{"id":1420,"date":"2013-03-28T13:36:53","date_gmt":"2013-03-28T17:36:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.graymanwrites.com\/blog\/?p=1420"},"modified":"2013-03-28T13:36:53","modified_gmt":"2013-03-28T17:36:53","slug":"last-saturn-apollo-block-1-suborbital-test-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/last-saturn-apollo-block-1-suborbital-test-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"Last Saturn-Apollo Block 1 Suborbital Test Flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fifty years ago today — March 28, 1963 — the Saturn-Apollo 4 mission was launched from Cape Canaveral.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(Saturn SA-4. NASA image.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Saturn-Apollo (SA) 4<\/a>, or Apollo SA-4, was the final “Block 1” Saturn test, the last of four test launches of the Saturn rocket’s first stage.<\/p>\n

The rocket was launched on a sub-orbital flight to an altitude of 129 km and a peak velocity of 5906 km\/hr. After 100 seconds of flight, a pre-set timer cut off engine no. 5 as planned to test the “engine-out” capability of the booster. Fuel was successfully routed to the other seven engines and the flight continued.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Also on this date in space history, 30 years ago, the first of an advanced series of remote-sensing spacecraft, NOAA 8<\/a>, launched into a polar orbit atop an Atlas E rocket out of Vandenberg AFB. Unfortunately, the satellite did not live out its two-year planned operational life: it failed in June 1984.<\/p>\n

Finally, 10 years ago today — March 28, 2003 — Japan launched a pair of reconnaissance satellites, IGS (Information Gathering Satellite) 1A<\/a> and IGS 1B<\/a>, from Tanegashima Space Center on an H-2A rocket. According to the National Space Science Data Center, “One of the two spacecraft uses optical cameras with a resolution of one meter; the other uses synthetic aperture radar to provide images at a resolution of a few meters,” but it is unclear which satellite carried which sensor.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fifty years ago today — March 28, 1963 — the Saturn-Apollo 4 mission was launched from Cape Canaveral. (Saturn SA-4. NASA image.) Saturn-Apollo (SA) 4, or Apollo SA-4, was the final “Block 1” Saturn test, the last of four test launches of the Saturn rocket’s first stage. The rocket was \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[19,26,20,33,11,17],"class_list":["post-1420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space","tag-apollo","tag-launch","tag-remote-sensing","tag-saturn-v","tag-space-history","tag-vandenberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1420"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1421,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1420\/revisions\/1421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}