{"id":598,"date":"2011-04-28T20:20:26","date_gmt":"2011-04-28T20:20:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=598"},"modified":"2011-04-28T20:20:26","modified_gmt":"2011-04-28T20:20:26","slug":"military-shuttle-mission-space-tourist-and-two-satellites-join-train","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/military-shuttle-mission-space-tourist-and-two-satellites-join-train\/","title":{"rendered":"Military Shuttle Mission, Space Tourist, and Two Satellites Join the 'A-Train'"},"content":{"rendered":"

First things first, the military mission: 20 years ago today — April 28, 1991 — the Space Shuttle Discovery<\/em> launched on a dedicated DoD mission.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(Auroral image taken during the STS-39 mission. NASA image.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\nThe STS-39<\/a> crew — Michael L. Coats, L. Blaine Hammond, Guion S. Bluford, Gregory S. Harbaugh, Richard J. Hieb, Donald R. McMonagle, and Charles Lacy Veach — completed a combination of classified and unclassified mission objectives during their week in space.<\/p>\n

On this same date a decade later — April 28, 2001 — the first “space tourist,” U.S. businessman Dennis Tito, rode aboard the Soyuz-TM-32<\/a> mission with cosmonauts Talgat A. Musabayev and Yuri M. Baturin. Their mission launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and docked with the International Space Station. I love the description of Tito in the linked write-up as “not a professional astronaut.”<\/p>\n

And just 5 years ago today, the CloudSat<\/a> and CALIPSO<\/a>* meteorological satellites launched from Vandenberg AFB on a Delta-II rocket. They launched into the same orbit as the Aqua, PARASOL, and Aura satellites to join the A-Train<\/a> of observational craft that pass overhead one right after the other.<\/p>\n

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\n*CALIPSO = Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation, a U.S. and French collaborative spacecraft<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First things first, the military mission: 20 years ago today — April 28, 1991 — the Space Shuttle Discovery launched on a dedicated DoD mission. (Auroral image taken during the STS-39 mission. NASA image.) The STS-39 crew — Michael L. Coats, L. Blaine Hammond, Guion S. Bluford, Gregory S. Harbaugh, \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":[5],"tags":[26,11,12,22,17],"class_list":["post-598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military","tag-launch","tag-space-history","tag-space-shuttle","tag-space-station","tag-vandenberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598","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=598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}