The events on this day in history for our heritage companies are noted below.
The earliest event was in 1958, the latest event was in 1992
Two milestone events (5 to 65+ years ago)
Human Spaceflight:
1960 – LAUNCH FAILURE: Mercury MA-1, GD Atlas D, LC14, CCAFS – structural failure of Stage I 58 seconds into flight – no flight objectives achieved
1985 – LAUNCH: STS-51-F (Challenger), LC39A, KSC – 7 person crew, Spacelab2 – one OV engine shut down early (abort to orbit). Crew: Gordon Fullerton, Roy Bridges, Karl Henize, Story Musgrave, Anthony England, Loren Acton, John-David Bartoe.
Military and Classified Programs:
1966 – LAUNCH: Classified mission, MM Titan IIIB, SLC4W, VAFB – First Titan IIIB flight
Exploration and Interplanetary Programs:
NONE
Earth-Monitoring and Civil Weather Satellite programs:
1976 – LAUNCH: RCA NOAA-5 (H), Delta 2310, SLC2W, VAFB
Commercial Programs:
NONE
Test, ICBM, FBM programs:
1959 – LAUNCH: GD Atlas D, LC11, CCAFS – first successful Atlas D – MILESTONE: 65 years ago
1964 – LAUNCH: GD Atlas D, 576-A3, VAFB – MILESTONE: 60 years ago
1967 – LAUNCH: GD Atlas F, 576-A2, VAFB
1991 – LAUNCH (4): Lockheed Trident II D5, SSBN735, ETR
1992 – LAUNCH: Lockheed Trident II D5, SSBN738, ETR
Other:
1958 – President Eisenhower signs the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating NASA
The photos today are from two missions. First, there is a photo of the launch of Mercury-Atlas 1 in 1960 and the damage to the recovered Mercury capsule after the failure. Photo Credits: NASA.
Second, there are photos from the STS-51-F mission in 1985 that had a serious anomaly during ascent with the shutdown of an RS-25 engine (the mission also had anomalies prior to flight). The photos include the launch and the crew. There are stories about both missions below. Photo Credits: NASA.
The story about the MA-1 failure from Wikipedia is noted below:
Telemetry indicated that the Atlas functioned normally up to T+58 seconds and there was no sign of any problems up to that point, when a severe axial disturbance was detected. Approximately one second later, the pressure difference between the RP-1 and LOX tanks dropped to zero followed by loss of engine thrust and telemetry and the appearance of multiple objects on radar. Capsule data indicated violent movements following loss of booster telemetry, but the Mercury otherwise continued functioning normally until impact with the ocean at around 220 seconds after launch. The automatic abort system appeared to have functioned correctly and issued a shutdown command to the Atlas’s engines the moment that it detected an abnormal situation. The parachute system did not deploy because the abort had taken place too early in the launch. Unlike R&D Atlas D missiles, Atlas 50D was not carrying a large complement of telemetry probes; only 50 measurements were taken on this flight. The Atlas had appeared to be on a steady flight path when telemetry was lost at T+60 seconds, but the last 1.2 seconds of telemetry data was questionable due to open circuits in the booster following the disturbance. The capsule gyroscope data suggested that the stack had pitched over as much as 10°. There had been two separate disturbances. The first one, at T+58.5 seconds, had caused the instant loss of telemetry measurements in the forward part of the booster. The second disturbance occurred at T+59.4 seconds, following the Abort Sensing and Implementation System (ASIS)-generated engine cutoff. The propulsion system did not appear to be affected by the initial event.
The initial suspicion was that the fiberglass fairing placed on top of the capsule to sit in place of the absent LES had broken loose and punctured the Atlas’s LOX tank. NASA’s Owen Maynard, who was involved in Mercury systems engineering, led the recovery of the MA-1 capsule from the sea floor (in which he performed a 30-foot (9.1 m) free-dive to find one particular missing component of the capsule). He stated in an oral history interview that his post-flight calculations showed the skin of the launch vehicle just below the spacecraft would have buckled due to the combined drag, acceleration, and bending loads which exceeded the resisting tensile stress in the skin provided by internal pressure.
The story about the STS-51-F flight anomaly from public NASA sources and Wikipedia is noted below; note that there were also pre-flight anomalies, including a post-engine ignition shutdown on the first launch attempt:
STS-51-F’s first launch attempt on 12 July 1985 was halted with the countdown at T−3 seconds after main engine ignition, when a malfunction of the number two RS-25 coolant valve caused an automatic launch abort. Challenger launched successfully on its second attempt on 29 July 1985, at 17:00 p.m. EDT, after a delay of 1 hour 37 minutes due to a problem with the table maintenance block update uplink. At 3 minutes 31 seconds into the ascent, one of the center engine’s two high-pressure fuel turbopump turbine discharge temperature sensors failed. Two minutes and twelve seconds later, the second sensor failed, causing the shutdown of the center engine. This was the only in-flight RS-25 failure of the Space Shuttle Program Approximately 8 minutes into the flight, one of the same temperature sensors in the right engine failed, and the remaining right-engine temperature sensor displayed readings near the redline for engine shutdown. Booster System Engineer Jenny M. Howard acted quickly to command the crew to inhibit any further automatic RS-25 shutdowns based on readings from the remaining sensors, preventing the potential shutdown of a second engine and a possible abort mode that may have resulted in the loss of crew and vehicle (LOCV).
The failed RS-25 resulted in an Abort to Orbit (ATO) trajectory, whereby the shuttle achieved a lower-than-planned orbital altitude. The plan had been for a 385 km (239 mi) by 382 km (237 mi) orbit, but the mission was carried out at 265 km (165 mi) by 262 km (163 mi).
