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NASA honors legendary astronaut Vance Brand NASA NEWS RELEASE Posted: January 10, 2006 NASA will honor former astronaut Vance Brand for his involvement in the Apollo space program with the presentation of the Ambassador of Exploration Award at 9 p.m. EST (7 p.m. MST), Friday, Jan. 20 in the City Council Chambers, Longmont Civic Center, 350 Kimbark St., Longmont, Colo. NASA is presenting the Ambassador of Exploration Award to the 38 astronauts who participated in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space programs for realizing America's vision of space exploration from 1961 to 1972. The award is a small sample of lunar material encased in Lucite and mounted for public display. The material is part of the 842 pounds of samples brought back to Earth during the six Apollo lunar expeditions from 1969 to 1972. Brand's award will be displayed at the Longmont Museum & Cultural Center. Brand will be the museum's guest starting at 1 p.m. EST (11 a.m. MST) on Saturday, Jan. 21, during an open house, where the new display will be unveiled, and he will talk about his experiences in the space program. All events are free and open to the media and public. In 1975, the Longmont-native made history as command module pilot with the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. This joint American and Russian mission was the first international manned space flight. It was an important part of improving American-Russian relations. Brand was also mission commander for three space shuttle flights from 1982 to 1990. He commanded flights on both the shuttles Columbia and Challenger. |
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This film looks at the highlights in NASA's history from its creation in the 1950s, through the glory days of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, birth of the space shuttle and the loss of Challenger, launch of Hubble and much more.
If at first you don't succeed, keep on trying. That is what the astronauts of space shuttle Endeavour's maiden voyage did in their difficult job of rescuing a wayward communications satellite. Spacewalkers were unable to retrieve the Intelsat 603 spacecraft, which had been stranded in a useless orbit, during multiple attempts using a special capture bar. So the crew changed course and staged the first-ever three-man spacewalk to grab the satellite by hand. The STS-49 astronauts describe the mission and narrate highlights in this post-flight presentation.
The mission for the crew of space shuttle Challenger's April 1984 flight was two-fold -- deploy the experiment-laden Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) and then track down the crippled Solar Max spacecraft, capture it and perform repairs during spacewalks. Initial attempts by the astronauts to grab the craft while wearing the Manned Maneuvering Unit spacewalk backpacks failed, but the crew ultimately retrieved Solar Max and installed fresh equipment while it was anchored in the payload bay. The crew narrates this post-flight presentation of home movies and highlights from mission STS-41C.