Milestones of 50 years of Women in Spaceships

Fifty years ago, a young Russian parachute jumper became the first female to be blasted into space, a milestone that has evolved into today’s key role for women in spaceships.

Valentina Tereshkova, 76, will undoubtedly be feted at many a ceremony this week as her June 19, 1963 flight of Vostok 6 forty-eight times around the world was another shocking first for the Soviet Union in the Moon Race with the United States.

Valentina Tereshkova, 1st woman in space

Those were the infant days of the Space Age, and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev used his nation’s space program for pure propaganda purposes to exploit the superiority of the Communist way of life.  Khrushchev ordered the female in space program, then orchestrated behind the scenes the convenient romance of Tereshkova to bachelor cosmonaut and Vostok 3 flier Andrian Nikolayev.  They bore a “space baby,” daughter Elena, who became a doctor.

The lasting fame Tereshkova will have includes her name on a lunar crater, an asteroid, monuments at her birthplace in Yaroslavl and where she landed in Altai, a “Cosmos” museum near her home, a planetarium several school and dozens of streets.  

After her flight, she was kept in the spotlight through three decades of service in Soviet politics: from 1966-74 as a member of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union; from 1974-1989 as a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet; and from 1969-91 as a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

Tereshkova inspired a generation of women to reach for the stars and become astronauts or cosmonauts.  Her spaceship code name was “Seagull,” and when she landed after spending three days in space, her mission had eclipsed the time spent in space by America’s first six Mercury spacemen added together!  The impression to the world was that the Soviet Union had a big lead in the Moon Race.

Valentina Tereshkova 1990s

It was nearly twenty years after Tereshkova that the Soviets again flew a woman, this time Svetlana Yevgenyevna Savitskaya who flew aboard Soyuz T-7 in 1982, becoming the second woman in space. She made another flight in July 1984, which included the first spacewalk by a woman on the Salyut 7 Space Station.

  So, like many of the early Soviet space missions, Tereshkova’s spaceflight was a big propaganda stunt, though her performance in space was equal to all the men who flew before and after her.  

The space flight of Savitskaya may have been pushed ahead as America had announced plans for their first female to fly in space as group of six women astronauts were selected for training in 1977. The first to fly was Sally Ride on June 18, 1983 aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger.  Ride flew again in 1984, and then promoted human space flight until her death from cancer in July 2012.

Liu Yang, China's 1st female spaceflier 2012

 And in just its fourth human space mission, the Chinese a year ago launched their first female “taikonaut” on the anniversary of Tereshkova’s historic space first.   Liu Yang, 33, was launched June 12, 2012 aboard a Chinese Shenzhou 9 spacecraft with two men.  They stayed a week aboard the boxcar-sized, prototype space station called Tiangong 1

While the Russians have not orbited another female in space since 1997, the American astronaut corps of 100 is one-fourth women, and they have served major roles in the Space Shuttle and Space Station programs.  

As of June 2013, , 56 women have flown in space, out of 527 total space travelers. By country of origin: one each from, France, UK, South Korea; two each from China, Canada and Japan, three from Soviet Union/Russia, and 46 from the United States.

While the Soviet Union sent the first two women into space, only three of all the women in space have been Russian. However, the French, British, South Korean and Iranian women all flew as part of the Soviet or Russian space program.

Notable female space travelers:

• 

  Judy Resnik aboard Challenger

  Judy Resnik, First Jewish-American and first female astronaut to die in flight during launch of Space Shuttle Challenger in January 1986.  Her crewmate who also died with five others was Christa McAuliffe, not technically an astronaut until reaching orbit.  Resnik flew two Shuttle missions and was the fourth female to orbit in August 1984.
• Shannon Lucid, 8th, is the first American woman to fly on a space station, the Russian MIR.  She has made five space flights, the best known being her last when she spent 188 days in space, 179 on MIR.  She is the first woman to make a third, a fourth and a fifth spac79. Her stay on Mir was not expected to last so long but her return was delayed twice, extending her stay by about six weeks
• Eileen Collins, 27th with four shuttle missions, including first female pilot and first commander.  This included the July 2005 Discovery, STS-114, the important return to flight after the reentry destruction of Shuttle Columbia.
• Anousheh Ansari, 44th female, and the fourth space tourist, paying 20 million for a rocket ride in a Russian Soyuz and a week on the International Space Station. Ansari, a software multi-millionaire American-Iranian, was blasted into space aboard the Soyuz TMA-9 mission with a Russian and American.
• Yelena Vladimirovna Kondakova, 26th,  was the third Russian woman to travel to space.  Her first trip into space was in October 1994, and she returned to Earth in March 1995 after a five-month stay on the MIR Space Station. Kondakova's second flight was as a mission specialist on Space Shuttle Atlantis in May 1997, the last time a  Russian woman has flown to space.

• 

  Laurel Clark aboard Columbia
  

  Laurel Clark, the 40th female astronaut and third to lose her life. She was killed with six others aboard the reentry disintegration of Space Shuttle Columbia, Feb. 1, 2003.  
• Peggy Whitson, the 38th female in space, and the first commander of the International Space Station In October 2007. She is one of 10 females to perform a spacewalk.

• 

  Sunita Willams and her EVA suit
  

  Sunita Williams, lady astronaut number 45, holds the record for the longest single space flight by a female, 195 days, total spacewalks by a woman, seven; and the most spacewalk time for a 
  woman, 50 hours, 40 minutes A veteran of two spaceflights, on her extended mission she had a fellow astronaut cut her long, brunette hair for the Locks of Love foundation, and the hair was sent back to Earth by returning astronauts. She is training for another mission.
  
  

And there’s a female astronaut for the tabloids....remember Lisa Nowalk?  Good if you don’t, because she was one of NASA’s most embarrassing moments.  Oh, it’s coming back now, huh?  Yup. She’s the love-lorn astronaut who drove non-stop from Houston, Texas to Cape Kennedy, Florida with adult “astronaut” diapers to avoid bathroom breaks.  

Nowak gained international attention on February 5, 2007, when she was arrested at the airport in Orlando, Florida, and subsequently charged with the attempted kidnapping of U.S. Air Force Captain Colleen Shipman, who was romantically involved with astronaut William Oefelien, Nowak’s former boyfriend.

Nowak, the 42nd female astronaut, flew aboard Space Shuttle Discovery during the STS-121 mission in July 2006, where she was responsible for operating the robotic arms of the shuttle and the International Space Station.

On November 10, 2009, Nowak entered a guilty plea to lesser charges. She was sentenced to a year's probation and the two days already served in jail, with no additional jail time. Needless to say, she was discharged from the astronaut corps.

Karen Nyberg on ISS

Tonight circling the Earth every ninety minutes are two women on separate space stations.  

On the International Space Station is 43-year-old flight engineer Karen Nyberg, experiencing her second mission as a weightless astronaut, 200 miles above Earth. She is one of six members of the Expedition 36 crew, having been blasted ot the ISS May 28th with a Russian and European spacefliers, and will return to Earth sometime in October.  

And China has launched its second female into space, a June 11th blast-ff with two males destine for the small Tiangong 1 Space Station. Wang Yaping has become the 56th female to be orbited 200 miles above Earth. She and her fellow "taikonauts" have been announced to be on a 15-day mission, ending around June 26th.

Wang Yaping preparing for blastoff

The ISS is easy to see when flying overhead in the morning or evening twilight. The viewing times are available at many places on the Internet, just google “observing ISS.” And it is possible to see the fainter Chinese Tiangong 1 with the Shenzhou 10  spacecraft attached. Than you can look up and give a wave to the seven men and two ladies pioneering the unknowns of outer space in this second decade of the 21st Century.

SMARTPHONE APPS FOR STARGAZERS

By Mark Marquette

I held off a while to get a fancy computer telephone in my pocket--a smart phone--and it didn’t take me long to load up on those applications simply called “Apps.”

And, as you might imagine, this stargazer has some favorite astronomy and space apps that are fun, educational and quite useful.

Let me share with you some that amateur astronomers like me have loaded into their phones to make looking skyward more fun and rewarding.

Now I have an Android version of a smartphone, and the rest of the world is the IPhone of Apple.  If you don’t have either, sorry--the 21st Century awaits you. As well as next week’s Stargazer column!

But for those who do have one of those amazing devices in their possession, I share what I’m packin’ to maximize my passion for looking up at the night sky. And go to your favorite “app” store to download a compatible version for you.

First app on my smartphone is a Compass.  This is useful for many things not related to stargazing...like getting lost in the woods!  I most recently used it to explain to my teenage daughter how to lay out a garden.  Figuring where the sunrise in the east and sunset in the west were, allowed an understanding that short crops like lettuce and onions will be on the southern side, while tall veggies like tomatoes and pole beans will be on the north side, thus maximizing the sunlight.

You need to know your directions to see the International Space Station--and that’s included with a cool app called ISS Detector.  I love this one, as it give you a five minute warning of when the ISS passes by, all the data of time, how high and a simple arc of the path with a pointer to keep you in the right direction.  The incredible, $40 billion complex covers a football field with its sun-reflecting solar panels and six large segments the size of a bus.  Put some binoculars on it, and you’ll see a boxy shape. But is bright and predictable as it goes through phases of evening and morning sightings about once a month for a week or so.  

To learn the constellations, and what bright star that is you’re looking at, you can’t beat the free app Google Sky.  This is simple, quick to learn, and even dims to red light at night--which doesn’t affect the night vision when our pupils dilate wider open.  I paid $1.99 for another “planetarium in your pocket,” the SkyEye app.  And it works great for a seasoned stargazing pro, but a little too much detail for the casual observer. You can strap it on a telescope, and it will help point to those galaxies and nebula the backyard amateur astronomer enjoys.

When the Moon is visible, and you look at it with binoculars or a telescope, it’s great to know the names of the prominent craters, mountains and those ancient, dark seas.  That’s where the Lunar Map HD app comes in handy. Every feature you can see on the Moon has a name, most honoring the world’s greatest scientists and thinkers of history.  And since they never change, it’s quite impressive to point out the crater Copernicus or the shore of the Sea of Tranquility, where the first American moon ship landed. The Moon App has several versions to download, including a satellite photo map, and a cartographic version.

If I’m looking at the Moon through one of my half-dozen telescopes, I am sometimes curious at to how much “power”  I’m using.  That varies with the size telescope and eyepiece I use, and to calculate the magnification, I have an app, Telescope Calculator.  PS: Backyard astronomers rarely use more than 250x, that magnification (or power) being a maximum for clarity and atmospheric conditions, no matter what those department store telescopes advertise!

When looking at Jupiter in a telescope, you’ll always see the four brightest moons--or you’ll want to know the name of the moon that is hidden behind or lost in front of the planet’s disk.  The app Where is Io? is named after the inner moon, and will show you also where Ganymede, Callisto and Europa are as they whizz around Jupiter in hours from side to side.  

And just for fun, I have a Mars Map app, though it is a good telescopic object only every two years or so.  But since I’m a Mars nut,  and very familiar with its geography, I like to look where the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers are, and visualize where the other missions to the Red Planet ended up.  It’s something to pass the time at the doctor’s office or any other boring situation I find myself in.  

Okay, what astro apps are left on my smartphone?  Duh, my Meteor Showers app, which give the start date, the peak and ending dates of all the major and minor meteor showers.  The Earth just plow through the Lyrids this week, peaking April 22.  And the peak of the eta Aquarids is May 6th--rated four out of four stars because moonlight won’t interfer.

I can’t live without my daily dose of NASA news, and there’s an app for that!  And, I enjoy getting an Astronomy Picture of the Day, the APOD app.

Finally, a little head’s up on what’s up in the sky is available with a weekly synopsis from the SkyWeek app of Sky & Telescope, amateur astronomy’s longest running magazine.  This app provides a day-by-day highlight of where the Moon is located, what events are taking place, and what celestial objects are available for viewing.

Astronomy apps are educational and entertaining, and now a part of my stargazing life.  Check ‘em out and keep a cosmic connection yourself.

SMARTPHONES ORBITED IN NEW AGE OF MINI-SATELLITES

By Mark Marquette

A new commercial rocket launch last week successfully put into orbit three mini-satellites that are competely operated by smartphones.

That’s right...if you have in your pocket or purse an HTC Nexus One smartphone, there are three mini-satellites orbiting the Earth with the same phone, running the mission with Google’s Android operating system.

And when we say a “mini-satellite,” how does fit-in-the-palm-of-your-hand strike you?  Well, the three “PhoneSats” called Alexander, Graham and Bell are each a “nanosatellite” that is a 4-inch cube, weighing just three pounds!

They were blasted into space on April 21st

aboard the maiden flight of Orbital Science Corp.'s Antares rocket from NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia. These three PhoneSats are destined to brake new ground in satellite technology and the commercialization of Earth orbit by space entrepreneurs.

In cooperation with new NASA directorates from the Obama Administration to create space technologies in the private sector, the PhoneSat mission goal is to determine whether a consumer-grade smartphone can be used as the main flight avionics of a capable, yet very inexpensive, satellite.

Transmissions from all three PhoneSats have been received at multiple ground stations on Earth, indicating they are operating normally. The PhoneSat team at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., will continue to monitor the satellites, which are expected to remain in orbit for two weeks, until around May 6th.

NASA's off-the-shelf PhoneSats already have many of the systems needed for a satellite, including fast processors, versatile operating systems, multiple miniature sensors, high-resolution cameras, GPS receivers and several radios.

NASA engineers kept the total cost of the components for the three prototype satellites in the PhoneSat project between $3,500 and $7,000 by using primarily commercial hardware and keeping the design and mission objectives to a minimum.

Each smartphone is housed in a standard metal cube structure measuring about 4 inches square, insulated from harmful cosmic rays. The smartphone acts as the satellite's onboard computer. Its sensors are used for attitude determination and its camera for Earth observation.

Several things smartphones don’t have were added-- a larger, external lithium-ion battery and a more powerful radio for messages it sends from space. When the batteries die, the gyroscopes will fail and the mini-satellites will tumble and fall back to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere. The smartphone's ability to send and receive calls and text messages has been disabled.

 It’s just the beginning of a new age of space entrepreneurs ready to provide access to low-earth orbit and maybe even the Moon.  

At the core of dismantling the 30-year Space Shuttle in 2011 is the Obama Administration’s desire to nurture fledgling space entrepreneurs and help their access to space with knowledge from NASA.  

The PhoneSat mission is a technology demonstration project developed through the agency's Small Spacecraft Technology Program, part of NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate. The directorate is innovating, developing, testing and flying hardware for use in future science and exploration missions. NASA's technology investments provide cutting-edge solutions for our nation's future.

Smartphones offer a wealth of potential capabilities for flying small, low-cost, powerful satellites for atmospheric or Earth science, communications, or other space-born applications. They also may open space to a whole new generation of commercial, academic and citizen-space users.

PhoneSat takes advantage of commercial products already imbued with speedy computing chips, lots of memory and ultra-tiny sensors like high-resolution cameras and navigation devices.

The two battery-powered PhoneSat 1.0 spacecraft are joined in outer space by a beta version of PhoneSat 2.0 . PhoneSat 2.0 is built around an updated Nexus S smartphone made by Samsung Electronics which runs Google’s Android operating system to provide a faster core processor, avionics and gyroscopes. PhoneSat 2.0 has small solar panels to enable longer-duration missions and a GPS receiver. It also has magnetorquer coils—electro-magnets that interact with Earth’s magnetic field—as well as reaction wheels to actively control the satellite’s orientation in space.

As part of the Obama Administration's recognition of the critical role that space technology and innovation will play in enabling both future space missions and bettering life here on Earth.  NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has created the Space Technology Mission Directorate. The directorate will be a catalyst for the creation of technologies and innovation needed to maintain NASA leadership in space while also benefiting America's economy.

And one of the first small steps of that “space directorate” are three cellphones that jumped out of a pant’s pocket and into Earth orbit.  Definitely another giant leap for mankind!