Innholdsfortegnelse for October/November 2019 i Air & Space

At the National Air and Space Museum, we celebrate aerospace groundbreakers and their incredible achievements. Some found their way into the history books by being the first or the fastest, and others made history by overcoming extraordinary obstacles to accomplish exceptional tasks. The path to these milestones starts early. By the time the Wright brothers were teenagers, they were already exhibiting the kind of curiosity and creativity that would lead them to greatness. NEW BADGES ENCOURAGE GIRLS TO RESEARCH WORLDS BEYOND EARTH AND LEARN ABOUT SPACE SCIENCE. Early exposure to science and technology, or an early brush with history, can have a profound impact on a young person’s future. For me, I found inspiration on a geology field trip with my mother. I was fascinated by the way the geologist…

The Girl Scouts was just a year old when, in 1913, it began awarding badges to young women for electronics and aviation. More than a century later, it is challenging members to aim even higher, with the release this summer of three new space science badges encouraging scouts to learn about astronomy and the exploration of other worlds. Funded by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, the SETI Institute, working with the Girl Scouts of the USA, led a partnership of groups to develop the badges. They were issued at the same time as nine new cybersecurity badges and 18 new badges in coding, as part of the Girl Scouts’ ongoing initiative to promote learning in STEM fields. The organization reports that its members are almost twice as likely as non-Girl Scouts…

U.S. MILITARY BASES around the globe might soon harness the power of THOR to defend against drone swarms. The Air Force Research Laboratory unveiled the $15 million weapon system—the Tactical High Power Microwave Operational Responder—this past June at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, where it used an electromagnetic wave to knock a drone out of the sky. Unlike conventional defenses, such as sharpshooters, THOR can instantly disable multiple drones simultaneously. “It operates like a flashlight,” program manager Amber Anderson told reporters viewing the demonstration. “It spreads out when the operator hits the button, and anything within that cone will be taken down.” THOR was designed for rapid deployment and can be assembled within three hours. The system is intended for short-range defense, but the Air Force is working…

BILL BRENNAND’S FRIEND, Marybeth, gripped my forearm and looked straight into my eyes as she delivered the news: “Kerry! Bill has not stopped talking about the airplane ride you gave him!” My heart sank. That meant Bill had lied to me two weeks earlier as I helped him off the wing of my airplane. It was September 2007, some six decades after 23-year-old William F. “Bill” Brennand had lowered his 100-pound frame into a midget airplane racer to fly at the 1947 National Air Races in Cleveland. Before I got to know Bill as a quiet man with a cutting wit, I knew him only by his accomplishments. The first time I approached him, in 1998, I held a heavy wood propeller, a marker, and a degree of anxiety about…

DAWN HAS BARELY BROKEN and Rawhide 78, a Northrop Grumman C-2 Greyhound, is already dodging storm clouds on its way to the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, about 100 miles off Florida’s northeast coast. The Truman is gearing up for a nine-month cruise and is chock-full of airplanes, but they aren’t launching and landing. Today is a change-of-command ceremony. Rawhide’s load is light: one bulky access panel for an F/A-18, a couple dozen personal packages for the carrier’s crew, 28 empty seats, and one nervous writer. A few-minutes’ flight ahead is another C-2 full of command staff for the ceremony. The C-2 is—with its close cousin, the E-2 Hawkeye—the heaviest airplane to board the carrier, but its pilots take pride in a crisp “break” over the ship. They make…

When the Chandra X-Ray Observatory was launched into orbit aboard the space shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999, NASA anticipated it would have a lifetime of five years. Two decades later, Chandra is still performing its mission, looking at celestial X-rays that are, for the most part, absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere and undetectable by ground-based telescopes. The observatory has laid claim to several notable discoveries, such as studies of colliding clusters of galaxies that support the existence of dark matter. NASA celebrated Chandra’s 20th anniversary by releasing a collection of new images that combine X-rays with visible light and radio waves to create vivid celestial panoramas of objects, such as the Messier 33 galaxy, a “mere” 2.73 million light-years from Earth (right), which contains a star-forming region where some 200…

Young at Heart As a pilot privileged to have flown the Navy’s Grumman S-2, I am wounded by the word “ancient” in your feature “Wildfire Wars: A Squadron of Ancient Airplanes Wages California’s Battle Against Natural Disaster” ( Aug . 2019). While it is true that I, a retired naval aviator, am 86 and can be called ancient, it is not a word I would use to describe the S-2. I flew the S-2F, which according to Wikipedia is still in service in Argentina. I might use the word “ancient” to describe the Grumman F4F, maybe even the F6F, but I think it’s a little early to call the S-2 ancient. JOHN LYNN United States Naval Reserve, (Retired and still vertical) Carlsbad, California Was It a Helicopter? Your article “The…

Veterans Memorial Park in Lewiston, Maine is home to several wartime relics, including a shell from the USS Maine, a five-inch rotating gun, and an Army jeep. And now, visitors to the park will also see a Vietnam-era A-7D Corsair II—a single-seat, tactical close-air-support aircraft derived from the U.S. Navy’s A-7. The Lewiston & Auburn Veterans Council spent two years trying to obtain the aircraft, which had previously belonged to the Montana Vocational Technology aviation school in Helena. When the school shut down, most of its aircraft were sold to museums, but the A-7D remained behind, sitting alone and exposed to Montana winters. In 2018, the veterans’ group was told they could have the A-7D, but that presented another problem: How to get the 20,000-pound aircraft to Maine? Enter trucker…

FOR THE FIRST TIME, an Army brigade in Afghanistan is using tiny, Black Hornet personal drones. In August, paratroopers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, deployed the device—which weighs less than two ounces and has a flight time of up to 25 minutes—for overhead surveillance while conducting patrols in Kandahar Province. The Army said in 2018 that it plans to eventually issue the drone to each of its infantry units.…

ON ITS FINAL FLIGHT, THE CONCORDE hurtled toward its destination at Mach 2, while those on board leisurely feasted on caviar, rock lobster, and foie gras. When the aircraft landed at Washington Dulles International Airport, its flying career was over, but it was about to start a new journey, as part of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum’s collection. It was June 2003, and the Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center was scheduled to open in just six months. When the Concorde arrived, it was the third aircraft waiting to enter the Hazy Center, along with the Boeing 367-80 (known simply as the Dash-80), and the Boeing 307 Stratoliner. “We had set aside three weeks to defuel all three aircraft and move them into the building,” says Museum Specialist Rob…

Nine years after the end of World War II, Keith Brunquist’s father, Norm, took him out to an airstrip near their Anchorage, Alaska home and showed Keith, who was nearly three years old, a Boeing YL-15 Scout. Sixty-three years after his first glimpse of the odd little airplane, Keith landed the fully restored Scout at the world’s biggest gathering of aircraft: the Experimental Aircraft Association’s 2017 AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. By the time the show was over, the YL-15 was recognized as the grand champion for post-World War II warbirds. In addition, Keith’s workmanship in restoring the Scout earned him a Gold Wrench award. When Norm acquired the YL-15, he already knew quite a bit about its background. During the war, the U.S. Army learned the value of small airplanes…

THERE ARE ATTEMPTS to make airports more pleasant, and then there are $265 million attempts to make them places you might want to be seen. John F. Kennedy International Airport’s TWA Terminal—commissioned by Howard Hughes and designed by Eero Saarinen—is back in all its swinging ’60s glory. Opening in 1962, it served as a transatlantic hub for TWA until it was abandoned in 2000, a year before the airline declared bankruptcy for a third and final time. But millionaire Tyler Morse, a one-time baggage handler at LAX who is now CEO of a hotel development firm, was intrigued by an invitation circulated by New York’s Port Authority: Who wants to turn the iconic building into a hotel? Three years later, the dream is a red and white reality, created in…

LightSail 2 deployed its 32-square-meter Mylar solar sail on July 23, demonstrating that light alone can propel a small satellite. On July 31, the Planetary Society—which built and operates the crowd-funded CubeSat—reported that its solar sail had raised the apogee of the satellite’s orbit by two kilometers (1.2 miles). After another two weeks, LightSail had ascended another 3.2 kilometers, all using nothing more than sunlight. The sun constantly blasts out photons, which have no mass but transfer momentum when they bounce off a reflective surface. Put something big and reflective enough in the vacuum of space, and in theory spacecraft could maneuver without the chemical thrusters that move all of today’s orbital satellites—allowing them to save more of their launch weight for important payloads and experiments. But LightSail is not…

The Los Angeles-based launch company Rocket Lab continues to prove that small satellites can mean big business. On August 19, Rocket Lab’s two-stage Electron rocket lifted off from New Zealand, carrying four satellites belonging to the U.S. Air Force and private companies in Seattle and France. The mission, named “Look Ma, No Hands,” marks the eighth launch since 2017, with a total of 39 small satellites placed in orbit. As Air & Space reported in its April/ May 2018 issue (“Small Shot”), Rocket Lab is using several innovative techniques to keep its costs low—around $5 million per launch—for customers. The Electron booster, which can lift 500 pounds into orbit, is made from a carbon composite, which reduces mass, and its engines are manufactured with 3D printing, which reduces labor.…

The National Air and Space Museum, one of the most visited museums in the world, is getting a much-needed facelift. On August 21, the first of 15,000 exterior stones was removed; the building’s existing Tennessee Pink marble cladding has warped since the Museum opened in 1976, and all 15,000 stones will be replaced. The recladding is part of the Museum’s multi-year renovation, but not to worry: Although parts of the Museum are closed, multiple galleries remain open to the public.…

ONE OF THE LAST TIMES former astronaut John Grunsfeld was in NASA’s immense underwater training pool in Houston, wearing a spacesuit and practicing for his third and final Hubble Space Telescope repair in 2009, he felt a growing pain in his shoulder. He was only weeks from liftoff, and the telescope’s fate—as well as a substantial NASA investment in his training—was on the line. He knew right away what might be causing the pain: a rotator-cuff tendon injury. He knew because after his second Hubble repair mission in 2002, he had needed surgery to repair significant tendon damage in his other shoulder. He was also aware that other astronauts—as many as 25, according to NASA—had experienced similar shoulder problems, and that the design of the suit’s shoulder joint appeared to…

ABOUT A DOZEN YEARS FROM NOW, Martians might finally arrive on Earth. If they do, it will be because we brought them here. NASA and the European Space Agency are planning an audacious mission to gather samples of rock and soil from the surface of the red planet and transport them across 34 million miles of space—giving scientists an unprecedented opportunity to study what Mars is made of and to search for evidence that the planet once harbored life. Because past missions have revealed signs of Martian lakes and river deltas, the scientists believe they may find the fossils of microscopic organisms that thrived in those lakes and rivers before the planet became the frigid desert that it is today. Next July, the three-part mission to return samples from Mars…

SALLY K. RIDE might have been a professional tennis player—she was nationally ranked when she played for Stanford University, and no less an authority than Billie Jean King urged her to turn pro. Instead, the Ph.D. astrophysicist answered an ad in the Stanford Daily seeking women to apply to NASA, and five years later, she became the youngest American to fly in space, and, more critically, the first U.S. woman. Upon her return to Johnson Space Center after the completion of STS-7, the first of her two missions aboard the Challenger, a NASA official handed her (but not her crewmates) a bouquet of flowers. She accepted them and then, wishing to free her hands—not, she said later, to send any kind of message—she handed them right back. Inevitably, her every…