Hidden treasures and stories from our collection
The “Blue Marble” view of the Earth, said to be the most widely reproduced image in history. Courtesy NASA
You’ve probably seen the image above many times: it is, after all, said to be the most widely reproduced image in history. However, you may not be aware that it was taken during the Apollo 17 mission, NASA’s last lunar landing mission, that came to a successful conclusion 40 years ago today.
Continue reading ‘Apollo 17-An Unexpected Legacy’
Dr. Sally K. Ride, first American woman in space, during the STS-7 mission in June 1983. Image courtesy NASA
This week we have said goodbye to Dr. Sally K. Ride, the first American woman to make a spaceflight and a passionate promoter of science and engineering education for girls, who passed away on July 23 after a seventeen month battle with pancreatic cancer.
Continue reading ‘Farewell Sally Ride, first US woman in Space (1951-2012)’
Photograph Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, taken by Valentin Shkolny. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
Fifty years ago today, on April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was launched into orbit, becoming the first person in space. In the Cold War climate of the times, this event was not only a major technological and scientific achievement, but also a tremendous propaganda victory for the Soviet Union in the Space Race with the United States. As a result of his historic 108 minute spaceflight, Gagarin-a genial, modest pilot in the Soviet Air Force- was catapulted to fame as a popular hero in the USSR and a global icon of the supposed “technological superiority” of the Communist system.
In 2004, the Powerhouse acquired two unique photographic portraits of Gagarin taken in the early 1960s that provide a glimpse of the man behind the icon. Both are the work of Valentin Shkolny, a Ukrainian-born photographer and artist who was at that time a prominent Soviet photojournalist. He frequently photographed Gagarin and his cosmonaut colleagues for TASS, the Soviet news agency. (After the fall of the Soviet Union, Shkolny migrated to Australia and has continued to work as a professional photographer and artist).
The first photograph (shown above) is a rare informal portrait of Yuri Gagarin in civilian clothes, sporting a ‘five o’clock shadow’, taken in his home at the cosmonauts’ training centre Zvezdny Gorodok (“Star City”) near Moscow. Gagarin permitted Shkolny, who was known to him from his photojournalism work, to visit his home briefly and take this photograph while Shkolny was in Zvezdny Gorodok on another assignment. Unlike many posed official ‘informal’ photographs of Gagarin and his family, this portrait emphasises Gagarin the man and hints at the underlying tensions being imposed on his private life as a result of his status as Cosmonaut No. 1-pressures that would lead to Gagarin developing a problem with alcohol.
The second photograph (below) is an interesting example of an ‘informal’ version of an official Soviet picture. Propaganda images of Gagarin surrounded by admiring crowds of adults and/or children are common and this photograph was taken by Shkolny while he was covering Gagarin’s reception at Zukhovsky Air Force Base following his return from a goodwill tour. In addition to his ‘official’ images of the crowd of children (said to be the children of fellow cosmonauts) welcoming Gagarin, Shkolny snapped this shot of Gagarin in an unguarded moment, showing his unfeigned delight in being with the children. Gagarin, by reputation, was very fond of children and this image once again captures Gagarin the man, as distinct from his more formal persona of ‘Gagarin the hero’ or ‘Gagarin the international public figure’.
Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, taken by Valentin Shkolny. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
Today, the rivalry of the Space Race has given way to the partnership of the International Space Station, but Yuri Gagarin (who was unfortunately killed in a plane crash in 1968) remains an international icon as the world’s first space traveller. Since 2001, global Yuri’s Night events have been held on April 12, to celebrate the achievements of human spaceflight in exploring beyond our home planet. Today, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Gagarin’s flight, more than 420 Yuri’s Night events will be held around the world (and beyond!) and the United Nations has officially designated the date as International Spaceflight Day.
It’s not too late to join in the celebrations. There are public Yuri’s Night events planned in several places around Australia (check the website), or you participate in the global premier of the film First Orbit-a documentary by award winning film maker Chris Riley (In the Shadow of the Moon) that recreates Gagarin’s orbit around the Earth, using footage specially shot by the astronauts on board the International Space Station. This film has been specifically made to celebrate the 50th anniversary of spaceflight and is being premiered around the world today. It can be downloaded free here.This film will be screened at the Powerhouse Museum and Sydney Observatory from today. Other Yuri’s Day activities at the Powerhouse have had to be rescheduled due to illness, but they will take place later in the year, so keep an eye on the Museum’s website for further information.
Of course, April 12 this year also marks the 30th anniversary of the first Space Shuttle launch took place, so today is a significant anniversary for US spaceflight as well. This event will be the topic of a future blog, so look out for it soon.
Photography by Marinco Kojdanovski, Powerhouse Museum.
It’s a little known fact that Britain is the only country to have developed its own satellite launch capability and then abandoned it. Britain’s launch vehicle was called Black Arrow and it was launched four times from the Woomera Rocket Range in South Australia between 1969 and 1971 before the program was cancelled. On its last, flight Black Arrow launched the satellite “Prospero” (named for the Shakespearean sorcerer who gives up magic), only the second satellite launched from Woomera. Visitors to the Museum’s Space exhibition can see a pair of payload fairings from a Black Arrow rocket, that were actually used on one of these test flights. The payload fairings covered the satellite at the top of the vehicle to protect it from the stresses of launch, forming a bullet-shaped nose cone for the rocket.
The name Black Arrow comes from the “Rainbow Codes” used for research projects conducted by the British Armed Services. Development of the Black Arrow launcher commenced in 1964, with much of its technology derived from the earlier Black Knight rocket, a re-entry test vehicle also used at Woomera. Standing 13m tall and with a maximum diameter of 2 m, the Black Arrow was a small three stage satellite launcher, designed to carry small test satellites (around 100-130 kg in weight) into low earth orbit. The payload fairings protecting the satellite were hinged so that they opened like petals and fell away during the second stage rocket firing.
The payload fairings were made by the British Hovercraft Corporation on the Isle of Wight in the UK: after the demise of the Black Arrow, the design lived on, being used on the French Diamant B/P.4 launcher in 1975 and the British Falstaff hypersonic research rocket, flown at Woomera in the late 1970s. Each metal fairing had an external cladding of a Hypalon, a synthetic rubber-like material. On one of the Museum’s fairings, this cladding shows a major body crack, like a blow, presumably from impact with the ground after it was jettisoned. The payload fairings on the first Black Arrow launch (designated R0) were white, but on the later three launches the fairings were bright red, although the Museum’s pair have faded to orange due to years of exposure to the desert sun before they were recovered.
Which Black Arrow launch did our fairings belong to? As already mentioned, R0 (launched in June 1969) had white fairings, so they must belong to one of the later launches. According to provenance information on the original recovery of the fairings, they were found on Millers Creek Station in South Australia, about 250kms north-west of Woomera. This indicates that the fairings are from R1, the first successful test flight of the Black Arrow rocket, with a dummy third stage. Only Black Arrow R0 and R1 had planned north-westerly flight paths in the direction of Millers Creek Station; the later two flights (R2 and R3) being launched on northerly flight paths. However, R0 was destroyed shortly after lift-off, while R1 was a textbook flight, with the nosecone being correctly jettisoned. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the R1 flight, which was launched on 4 March 1970.
How the fairings came to the Museum is an interesting story in itself. They were purchased at auction in 2001 from the collection of the Rohrlach Heritage Gallery, a private museum in Tanunda, South Australia. The museum’s collection was assembled by Kevin Rohrlach, a South Australian businessman with a passion for collecting technology. In the 1970s and 80s, as the research work at the Woomera Rocket Range was winding down, Mr. Rohrlach salvaged various items of aerospace hardware from Woomera and the downrange pastoral properties for inclusion in his collection. The Rohrlach museum was a tourist attraction in the Barossa Valley area for about 30 years, but after Kevin Rohrlach passed away in 1998 his widow closed the museum and put the contents up for auction in 2001, at which time the museum acquired several examples of space-related technology used at Woomera. In addition to the Black Arrow fairings, other material from the former Rohrlach Collection can be seen on display in the Space exhibition and at the Powerhouse Discovery Centre.
Image courtesy of NASA
April was a busy month for milestone anniversaries of space events: so busy in fact that I didn’t have time to write this article and post it until now-on the 49th anniversary of the first US Mercury space mission. At 12.34am (eastern Australian time) on May 6, 1961 American astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. was launched on a short, 15 minute sub-orbital flight in the spacecraft Freedom 7, making him the first American and second person in space. Next year, for the 50th anniversary of human spaceflight, expect to hear a lot more about Shepard’s flight, and that of the first person in space, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (whose spaceflight anniversary is also in April!). We’ll also be celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Space Shuttle. In the meantime, let’s look back at some of the significant space anniversaries that occurred in April 2010…..
Television Infrared Observation Satellite TIROS. Courtesy of NASA
Fifty years ago, as the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union was heating up, two US satellites were launched in April 1960 that were the forerunners of technologies that we take for granted today: TIROS (Television InfraRed Observation Satellite)-1, the world’s first dedicated weather satellite, and Transit 1B (Transit 1A failed to reach orbit), the first navigation satellite. Essentially a television camera in orbit, TIROS -1 was only operational for 78 days, but it proved its worth by detecting and tracking a cyclone in the Pacific Ocean-the first time it had been possible to chart the progress of one of these potentially devastating storms. Although the Transit navigation system was originally developed to provide guidance for submarine-launched ballistic missiles, it was soon opened up to a variety of civilian uses and was the predecessor of the GPS (Global positioning System) satellite network we use for finding our way around today.
Also ‘launched’ in April 1960 was the world’s first SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) experiment, Project Ozma, conducted at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, Virginia, by SETI pioneer Frank Drake. Project Ozma (named for a character from the Oz books by L. Frank Baum) targeted the stars Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani in a search for radio signals that might be evidence of intelligent life beyond the Earth. After 150 hours of intermittent listening between April and July, no extraterrestrial signal was detected, but Project Ozma became the prototype for future SETI searches.
Forty five years ago, another important step on shaping today’s world took place, with the April 6, 1965 launch of INTELSAT-1, also known as Early Bird, the first communications satellite operated by the International Telecommunications Satellite Organisation (INTELSAT). INTELSAT was a consortium of countries (including Australia, which would become the sixth largest shareholder) created to develop the first world-wide satellite communications network. INTELSAT’s early success in providing satellite networks paved the way for our modern globally connected culture.
Image courtesy of NASA
For 5 days in April 1970, the world held its breath in the wake of the Apollo 13 accident, hoping that the crew of three astronauts would make it safely back to Earth following an explosion on board their spacecraft. Although unable to land on the Moon, Apollo 13 was judged a “successful failure”, with the mission rescued from disaster by the courage of the crew and the resourcefulness of NASA’s engineers, scientists and technicians on the ground. The first Earth Day was also held 40 years ago, on April 22, using one of Apollo 11’s pictures of the Earth hanging in the immensity of space as its icon image, to highlight the fragility of our home planet’s environment.
China celebrated the 40th anniversary of the launch of its first satellite, Dong Fang Hong (the East is Red)-1 on April 24, while India launched its first satellite 35 years ago, on April 19, 1975. Built by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and launched by the USSR, the Aryabhata satellite was named after a 5th century AD Indian mathematician and astronomer. From modest beginnings, both China and India have grown to become leading spacefaring nations today.
The Hubble against Earth's horizon (1997) Image courtesy of NASA
And finally, on April 24, 1990, NASA launched the Hubble Space Telescope, one of the most important scientific instruments of all time. Overcoming initial technical problems with its mirror, Hubble has proved to be vital research tool for astronomers, its discoveries helping to resolve some long-standing questions of astrophysics and revealing new cosmic mysteries to research.
Photography by Sotha Bourn © Powerhouse Museum all rights reserved
Name
Kerrie Dougherty
What is your speciality area?
I’m the museum’s Curator of Space Technology and my areas of interest cover the history of astronautics and space flight, space education and public awareness, and social and cultural responses to space. In addition, since I’m also interested in science fiction and pop culture, I’ve also been involved with the museum’s Star trek, Star wars and Lord of the Rings exhibitions
How long have you been working at the Museum?
Almost 27 years!
What is your favourite object in the collection?
My favourite object in the museum’s collection overall is the Boulton and Watt beam engine, which I’ve always thought of as a gentle giant. Despite its massive size, it produced what we would today consider only a small amount of power-yet it represents the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution that shaped our technological world. It’s actually a lot harder for me to nominate my favourite object in the space technology collection: since I acquired them all, I’m fond of every one of them. I can’t just choose one, but I’ll mention a few: a small Apollo Lunar Module model, produced by the Grumman company to celebrate the Apollo 9 mission, when the LM made its first space qualifying test flight; the fairings (nose cone sections) from a British Black Arrow rocket that were recovered from the Woomera Rocket Range; a waste management system from a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft (yes-a space toilet!) and an Australian space experiment-the Aggregation of Red Cells apparatus-that was twice carried on space shuttle missions.
What piece of research or exhibition are you most proud of in your career at the Museum?
I’m very proud of developing Australia’s first major museum space display, the Space-Beyond this World exhibition (1988-2007), which was the first exhibition anywhere in the world to bring together examples of the space technology of the three Cold War superpowers. When I look back on it now, I am astonished that we were able to accomplish this in a period of Cold War tension. But I think that, even more, I love the ongoing challenge of developing the first international space technology collection in Australia. While the museum’s collection is very modest when compared to the major aerospace museums overseas, the Powerhouse is the only museum in Australia actively collecting in the space field and I am proud to have been able to develop the current collection essentially from scratch over almost 25 years.
Photography by Marinco Kojdanovski, © Powerhouse Museum, all rights reserved.
Curators at the Powerhouse not only research information about the artefacts in our own collection, from time to time we assist external colleagues with their object research as well. Satellite propulsion engineer Alan Lawrie, author of histories of the Saturn V and Saturn I rockets, contacted the museum seeking information about the F-1 rocket motor in the Space exhibition. Together with former employees of the Rocketdyne company, which manufactured the F-1, Alan has been researching the location and identification of all the surviving F-1 rocket engines.
The most powerful single chamber liquid fuel rocket engine so far put into service, five F-1 motors were used in the first stage of the Saturn V rocket that launched the Apollo missions to the Moon. The only example on public display outside the United States, the museum’s F-1 is on long term loan from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.
Unfortunately, the Smithsonian’s records had very little information about the history of this rocket motor and had incorrectly recorded its serial number, making it difficult for Alan to trace the story of this particular engine. Despite the difficulty of accessing the suspended engine, we were able to arrange for photos of the motor’s makers plate, which allowed for the correct identification of its serial number. This enabled a search of the surviving Rocketdyne records to establish the engine’s history.
We now know that the F-1 rocket motor in the Space exhibition was the 25th of 114 research and development F-1 engines produced by Rocketdyne and that it was probably manufactured in 1961. It was test fired 35 times.
Collection, Powerhouse Museum
With all the media attention focussed on the Apollo 11 Moon landing 40th anniversary, another space anniversary of particular interest to Australia passed un-noticed in July. Thirty years ago, in the early hours of July 12, 1979, the United States’ first space station, Skylab, re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere and broke up scattering debris across the southern Indian Ocean and the south-eastern part of Western Australia. Launched in 1973, Skylab had been home to three crews of astronauts in 73-74.
Although the heaviest fragments of the station fell into the Indian Ocean, a large amount of Skylab debris fell in a swath from the coastal town of Esperance to the Nullarbor Plain, beyond the community of Balladonia. One of the pieces that landed on the Nullarbor was a large cylindrical oxygen tank that burst on striking the ground, breaking into two fragments which bounced in different directions. The largest fragment, the main body of the tank, ultimately found its way into the special Skylab collection of the Esperance Museum. The smaller piece, the end cap of the oxygen tank, remained undiscovered until the early 1990s when it was found by a stockman.
The circular lid had landed with its insulated exterior to the ground, so that its curved shape formed a shallow dish that caught rainwater, turning it into a very unusual drinking bowl for the cattle and native animals of the area. In fact, it was seeing animals drinking at a place where there should have been no water available that led to its discovery.
As you can see in the image, the end cap is torn and bent as a result of being ripped away from the rest of the tank and its exterior is covered by a composite insulation material with a woven fibreglass outer surface.
October 4th to 10th is World Space Week!
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