In late February, the Association of Space Explorers, working with the United Nations in Vienna, proposed that the UN declare that Asteroid Day be held as an annual, global event. Asteroid Day, first held in 2015, heightens public awareness of the asteroid impact hazard, educates society on what we humans can do with space technology to prevent a future disaster, and calls for stepping up the discovery rate of possibly hazardous asteroids. 

 

At the Vienna session of the UN’s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (through its Science and Technical Subcommittee), our ASE representative Dorin Prunariu delivered our statement on the importance of Asteroid Day as a global, UN-recognized event. His presentation to the member state delegates was well-received. The Association of Space Explorers submitted a Conference Room Paper to the member state delegates calling for recognition of Asteroid Day, and it’s posted here. 

Here is one excerpt from our Paper:

In view of the successful results of last year’s Asteroid Day, and the goals and
plans for Asteroid Day 2016 and beyond, the Association of Space Explorers asks
the member States of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space to support
Asteroid Day’s goals, and to propose that the United Nations General Assembly at
its 71st session in 2016 declare the International Asteroid Day as [an] annual global
observance. The purpose of such an Asteroid Day declaration is to promote and
raise each year at the international level the awareness of NEO hazards, the
potential for space science and technology to protect humanity against future
damaging impacts, and the need to act together to end the threat of an asteroid
collision with Earth. Because 30 June was the date of the largest impact of an
asteroid on Earth in historical times, we propose that the United Nations General
Assembly resolve that the International Asteroid Day be celebrated and promoted
annually on that date.

We anticipate that the full Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, meeting in June, will adopt the report of its Committee. If so, October’s gathering of the General Assembly in New York should see the approval of the document, and thus UN recognition of Asteroid Day as an annual, global event. 

The Association of Space Explorers Committee on Near-Earth Objects thanks Dorin (celebrating the 35th anniversary of the first Romanian space mission (his) this year) and the Asteroid Day organizers Grig Richter and Danica Remy for making the work in Vienna possible. So this June 30, check with AsteroidDay.org to see and attend the closest Asteroid Day event, or better yet, plan to organize and hold one of your own. We’re sure to continue our ASE support of this year’s events with astronauts attending many of the Asteroid Day gatherings. See you on June 30. 

Since July 1990, the 23 members of Astronaut Group XIII had studied and trained together for their ultimate challenge in space. Although all of us wanted to be the first in our class to fly, we knew it would take a couple of years to get every Hairball into orbit, flying a couple of us rookies at most with every shuttle mission. Bernard Harris and Charlie Precourt were the first in the group to get to space, flying in April 1993 on STS-55. It was almost a year later before I got my chance on STS-59.

Just six months earlier, in October, I was floored to learn I’d be joined on STS-68, flying the SRL-2 radar imaging payload, by THREE of my Hairball classmates: Terry Wilcutt, Jeff Wisoff, and Dan Bursch. We’d spent a year together in “astronaut school” at Johnson Space Center, and flown everything from the simulators to T-38 jets together. We knew each others’ personalities well, and I was reassured that I was flying with good friends and strong, capable crewmates. Jeff and Dan had flown in the previous year as mission specialists, and Terry would be our crew’s pilot. The way we split up our orbit team for round-the-clock radar operations, Dan and I would work the “night” shift together–the Blue Shift–, along with Steve Smith, and Terry and Jeff would take up the Red Shift–daytime back in Houston–with commander Mike Baker.

Today, Terry is the safety and mission assurance chief at NASA, Jeff is principal associate director of the National Ignition Facility (“lasers”), and Dan is a senior project engineer at the Aerospace Corporation. They’ve taught me so much, both on space and on Earth.

Here we are, just after suiting up down the hall from astronaut crew quarters in the Operations and Checkout Building at Kennedy Space Center. From here it was just a few short steps to the elevator down to the Astrovan, and our ride to the pad for the launch of STS-68,

Read more about the STS-68 mission in “Sky Walking: An Astronaut’s Memoir,” and at my website, www.AstronautTomJones.com.

The crew of STS-68, Space Radar Lab 2, on Endeavour. Throughout our training syllabus, we were guided through the frantic schedule of classes and simulator sessions by our training team. Without their expertise, we would never have been ready in time for our planned Aug. 18 launch date.

The FFT trainer, once in Bldg. 9, is now at the Seattle Museum of Flight, still bearing the scuff marks from the boots of dozens of crews sliding down the exterior using their “Sky Genie” escape ropes.

Our crew of six included two EVA-qualified astronauts: Jeff Wisoff and Steve Smith. They trained for an unexpected spacewalk on STS-68, if needed for repairs or emergency closure of the payload bay doors or latches. As Jeff and Steve worked through their syllabus, including four underwater sessions covering most orbiter repair tasks, I visited to refresh my memory on their tools and to take some photos of them as they prepared to plunge into the 25-foot-deep pool. I’d trained for this same job on STS-59, a few months earlier. Here, Jeff is fully suited, on the donning stand, and ready to begin his training class. Steve Smith is on the other side of the stand. Crewmate and Endeavour pilot Terry Wilcutt took the photo.

Terry and I discussed Steve and Jeff’s work poolside at the Weightless Environment Training Facility in Bldg. 29 at Johnson Space Center. This building had once housed the Apollo-era centrifuge, but with the advent of the shuttle, the centrifuge gave way to the new WETF swimming pool for EVA training. The building also housed control consoles, life support systems, tool storage, a medical office, and diver and astronaut locker facilities. An ambulance was always parked at the WETF entrance during suited runs underwater.

We all had a chance to drive the M113 APC, below, just in case we had to evacuate an injured crewmember from the blast bunker and get him to a nearby helipad.

Our crew posed on the launch pad next to Endeavour during the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test activities. This swingarm carries flammable, gaseous hydrogen away from the external tank during launch preparations. It’s amazing to get so close to this massive machinery, even more startling to realize you’re going to ride it off the planet.

The AstroVan (below) is now on display near Atlantis at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Will it roll again? Here we’re loose and joking, but the atmosphere’s a little more tense on the day of the real ride to the launch pad.

As we waited for our strap-in and countdown rehearsal aboard Endeavour, we took some photos atop the launch pad.

Steve and I would work on the Blue Shift together with Dan Bursch while in orbit. Steve rode uphill in the MS-1 position on the flight deck, next to flight engineer and MS-2 Dan Bursch.

Our countdown rehearsal ended with a mock pad abort and an emergency egress from the crew module to the escape slide baskets on the western, or far side of the 195-foot level.

Following lunch back at crew quarters, we headed back to the pad for an afternoon press conference near the blast bunker on the pad perimeter road.

On the shot below, the slide wires for the escape baskets are visible, reaching back to the 195-foot level at Pad 39A. It was a hot August day on the Florida Space Coast.

Two days before launch, 20 years ago, for STS-68. The crew arrives at the Cape beach house for BBQ with family members. Left to right: Steve Smith, Mike Baker, Tom Jones, Terry Wilcutt, Jeff Wisoff, and Dan Bursch. NASA had rented us some nifty Chrysler LeBaron convertibles. (below, NASA 9-28-94)

The day before launch, our food technicians start loading the contents of the fresh food locker: Wheat Thins in ziplocs, tortillas into dark green packages, squeezable cheese spread, picante sauce packets, peanut butter, empty water pouches, my TastyKake chocolate cupcakes and butterscotch krimpets, and (ahem) white packets of high-fiber cookies.

After our pad abort on August 18, we were all eager to go. Here are the four “Hairballs” from the 1990 astronaut group flying on STS-68: Jones, Wilcutt, Wisoff, and Bursch. In the background of the suit room, we see Hoot Gibson (chief astronaut) in the blue flight suit, with tan-suited Dave Leestma (chief of Flight Crew Operations) on the right. We would shortly walk to the Astrovan for our ride to Pad 39A.

In the photo above, LIz and I posed in front of Endeavour as part of our spouse’s tour before heading to night viewing with our friends and family. We were able to see the ship from top to bottom, from the White Room down to the flame trench beneath the mobile launch platform on Pad 39A. Likely taken Aug. 17, 1994. For more info on STS-68, see: www.AstronautTomJones.com

Space Shuttle Endeavour launched on its STS-69 mission on September 7, 1995. The orbiter and stack had rolled back to the VAB on Aug. 1 to avoid the effets of Hurricane Erin. I was one of the capcoms (astronaut communicator working in Mission Control) for the mission, and I had never seen a space shuttle stack move out to the launch pad. So I took advantage of an invitation from the STS-69 crew (Dave Walker, Ken Cockrell, Jim Voss, Mike Gernhardt, and Jim Newman) to join them for the rollout. Our pair of T-38s headed from Ellington Field near Johnson Space Center for the Cape on the afternoon of Aug. 7, 1995.

After spending the night at astronaut crew quarters, we were up the next morning to join Endeavour on her roll to the pad, which had begun in darkness at 1:55 am. We drove out to the crawlerway, once the route of Saturn V moon rockets to the pad, catching a heart-stopping view of the shuttle stack about two-thirds of the way to Launch Pad 39A. We parked along the road to step aboard the Mobile Launch Platform and get up close to the orbiter I’d flown twice in the previous year (STS-59 and STS-68).

I had never boarded the MLP while in motion, but it was easy to jump aboard the gangway at its 1 mph pace along the crushed river stone of the crawlerway and climb to the deck. Here I was within touching distance of the Endeavour stack, this time unprotected from any pad structure, as on my prelaunch visits to my ship in 1994. Endeavour was independent and self-supported, gliding toward its appointment with orbit, oblivious of the human gnats buzzing around her with a Nikon draped around their necks.

I think the focus on the above shot is a bit soft, due to the early morning light at the Cape–we got their shortly after dawn. The two tab-shaped gray structures on either side of the orbiter’s tail also belonged to the MLP. They housed the T-minus-zero umbilicals (“T-zero umbilicals” was how we said it), those clusters of gas, power, and propellant lines that fed into the ship on either side, just below the OMS pods. Through these umbilicals the external tank received its propellants, the orbiter received commands and electrical power and sent back telemetry, and its plumbing was furnished with gaseous nitrogen for purging the payload bay and engine compartment. At zero in the count, the umbilical panel was yanked away by a falling counterweight, retracted into the gray structure, and protected from the fierce exhaust blast by armored doors that slammed down over the now-recessed umbilical plate.

While pacing the MLP and craning my neck back to look up at Endeavour (as close as I’d been since my landing at Edwards on STS-68 the previous October), I had to get myself in the picture. I’d lived aboard this ship in space for three weeks in 1994, yet it was still hard to wrap my head around that reality. How is it possible that we could have hurled this entire machine into space at five miles per second, with six humans aboard, and brought it back safely to Earth? We have deliberately chosen to walk away from this national capability. Today, if we don’t choose to use these machines any longer, we must quickly–very quickly–develop an alternative national means to send our people to space. Not accelerating this development is sheer negligence on a national scale.

We dropped back to Earth again, stepping onto the crawlerway for a few more photos as the mobile launcher neared the incline to the top of Pad 39A. These views just kept me grinning and shaking my head in awe. I will be similarly amazed when a mobile launcher carries the first Space Launch System booster to its pad.

Endeavour, OV-105, began its ascent of the ramp to 39A as I took up a perch on the Rotating Service Structure, seen to the left in the photo above. This was the rail-mounted “gantry” that would swing in behind the orbiter, once it was in position, and enclose most of the orbiter for protection from the weather. It would also provide clean-room access to the payload bay, enabling technicians to transfer payloads from a mobile canister from the RSS into the payload bay. For me, the top of the RSS provided a fantastic photo vantage point for me and the Nikon F4 I’d borrowed from the photo lab at JSC.

From atop the RSS I head the constant roar of the crawler’s diesels (in turn powering electric motors that drive the tracks) as it mounted the pad elevation.

If there’s anything that will bring a grin to your face, it’s the sight of a spaceship almost imperceptibly rolling up alongside of you. The orbiter seemed to say: “Comin’ through! I’m headed for orbit. Stand aside!”

Endeavour pulls even with the pad structure as I stood, amazed, just above the orbiter White Room level on the RSS.

Here, the crawler would lower the stack onto the four massive launch platform pedestals, then drive back down the incline for its next job. Back on the MLP deck, I got a look at the base of the external tank and its structural connections to the solid rocket boosters. Each booster is held to the platform by 4 massive bolts and nuts, which shatter under explosive detonations at T-minus-zero.

I flew home later that afternoon, with Ken Cockrell at the controls. I hope he’ll be able to figure out who the crew is in T-38 #907, based on the helmet colors in the photo. STS-69 launched on September 7, 1995:

My thanks to the STS-69 crew for allowing me to share their orbiter’s rollout, and for inviting me to work with them as a capcom on their mission. Of course, Ken Cockrell and I flew together just 14 months later on STS-80. But that’s another story. See my website here for more details:

www.AstronautTomJones.com