|
|
|
|
|
Goodbye, Titan BY JUSTIN RAY SPACEFLIGHT NOW Posted: October 19, 2005 The mighty Titan -- a pillar in American rocketry for five decades -- flew into orbit for the final time Wednesday, capping a distinguished career of heavy-lifting that has spanned the nation's space age.
Less than 10 minutes later, the Lockheed Martin-built rocket completed its job by deploying the spacecraft payload. The new satellite will be operated by the NRO, a hush-hush government agency responsible for the country's spy satellite fleet. Details of the Titan's payload and its mission were not revealed to the public. However, experts say the craft was placed into an orbit that coincides with imaging satellites. Such spacecraft are telescopes that point back at Earth with powerful vision to see objects as tiny as just inches across, observers believe.
"Today's spectacular launch is a fitting way to say goodbye to Titan," said G. Thomas Marsh, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company. "The Lockheed Martin employees who have given their utmost efforts to the program over the years join with our Air Force and NRO customers, and the many other organizations that make up the Titan team, in expressing our great pride in this service to our country's space program."
Various Titan 3, 34B and 34D satellite-launchers and finally the largest and most powerful version -- the Titan 4 -- were conceived through the years to incrementally increase the capability of the rocket family. Wednesday's launch was the 200th Titan to fly from Vandenberg including:
Cape Canaveral hosted 168 Titan launches including:
"If you take a look back through history, it's not at all a stretch to say that Titan was really a key part of how we won the Cold War because the advantages we had from space allowed us to be successful," said Lt. Gen. Michael Hamel, Space and Missile Systems Center commander. Besides hauling countless military and spy satellites, Titans also launched the Viking space probes to Mars, Voyagers to the outer planets and Cassini to Saturn. In a pre-launch letter to employees, Lockheed Martin's Titan program manager Walt Yager said Wednesday's liftoff would "place the final brush stroke on the Titan Masterpiece." "Mission success is an outgrowth of The Titan program. Titan B-26 will put that trademark on history. The entire team is proud to represent those who have gone before us and close the book on a National Legend. God Speed the 'Silent Hero.'" But the need to modernize the U.S. rocket industry caught up with Titan. Known for its complexity and stiff price tag, at least $411 million for Wednesday's rocket, military leaders took the first steps to retire the big booster a decade ago with creation of the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program. The new-generation EELV rockets -- Lockheed Martin's Atlas 5 and Boeing's Delta 4 -- are supposed to be less expensive and offer a tailored-feel for a payload's weight. Both made inaugural flights in 2002. "The Atlas 5 and the Delta 4 Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles are going to provide our assured access to space and become the workhorse launch vehicles for the 21st century," Hamel said.
About 110 workers will begin the effort of closing out the program, including cleanup of the launch pad. Work to decontaminate the Space Launch Complex-4, remove hazardous items and dispose of hardware is expected to last several months as the workforce gradually dwindles down. The company expects to reduce its total Vandenberg workforce to 159 employees in support of the new Atlas 5 rocket. Meanwhile, another 250 jobs at Lockheed Martin's Denver site will be phased out with Titan. But Yager said 60 percent have found new jobs inside the company. That percentage is similar to the rate experienced by Cape Canaveral workers following the final Titan 4 from the East Coast this spring. Also being impacted are the Titan subcontractors like solid rocket booster-maker Alliant, avionics-maker Honeywell and Aerojet, the engine supplier for Titan since the program's start. "What began as a development project for Aerojet ran for 50 years as a production program with 100 percent mission success in space launch applications," said Aerojet President Michael Martin. Aerojet produced 1,182 Titan engines and performed 11,582 engine tests and 368 launches.
"With my age it's time I take the offramp if you will and let the group go on down the road with Atlas 5, Delta 4 and the (United Launch Alliance)," Heter, 66, said in an interview. The ULA will marry the EELV rocket programs under one organization for government launches. Heter says the thrill of seeing a launch remains strong, as does the pride in his team's role of putting critical national payloads in space. "We're in the business of protecting the good ol' USA," he added. "Yeah, we don't wear the blue uniform but we're just as dedicated and just as proud. I don't know if other people that are not in the business can really feel that pride but it certainly runs rampant out here." Wednesday's launch paid tribute to the memory of two respected Titan team members who passed away this year. Lenny Hoops, an Aerospace Corp. employee, was an expert on ground control systems used to test and launch rockets. "Lenny's knowledge of his systems was unrivaled within the corporation and recognized within the contractor community. Lenny's innate ability to teach coupled with his system knowledge allowed him to conduct several ground system training classes in support of the 2nd Space Launch Squadron. Lenny was most at home with a LASER pointer in hand and a Power Point briefing displayed on a projection screen," a tribute read. Abe Freels was a three-decade Titan veteran working as the Lockheed Martin senior program engineer at Cape Canaveral. He was one of 30 brought to Vandenberg to help launch the last vehicle, but died suddenly earlier this month. In an interview on the eve of the Cape's final Titan launch in April, Freels spoke about his plans to retire after seeing the last one fly. "I'm looking to go out and support the B-26 mission at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and looking seriously at retirement after that. Titan has been a good run and I don't know there is anything else in the industry that would fulfill me as much Titan has." Their names were placed on the rocket's second stage, which now orbits the Earth in peace. |
|
|
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stunning images of Saturn's moon Hyperion taken by the Cassini spacecraft show a surface dotted with craters and modified by some process, not yet understood, to create a strange, "spongy" appearance, unlike the surface of any other moon around the ringed planet.
The astronauts from space shuttle Discovery's return to flight mission recently paid a visit to Japan, the homeland of mission specialist Souichi Noguchi, and were treated to a grand parade.
The International Space Station's outgoing Expedition 11 crew and the new Expedition 12 crew gather inside the Destiny laboratory module for a change of a command ceremony, complete with ringing of the outpost's bell, as the human presence in space continues.
The Expedition 11 mission of commander Sergei Krikalev and flight engineer John Phillips aboard the International Space Station is winding down, and this narrated retrospective looks back at the key events of the half-year voyage in orbit.
The Pluto New Horizons spacecraft, destined to become the first robotic probe to visit Pluto and its moon Charon, arrives at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in advance of its January blastoff.
NASA astronauts Bill McArthur and John Phillips chat with Associated Press space reporter Marcia Dunn about life aboard the International Space Station in this live space-to-Earth interview from the Destiny laboratory module on October 5.
In preparation for the West Coast launch of Boeing's next-generation Delta 4 rocket, the two-stage vehicle is rolled out of its horizontal hangar and driven to the Space Launch Complex-6 pad for erection. The nose cone for the NRO payload is then brought to the pad.
Boeing's Delta 4 rocket pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base was renovated in recent years, transforming Space Launch Complex-6 from the West Coast space shuttle launch site into a facility for the next-generation unmanned booster. This collection of footage shows the 1985 launch pad test using NASA's orbiter Enterprise.
VIDEO:
TODAY'S TITAN ROCKET LAUNCH 
