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My brother Will has been involved with the New Horizons mission to Pluto, and they were scheduled to launch in January from Cape Canaveral. So, I headed on down to watch the show. I got there a few days early and got my security badge and info packet and toured the touristy section of the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). This is run by Delaware North Corporation (infamous for Yosemite operations). Some of the material is the same as it used to be, with a rocket garden full of old rockets, and exhibits on the early history of space exploration. Then there is the newer more disneyesque dumbed down exhibits. Well, to be charitable, they probably are not aimed at my demographic. I imagine the imax movies are a little better, but my pass didn't get me into them. I met up with Will at a press briefing thing. That evening there was a fancy get together, so after walking on the beach a bit and watching a gorgeous sunset, I went and stuffed myself silly. The next day we went back to the KSC for a while and then to the Merrit Island wildlife sanctuary where we saw a lot of interesting birds like egrets, eagles, osprey, herons, etc.
I could spend a lot of time going on about this mission, but it is better left to the experts. I'll just go with a few words. This mission is to go past Pluto and on with a bunch of instruments to get data on what is going on out there. Because it is so far away, they are using plutonium for electricity and launching fast. It is important to do it soon because of favorable orbital geometry, especially if they can use Jupiter to get a gravitational boost. Even so, it will take some 9 years to get there. In fact, this will be the fastest launch from earth, with a 196 foot rocket and a payload about the size of a grand piano. Check out some of the links below for more pictures and a description that makes sense.
JH APL New Horizons SiteHere is a description from my parents...
Back in the Fall we were informed that the launch was set for mid-afternoon, January 11, 2006. We even got the formal invitation from NASA to prove it. But sometime in the following weeks after early December the date was shifted to January 17th. Seems that NASA feared it would be pre-occupied by the return and recovery of a space craft that had been collecting comet dust. Stardust it is called and it sailed through the tail of a comet and was scheduled to land in Utah the same week as the original New Horizons launch. NASA feared that their equipment and personnel would be too busy to handle both the landing and the launch within days of one another. So they wisely held off on the New Horizons mission until all systems could be readied properly. That’s okay, since Will told us that the week of January 17 would actually provide a better launch window anyway.
January 17, 2006 We delayed making flight arrangements and held off on our trip to the Space Coast of Central Florida until Sunday, the 15th. And here we are, two days later, Tuesday the 17th, at the Kennedy Space Center, waiting in the sun, what else, for a bus, one of 22 of them, each holding 60 passengers, to take us VIPs to the viewing area. We anticipate that we will be watching history in the making.
Now we sit here on bleachers in the sun, maybe 3 miles from the launch site. We can see Pad 41 far off, across the wide Banana River, the giant Atlas V rocket flanked by four taller towers, serving as lightning rods. But they are pretty small from this distance. So far, we are told, all systems are “go”. Notice how easy it is to slip into the lingo of the space program. You can’t help it when everyone around here is so upbeat. The enthusiasm yesterday at the briefing, the excitement and positivism at Sunday’s mobbed reception carry us along. It’s like a football game tailgate party.
There is a pep rally ambience to the proceedings so far. Optimism, can do, assumed victory, all mark the project so far. Even down to the 17 year-old high school boy from rural Pennsylvania who initiated a signature drive on the web when he learned that NASA had decided to scrap the New Horizons mission five years ago. That didn’t faze him – he simply decided to get involved, and his pleadings, and those of scientists and politicians made a difference. He’s down here to observe the launch, too.
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Most of the local press coverage of the launch so far is focused on protests over the inclusion of 24 pounds of radioactive plutonium in the space package. The plutonium (an appropriate moniker for this mission) is part of the RTG that is used to power the electronic equipment on the craft on its long journey. The equivalent of only 200 watts of baseline power is needed, and there is no other type of power available to do this job.
So we sit in the stands, far enough away from Pad 41 to give us time to get into the Saturn/Atlas building, should anything go wrong, before we get zapped by plutonium wafting our way in the form of radioactive particles escaping from an explosion on site. The launch is scheduled for 1:23 p.m., and no one in our crowd seems remotely concerned about the plutonium.
We’ve been told that the launch works like this. Assuming all goes well toward launch time, when they arrive at 4 minutes to lift off there is an automatic ten minute hold built into the countdown. That’s when they make sure all is ready and all the propellant is in place. After ten minutes they begin the final 4 minute count down. But that ten minute hold allows them to delay further if they need to reset computers, and so forth. We certainly get a lesson in this protocol throughout the afternoon.
At 1:17 we are told that the launch has been delayed to 1:45. What a blessing to have a PA system that keeps us informed about the progress toward lift-off. There seem to be two “issues” – wind gusts at ground level that exceed the guidelines and an air valve that is not opening properly. At 1:40 it is postponed until 2:10. The air valve problem is resolved. At 1:58 “our new T minus zero will be at 2:30.” Throughout these PA announcements we have “rogers,” and “zulus” and “tangos,” at every turn. Still we are not panicked. We have been told that today’s launch window will be two hours long. At 2:10 they announce that the deep space network has to “resolve its issues” so “they will not be able to sustain lift-off at 19:30.” Now they are talking in Greenwich Mean Time jargon.
Meanwhile, dozens of kids are playing rough house games on the 30-yard wide grass patch between the stands and the water. They are playing make-shift games, high jump, tag, red rover, and because all aged kids are involved it is getting pretty mad-cap and dangerous. At first a number of yellow ropes keep them from running into one another but after a while someone removes the ropes and now they race with abandon. There are also a passel of amateur photographers set up down by the waterside with tripods and awesome cameras and lenses. The professionals are in a different locale, and in addition there is a lot of remote photography being readied as well. Ospreys are catching fish in front of us. Lots of other exotic birds enter our visual frame. The Kennedy Space Center (KSC) is situated in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. The wind is in our faces, whipping up the Banana River, and frankly it does not seem to be abating very much. We begin to wonder whether lift-off will happen today. It is a pleasant scene altogether, except that now we are getting anxious about the launch.
At 2:33 T minus zero is changed to 2:50, although our hopes are raised by an announcement that “all centers reported they are prepared to support launch today.” The delays go on – at 2:45 it is changed to 3:05 and at 3 p.m. it is changed to 3:23. That is the end of the window for today. Do you get the sense of frustration and hear the groans after each announcement?
At last, at 3:19 they begin for the first time the countdown of the last four minutes. This is preceded by a polling of all systems managers, maybe as many at 20 or 25 of them. Each answers a terse “Go.” There are cheers when they have finished the poll. So we are convinced that we have finally made it to the launch. But at T minus 2:39 one voice is heard to utter into his mike, “we have a ‘no go’ due to a red line monitor fault.” What this means in layman’s terms is that surface winds have exceeded 33 knots at the launch pad, the highest tolerable breeze. And that is it – end of story. If it had happened anytime earlier, as it did many times I expect, they could have put the countdown on hold and kept trying. But this belated 3:23 lift-off was the absolute final time possible in today’s window.
We all shuffle back to the buses and head back, almost chastened, to KSC, wondering what tomorrow’s launch window for 1:16 to 3:15 will hold. The predictions are for colder temperatures, wind and rain in the morning, diminishing through the day.
January 18, 2006 We do as we were told. We telephone the NASA 800 number at 9:45 and learn that today’s launch is still on. Yet any fool can see that it is pretty windy, and cloudy, too. Still, we drive over to KSC. As we pull into parking lot #4 an attendant tells us that at 9:59 the launch was scrubbed. Just like that our day is finished. God again takes full credit for the delay. Seems that an ice storm has snuffed out power at the APL facility in Columbia, Maryland. That’s mission control for New Horizons and although they have backup generators there, they would rather not depend on auxiliary power for the start of this mission. It is lucky, in retrospect, that the launch did not go yesterday. Result – postponement for another day.
So we drive to the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. We spot an alligator, a big one, gliding placidly in the pond at the visitor’s center. But no manatees. We go to the Manatee Observation Deck. No manatees. We walk the Palm Hammock Trail. We do see armadillos, but no manatees. We anticipate tomorrow.
January 19, 2006. Wednesday morning. For two days in a row we missed the launch, and for two nights in a row we missed the so-called “post-launch” parties. It has not been a good run. But today looks promising. It is sunny, chilly but warming fast. There is moderate to no wind. There are some clouds and that could be a problem, especially if they thicken and get lower in the sky. But the TV weather says there is an 80 percent chance of launch today – the highest figure they ever use to state the prospects.
At KSC they inform us that they will be taking us to a different viewing area. Apparently the winds have shifted and hence they would not have enough time to evacuate all of us from the Banana River bleachers “if there is a contingency.” They refuse to call it a nuclear accident. With all the delays, this time there are far fewer people around to watch – merely 12 buses to the KARS recreational area. And there are no stands there, just a pier out into the Indian River that holds precisely 350 people. The rest have to line the embankment to see Pad 41, further away than at Banana River, but across water with no vegetation partly obscuring the view.
Today there is a new “issue”– cloud cover. From the start clouds are “broken” and they cannot launch until the cloud cover becomes “scattered.” The problem is that we cannot discern a difference in the cloud cover all day. Can they explain to us the difference between broken and scattered, so that we can cheer when the skies brighten? So our 1:08 liftoff is set back several times, eventually coming to T minus 0 at 2 p.m. Once more they poll the team leaders. The crowd is silent, listening. The 4 minute countdown continues, in which tension is palpable. The last 11 seconds are counted out loud on the PA, with the crowd joining in for the last few digits. It actually happens – ignition! Blast off! And what a sensational sight! With such a small spacecraft and an Atlas V rocket with five boosters strapped to it, the package veritably leaps off the pad. Periodically the rocket would dip behind clouds. We never did see the boosters or the Atlas V separate from the nose. Then the roar of the engines hit us, maybe a half minute into flight. The cheering and the screams added to the din. It was as if we were at a game and as the sound spread through the area, it was sheer excitement for us.
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Within minutes members of the team were running at one another, hugging and kissing and screaming as if they were teenagers. Grown scientists really do express emotions and giddy relief. At last they can express the frustrations of the last two days. We enjoyed it all immensely. What can you say when everything works perfectly. In nine hours the craft would be beyond the moon’s orbit. It took our mission to place men on the moon 3 days to get there. In 13 months it will approach Jupiter for its boost into space. And in 9 and a half years, it approaches Pluto, then the Kuiper Belt and beyond. And with all this work and waiting they only have one day for the actual fly-by encounter with Pluto. We’ve been told that even with the delays, January 19 at 2 p.m. in fact is the optimum time for launch to assure an efficient rendezvous with Jupiter and the maximum conservation of fuel. No wonder they are ecstatic.
Back to Tom narrating here:
It was a shame we were so far away from the launch site. We had a clear view of it, but were pretty far away, maybe 5 or so miles. From what I heard at the press site, the rumble of the launch was impressive, but they were positioned so that all they saw after the initial lift off was the exhaust plume. Not that we saw too much more with the clouds. Other than our viewing, it was a near perfect launch at a near perfect time. As far as the scientists and engineers are concerned, things couldn't have gone much better. I think they needed something like 12 m/s delta V correction to hit the Jupiter flyby. At the after launch party they showed a number of previous Atlas V launches. They all seemed to lumber off of the launch pad. Then when they showed this launch, it really did take off. Will visited the launch pad 2 days later and saw the scorch marks on the tower. The huge plume of steam from the launch (they dump huge volumes of water into the tunnel redirecting the plume during launch) was redirected into the air and didn't appear to have damaged the vegetation at all.
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The next day we went to Blue Springs, where we saw plenty of manatees and fish in the clear spring water. We also saw some birds and turtles. I was disappointed that they didn't let me snorkel in the upper springs area, despite what at least one of the park workers said. (I think they changed the rules recently, as some people were swimming, but when I came back with my stuff, the guys with guns were saying you weren't allowed in the water if any manatees were anywhere from the springs to the river. Before, I think if there were no manatees in the upper section, then you were allowed in.
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The next day I stopped and snorkeled and paddled my pack raft on the Ichetucknee? river. First I fished out a fancy multitool a guy had dropped in, then a cell phone that had been sleeping with the fishes. The visibility wasn't quite as good as blue springs because I was further from the initial springs, and there were less large fish, but I saw plenty of cool things and got lots of disappointingly blurry (too dark) photos. I was having problems with the goggles fogging up though. It was weird snorkelling with such a current, and a little scary coming up towards submerged trees. Most of those had been well trimmed for the tubers though.
As I left Florida, I began to see buildings with storm damage. Things like blue tarps on the roof and missing siding. By the time I got to Gulfport, the damage was most impressive. I didn't go through New Orleans, so I didn't see how bad things were there, but if it was like Gulfport, then they are pretty much just starting over after the effort of getting the old busted stuff out of the way.