{"id":433,"date":"2010-04-05T09:53:23","date_gmt":"2010-04-05T09:53:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=433"},"modified":"2010-04-05T09:53:23","modified_gmt":"2010-04-05T09:53:23","slug":"first-pegasus-launch-twenty-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/first-pegasus-launch-twenty-years-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"First Pegasus Launch, Twenty Years Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"

On April 5, 1990, the first live launch of a Pegasus rocket carried the PEGSAT experimental satellite into orbit.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(July 1991 picture of a Pegasus rocket being carried by NASA’s B-52. NASA image.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\nPEGSAT<\/a> was an interesting combination of an instrumentation package to monitor this first Pegasus launch; a small Navy communications relay satellite; and a science experiment involving the release of barium to observe “interactions of photoionized barium with magnetic and electric fields in the Earth’s magnetosphere and ionosphere.”<\/p>\n

The Pegasus rocket<\/a> was carried aloft from Edwards AFB and released by the same NASA B-52 that had conducted drop tests and launches of various experimental aircraft, including the X-15. Later, Orbital Sciences Corporation commissioned its own L-1011 carrier aircraft, which they kept at Vandenberg AFB.<\/p>\n

FULL DISCLOSURE: I was on the Flight Readiness Review Committee for this launch, so this space anniversary is special to me. And somewhere I have a picture of me in front of Orbital Sciences’ L-1011\/Pegasus combination….<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On April 5, 1990, the first live launch of a Pegasus rocket carried the PEGSAT experimental satellite into orbit. (July 1991 picture of a Pegasus rocket being carried by NASA’s B-52. NASA image.) PEGSAT was an interesting combination of an instrumentation package to monitor this first Pegasus launch; a small \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":[16,26,141,28,11,17],"class_list":["post-433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space","tag-edwards","tag-launch","tag-pegasus","tag-rocket","tag-space-history","tag-vandenberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433","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=433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}