War II, Huntsville Arsenal was established in 1941 to create a second chemical weapons plant in addition to one in Edgewood. Over 550 families were displaced when the Army acquired the land, including over 300 tenants, most of the landowners were allowed to salvage their assets and rebuild elsewhere. The remaining buildings were almost all razed by the War Department, a land-use agreement was arranged with the Tennessee Valley Authority for the Army to use about 1,250 acres of land along the Tennessee River. The name Redstone drew on the red rocks and soil. In its early years, the produced and stockpiled chemical weapons such as phosgene, Lewisite
40.
Huntsville, Alabama
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Huntsville is a city located primarily in Madison County in the central part of the far northern region of Alabama. Huntsville is the county seat of Madison County, the city extends west into neighboring Limestone County. Huntsvilles population was 180,105 as of the 2010 census, the Huntsville Metropolitan Areas population was 417,593 in 2010 to become the 2nd largest in Alabama. Huntsville metros population reached 441,000 by 2014, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named Huntsville to its Americas Dozen Distinctive Destinations for 2010 list. The first settlers of the area were Muscogee-speaking people, the Chickasaw traditionally claim to have settled around 1300 after coming east across the Mississippi. The 1805 Treaty with the Chickasaws and the Cherokee Treaty of Washington of 1806 ceded native claims to the United States Government, the area was subsequently purchased by LeRoy Pope, who named the area Twickenham after the home village of his distant kinsman Alexander Pope. Twickenham was carefully planned, with streets laid out on the northeast to southwest direction based on the Big Spring. However, due to anti-British sentiment during this period, the name was changed to Huntsville to honor John Hunt, both John Hunt and LeRoy Pope were Freemasons and charter members of Helion Lodge #1, the oldest Lodge in Alabama. In 1811, Huntsville became the first incorporated town in Alabama, however, the recognized birth year of the city is 1805, the year of John Hunts arrival. The citys sesquicentennial anniversary was held in 1955, and the bicentennial was celebrated in 2005, Huntsvilles quick growth was from wealth generated by the cotton and railroad industries. Many wealthy planters moved into the area from Virginia, Georgia, in 1819, Huntsville hosted a constitutional convention in Walker Allens large cabinetmaking shop. The 44 delegates meeting there wrote a constitution for the new state of Alabama, in accordance with the new state constitution, Huntsville became Alabamas first capital when the state was admitted to the Union. This was a designation for one legislative session only, and the capital was then moved to Cahawba, then to Tuscaloosa. In 1855, the Memphis and Charleston Railroad was constructed through Huntsville, Huntsville initially opposed secession from the Union in 1861, but provided many men for the Confederacys efforts. The 4th Alabama Infantry Regiment, led by Col. Egbert J. Jones of Huntsville, distinguished itself at the Battle of Manassas/Bull Run, the first major encounter of the American Civil War. The Fourth Alabama Infantry, which contained two Huntsville companies, were the first Alabama troops to fight in the war and were present when Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox in April 1865. Eight generals of the war were born in or near Huntsville, Huntsville was the control point for the Western Division of the Memphis &Charleston, and by controlling this railroad the Union had a direct connection to Charleston South Carolina. During the first occupation, the Union officers occupied many of the homes in the city while the other men camped on the outskirts
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