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Space Shuttle Endeavour — Success on STS-126

December 6, 2008 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

Liz and I attended the launch of space shuttle mission STS-126 on November 14, 2008. This resupply and repair flight to the International Space Station (which I had visited with my STS-98 crew in 2001) took on an ambitious array of tasks, from installation of interior facilities for expansion of the ISS crew to 6, to a complicated repair of the starboard Solar Alpha Rotary Joint (SARJ), the ferris-wheel-like joint that allows the right side solar array to swivel like a paddle wheel to track the sun.

The launch itself came on Friday night the 14th at 7:55 pm, EST, into a clear, calm night sky. A high layer of cirrus was backlit by a nearly full Moon. I’ve seen night launches before, but never one this dramatic. Endeavour lit up the Cape in a flickering, orange-yellow glow, even as the sound from the shuttle’s boosters smacked across the press site and shook the Vehicle Assembly Building across the road. A minute into the flight, supersonic, Endeavour tore through that high cirrus layer like an incandescent needle through canvas. As the shuttle’s shock cone pierced the clouds, it spread a widening ripple in the layer of ice crystals, revealing the black sky above. The hole blown through the Moon-lit cirrus layer brought gasps of awe from all of us on the ground!

Endeavour launches at the start of STS-126 (NASA)

By the time their 15 days of work were done, the Endeavour crew had put the damaged joint back into operation, and upgraded the living space with a water recycling system that can even turn waste humidity and urine into potable water. Well done to the STS-126 crew, and thanks for a spectacular departure I’ll never forget. It was almost as beautiful as my last flight! Compare for yourself in Sky Walking…

Battle of the Bulge: What the Hell Hawks Wrought

December 6, 2008 By TOM JONES 1 Comment

Martha Gellhorn, third wife of Ernest Hemingway and a well-known war correspondent, wrote (The Face of War) of her visit to the Ardennes front and the breakthrough to Bastogne in January 1945 :

“…The road to Bastogne had been worked over by Ninth Air Force Thunderbolts before the Third Army tanks [under Patton] finally cleared the way. A colleague and I drove up to Bastogne on a secondary road through breath-taking scenery. The Thunderbolts had created this scenery. You can say the words “death and destruction” and they don’t mean anything. But they are awful words when you are looking at what they mean.

There were some German staff cars along the side of the road. They had not merely been hit by machine gun bullets; they had been mashed into the ground. There were half tracks and tanks literally wrenched apart, and a gun position hit directly by bombs. All around these lacerated or flattened objects of steel there was the usual riff-raff: papers, tin cans, cartridge belts, helmets, an odd shoe, clothing. There were, also, ignored and completely inhuman, the hard frozen corpses of Germans.

…We had watched the Thunderbolts working for several days. They flew in small packs and streaked in to the attacks in single file. They passed quickly through the sky and when they dived you held your breath and waited: it seemed impossible that the plane would be able to pull itself up to safety. They were diving to within 60 feet of the ground.

The snub-nosed Thunderbolt is more feared by the Germans than any other plane.”

Gellhorn was a frequent visitor to the Hell Hawks’ base, and even flew over the front in one of the 365th Fighter Group’s 2-seat P-47s. Some of the men resented her presence; others winked at the celebrity hoopla and Gellhorn’s friendly relationship with their commander, Col. Ray J. Stecker. Gellhorn had friends among the pilots wherever she went, and respected their work. Her book captures the destruction along the front and the attitudes of the men who rained such devastation on the heads of the Wehrmacht.

Martha Gellhorn editing "The Face of War"

How the Hell Hawks saw the fighting in the Bulge occupies two chapters in Hell Hawks! — now the best-selling title at the National Air & Space Museum.

Hell Hawks! Talk at National World War II Museum — Nov. 15

November 5, 2008 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

Celebrate American’s servicemen and women the week of Veterans Day: Join me for a Hell Hawks! talk and book signing at the National World War II Museum on November 15. My talk on this aerial band of brothers and their combat experiences flying the P-47D Thunderbolt against Hitler’s armies will take place at the Museum at Noon. I’ll be at the Museum store through 4 pm to sign copies of Hell Hawks! and talk with veterans, visitors, and those who would salute these heroes.

More information on my astronaut speaker appearances at www.AstronautTomJones.com.

Two departed “Hell Hawks”

November 5, 2008 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

Bob Dorr and I received sad news in late October about the deaths of two of our Hell Hawk veterans, both contributors and enthusiastic supporters of our work on Hell Hawks! The Untold Story of the American Fliers Who Savaged Hitler’s Wehrmacht. Jim McWhorter, past president of the 365th FIghter Group Association, passed away in Florida on Oct. 22. He was preceded on his final flight by Edgar C. Kiefer, who died in Royal Oak, MI on October 14. Both men were successful and courageous combat pilots with the Hell Hawks. McWhorter told us of his slam-bang shootdown of a Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter on Oct. 12, 1944, an action for which he was awarded with the Distinguished Flying Cross:

“Mac” McWhorter, Red 3, with 1st Lt. Robert S. Maney flying his wing, heard Porter call out the bandits and direct the flight to “prepare to drop belly tanks in ten seconds.” “The hell with waiting,” thought Mac. “I dumped mine immediately . . . and looking up saw [my drop] was in last place!” Following Porter, he climbed through eleven thousand feet at three hundred miles per hour, chasing a flight of Messerschmitts, which scattered and fled. Bouncing one, McWhorter caught his enemy in a climbing right turn at about 270 to 300 miles per hour. He fired a burst that peppered the dark gray fighter’s left wing and chopped loose its left main gear. As the 109 tightened the turn, Mac squeezed off a second burst that riddled the 109’s fuselage and tail. Maney, concentrating on clearing McWhorter’s tail, never saw the enemy but caught a glimpse of the shell casings and belt links pouring from his leader’s wings. He thought for a terrible instant that Mac’s Thunderbolt was disintegrating, hammered by strikes from a German coming head-on.

Instead it was McWhorter who had the range. He fired again just as the enemy pilot jettisoned his canopy. Too late: Mac’s eight fifties blasted the enemy’s cockpit and engine. The Messerschmitt’s Daimler-Benz engine froze, and flames erupted from the 109’s cramped cockpit. McWhorter saw his victim, spinning and aflame, hurtle down to spray a fireball across the landscape below. “In that forty-five seconds or a minute, I didn’t have time to think about that pilot,” said McWhorter. “That 109 was just a target.” He pulled up and circled, looking for more, but by then the enemy was gone. He had a confirmed kill, and his courage and skill were recognized by the award of a Distinguished Flying Cross.

1Lt Jim McWhorter (left) with crew chief, and P-47D “Haulin’ Ass II”

Edgar Kiefer contributed to our research by sharing with us his self-published memoir, A P-47 Pilot’s Recollections of his WWII Battles (written with his son, Richard Kiefer of Boulder, CO). Both men were brave young Americans in 1944-45, a time (like today) when our nation is in vital need of their determination, dedication, and deadly earnestness in combat.

Men like McWhorter and Kiefer will be the subject of my upcoming Hell Hawks! talk to the Service Academies Association at 0745 on Friday, December 12, at the MARRIOTT HOUSTON WESTCHASE HOTEL, 2900 Briar park, Houston, Texas 77042. Hell Hawks! remains the top-selling title at the National Air & Space Museum.

For more of my astronaut speaker appearances, in Houston or nationwide, please watch this space. I’ll also be signing Sky Walking: An Astronaut’s Memoir, at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex on Nov. 14, 2008, from 1230-1430.

Stellar “Planetology” Review

November 5, 2008 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

Science writer and “Spacewriter” Carolyn Petersen, co-editor of “The New Solar System,” has just published a kind review of Planetology. Carolyn tells us that…

“…this is the book I would have written if I were tasked to bring the beauty and excitement about planetary studies to a broad audience.…I’m in awe at the work that Jones and Stofan put in on it.”

Read the entire review at The Spacewriter’s Ramblings. It’s great early buzz for co-author Ellen Stofan and our new book.

The book will be released on November 18, but you can order now.

Planetology: About To Enter Orbit

October 16, 2008 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

My new book with Ellen Stofan, Planetology: Unlocking the Secrets of the Solar System, will debut in stores on November 18. It’s already available for order online.

Here’s the National Geographic Books press release:

CONTACT: Penelope Dackis

(202) 857-7335 pdackis@ngs.org

PLANETOLOGY: UNLOCKING THE SECRETS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM

A Stunning, Completely New View of the Planets

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WASHINGTON (Sept. 22, 2008)—Veteran astronaut and planetary scientist Tom Jones and noted planetary geologist Ellen Stofan join forces and use the latest space technology to reveal astonishing new insights into the dynamic stories of Earth and its celestial neighbors. PLANETOLOGY: UNLOCKING THE SECRETS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM (National Geographic Books, ISBN: 978-1-4262-0121-9, Nov. 18, 2008, $35 hardcover) presents compelling new images of Earth—many captured by space shuttle and space station crew members—and remarkable scenes of alien surfaces beamed home by our far-ranging robotic probes, from the international fleet of spacecraft on and around Mars to the Cassini Saturn mission. These striking images, viewed side by side, show us the powerful forces that have shaped our own planet, and inform humanity’s age-old quest for other worlds like our own.

PLANETOLOGY contains remarkable visual evidence of the natural processes that have shaped the varied planetary landscapes in our solar system: searing lava plains, windswept deserts, active volcanoes, jagged mountains, majestic glaciers and stark impact craters. Readers discover the details behind the solar system’s largest volcano, Mars’ “dry ice” polar caps, and the on-going threat of comet and asteroid collisions with Earth.

A comprehensive new portrait of the solar system unfolds in PLANETOLOGY. The authors bring a fresh approach to the study of space science and illustrate clearly how discovery of dramatic features of other planets give us crucial information about our own. Engaging text, highlighted with personal experiences from space flights and robotic exploratory missions, make this book just as absorbing as it is informative.

Tom Jones is a planetary scientist, author, pilot and veteran NASA astronaut. He flew on four space shuttle missions and led three space walks to help his crew install the centerpiece of the International Space Station. He has written “Hell Hawks!,” “Sky Walking: An Astronaut’s Memoir” and “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to NASA.” Ellen Stofan is a planetary geologist who has studied volcanic and tectonic features on Venus, Mars, Titan, and Earth. While at NASA, she was Chief Scientist on the New Millennium Program and is currently Senior Research Scientist at Proxemy Research, and Honorary Professor of Earth Sciences at University College London.

Ellen Stofan and I have our preview copies in hand, and the book is spectacular. We hope you’ll grab a copy in time for Christmas. Planetology will be a perfect gift for anyone with an interest in our place in the solar system and universe.

Latest articles from Astronaut Tom Jones

October 16, 2008 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

October has been a productive month for getting some of my interests into print. The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics publishes “Aerospace America” every month, and in October my “View from Here” column appeared. My topic was dealing with the impact hazard from Near Earth Objects: 2008 TC3 collided with Earth on October 7th, making my report on the need for a decision-making agreement to deal with a future rogue asteroid a timely one. You can read Asteroid Deflection: Planning for the Inevitable online and in the October issue of Aerospace America.

Speaking of 2008 TC3, I reported on its collision with Earth and the need to prepare for a future rogue asteroid in Why the World Needs Asteroid Insurance: Resident Astronaut on Popular Mechanics‘ web site, October 9, 2008. Keep an eye out for my continuing space comments at their site.

My article on the early space race and the US effort to put a man in space, Mercury Rising, appeared in Invention and Technology‘s fall 2008 issue. I interviewed Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter for the article, which is beautifully illustrated with mission photos and developmental drawings of the Mercury design. I’ll post a pdf version of the article shortly at my website, AstronautTomJones.com.

All of these intriguing topics are sure to be featured in my upcoming astronaut speaker talks, and I’ll post my upcoming appearances in a future entry here at Flight Notes.

Small NEO strikes Earth early on Oct. 7, 2008

October 7, 2008 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

A small asteroid, 2008 TC3, entered Earth’s atmosphere last night, October 6, at 10:46 pm EDT (October 7, 0246 UTC). The rock, 1-5 meters in diameter, burned up harmlessly over northern Sudan. The crew of a KLM jetliner about 750 miles away reported seeing the flash from the fireball, which released about a kiloton of explosive energy into the atmosphere. No damage was expected on the ground.

Such fireballs, or bolides, enter Earth’s atmosphere routinely. What marked this Near Earth Object‘s demise was that it was detected and its entry predicted through the efforts of the Spaceguard Survey team in Tucson, AZ. Warning time was a mere 24 hours or so, and there are hundreds of thousands of such objects, bigger than about 40 m (large enough to strike the surface) trooping through the inner solar system within reach of Earth’s orbit. We know of only 5600 or so of these Near Earth Objects. As our telescopes get better, we’ll be finding thousands more, and of those, a few dozen will be found to pose an uncomfortably high probability of hitting Earth with enough force to cause damage to lives or property.

To address that unseen but certain threat, the Near Earth Object Committee of the Association of Space Explorers submitted a report, prepared by its Panel on Asteroid Threat Mitigation, to the United Nations on Sep. 25, 2008. The Panel proposes a decision-making process to deal with threatening asteroids for adoption by the international community, working through the existing structures of the United Nations.

An excerpt of that report is available at the Association of Space Explorer site, here. As a member of the Committee, I worked with the Panel through its two years of deliberations, ending in the delivery of the report last month. Now it’s up to the United Nations and the world’s peoples to prepare for some future asteroid strike, potentially much more dangerous than the harmless light show put on by 2008 TC3.

Video of 2008 TC3 here:

An earlier video of an Australian fireball:

NASA diagram of 2008 TC3 impact trajectory.

Meteosat 8 image of fireball (Image credit: Zdenek Charvat, Czech Hydrometeorological Institute)

October Sky Festival: Coalwood with Homer Hickam

October 7, 2008 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

Last Saturday, October 4, I was a guest in Coalwood, WV, at the 10th annual October Sky Festival, hosted by Coalwood citizens and best-selling author Homer Hickam. The day was blessed with beautiful early autumn weather: temperatures about 70 under a cloudless blue sky. The forested ridges surrounding the little town (population, 180, down from 2000 sixty years ago) where Homer grew up were brushed lightly with the first traces of yellow, orange, and rust-red. The mining town’s main street was lined with art and craft vendors, food stalls, and plenty of happy families.

Along with Homer’s boyhood pals, I participated in a series of model rocket launches just after lunch at “Cape Coalwood,” where Homer and the Rocket Boys once lofted their home-built missiles. Most of Saturday’s rockets managed to parachute back into the former mining dump site without damage, although the surrounding tall trees claimed a few reentering vehicles.

Homer’s latest book is Red Helmet, and he always had a line out front of the Methodist Church for signing. My table was on the church’s front lawn, where I signed copies of Hell Hawks! and Sky Walking through the day. With both my grandfathers having worked in the coal mines of Wilkes-Barre, PA, my visit to Coalwood was a glimpse into their lives 75 years ago. For a day, at least, I could trace a direct path from the mines to the stars. Plan on visiting the October Sky Festival in 2009.

Rocket launches at Cape Coalwood (credit D. Kilpatrick)

Signing "Sky Walking" and "Hell Hawks!" at Coalwood (D. Kilpatrick)

Signing "Sky Walking" and "Hell Hawks!" (credit -- D. Kilpatrick)

Coalwood Main -- October Sky Festival (credit D. Kilpatrick)

Hell Hawks! in Houston

September 24, 2008 By TOM JONES Leave a Comment

I’ll be appearing in Houston this Saturday, September 27, 2008, for a talk and book signing of Hell Hawks! from 2-4 pm at the Borders — Baybrook location in Webster, Texas.

Looking forward to seeing many old friends and learning of their experiences in Hurricane Ike. Best wishes to all there for a smooth clean-up and a quick recovery from the extensive damage inflicted by Ike.

Spread the word and join me Saturday for the extraordinary tales of the 365th Fighter Group, the Hell Hawks! This band of young pilots and airmen had an extraordinary impact on winning victory in WWII Europe.

P-47s at Yankee Air Museum -- 2005