The events on this day in history for our heritage companies are noted below.
The earliest event was in 1963, the latest event was in 2022
Human Spaceflight:
1992 – LANDING: STS-52 (Columbia), KSC
1993 – LANDING: STS-58 (Columbia), Edwards AFB
Military and Classified Programs:
1962 – USAF awards a contract worth $173 million to UTC/CSD for continued development of 5-segment solid rocket boosters for the MM Titan III program
2022 – LAUNCH: LM LINUSS Chase/RSO nanosats (with multiple other payloads including LDPE-2, Shepherd Demonstration, Alpine, Tetra-1, USA-344), Falcon Heavy FH-004, LC-39A, KSC – Satellite servicing demo missions (LINUSS)
Exploration and Interplanetary Programs:
1994 – LAUNCH: MM (GE/RCA) Wind, Delta 7925-10, LC17B, CCAFS – Solar Wind experiments at L1 point
Earth-Monitoring and Civil Weather Satellite programs:
NONE
Commercial Programs:
NONE
Test, ICBM, FBM programs:
1963 – LAUNCH: MM Titan II, LC15, CCAFS – Test of accumulators to lessen the impact of longitudinal vibrations (POGO); successful test led to adoption of the accumulator mod on Gemini vehicles
1967 – LAUNCH (4): Lockheed Polaris A3, SSBN657, ETR
2003 – LAUNCH: LM Trident D-5, SSBN733, ETR
Other:
NONE
The images today are from two events. First, there are photos of the Wind spacecraft and its launch vehicle, a Delta 7925-10, just before launch in 1994. Second, there are images of the LM LINUSS Chase/RSO nanosats and their launch on Falcon Heavy FH-004 in 2022 (along with many other payloads), along with a publicly released diagram of the LINUSS architecture.
The global geospace Wind satellite is still operational at L1 as of 11/1/2023, with enough fuel to last until 2070. Here are the objectives of Wind (from Wikipedia):
- Provide complete plasma, energetic particle, and magnetic field input for magnetospheric and ionospheric studies.
- Determine the magnetospheric output to interplanetary space in the up-stream region.
- Investigate basic plasma processes occurring in the near-Earth solar wind.
- Provide baseline ecliptic plane observations to be used in heliospheric latitudes by the Ulysses mission
The LINUSS (Lockheed Martin In-Space Upgrade Satellite System) nanosats are described as follows in a news release:
LINUSS is a pair of LM 50™ 12U cubesats — each about the size of a four-slice toaster — designed to demonstrate how smallsats can serve an essential role in sustaining critical space architectures in any orbit. Developed using internal funding, LINUSS will be two of the most capable cubesats in Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO).
LINUSS’ mission is to validate essential maneuvering capabilities for Lockheed Martin’s future space upgrade and servicing missions, as well as to showcase miniaturized Space Domain Awareness capabilities. LINUSS also will demonstrate new, mature, onboard high-performance processing by Innoflight; low-toxicity propulsion by VACCO; and inertial measurement units, machine vision, 3-D printed components and SmartSat™ (transformational on-orbit software upgrade architecture) technologies by Lockheed Martin.
