This new ocean, p.111
This New Ocean, page 111
Davies, Merton E. RAND Jan. 4, 1989
Dula, Arthur M. Houston July 13, 1996
Edelson, Burton I. Johns Hopkins University Jan. 29, 1988
Filina, Larisa A. Korolyov Memorial Museum May 17, 1995
Gingerich, Owen Harvard University May 31, 1969
Hall, Charles F. Ames Research Center Mar. 1, 1988
Helfand, David J. Columbia University May 10, 1989
Johnson, Nicholas L. Teledyne Brown Eng. Oct. 11, 1988
Johnson Space Center Oct. 18, 1996
Kantemirov, Boris N. Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics May 17, 1995
June 6, 1996
Kapitsa, Sergei Moscow May 16, 1995
Keegan, General George J. U.S. Air Force (ret.) Sept. 16, 1981
June 2, 1984
Khozin, Grigori S. Russian Diplomatic Academy June 5, 1995
Khrushchev, Sergei Brown University Nov. 27, 1995
Killian, James R., Jr. MIT Feb. 11, 1985
King, John W. NASA (ret.) Mar. 21, 1995
Kistiakowsky, George B. Harvard Apr. 12, 1981
Knoche, E. Henry CIA (ret.) July 1, 1985
Krichevski, Sergei Gargarin Training Center May 14, 1995
Lane, Arthur L. JPL Feb. 19, 1988
Leonov, Alexei Moscow June 8, 1995
McLuhan, Marshall Toronto July 11, 1969
Mead, Margaret American Museum of Natural History May 28, 1969
Minovitch, Michael A. Phaser Telepropulsion Mar. 16, 1995
Mishin, Vasily P. Moscow Aviation Institute June 4, 1996
Morrison, Philip MIT May 31, 1969
Murray, Bruce Caltech July 2, 1987
Jan. 10, 1989
Niebuhr, Reinhold Stockbridge, Mass. May 30, 1969
Pickering, William H. JPL (ret.) June 15, 1987
Pike, John Federation of American Scientists Aug. 25, 1981
Ponomareva, Valentina Moscow June 5, 1996
Ride, Sally K. Stanford University Mar. 1, 1988
Savin, Anatoli I. Moscow May 12, 1995
Scoville, Herbert, Jr. CIA (ret.) Apr. 12, 1984
Stofan, Ellen R. JPL Mar. 17, 1995
Tatarewicz, Joseph N. National Air and Space Museum Jan. 28, 1988
Toynbee, Arnold London June 9, 1969
Van Allen, James A. University of Iowa Feb. 14, 1987
van der Woude, Jurrie JPL Feb. 22, 1988
Van Doren, Mark Columbia University (ret.) June 5, 1969
Wheelon, Albert D. CIA (ret.) Jan. 6, 1997
For Background
Alexander, Joseph K. NASA Jan. 29, 1988
Allen, Lew JPL June 18, 1987
Jan. 6, 1989
Beichman, Charles Caltech June 25, 1987
Bowen, Fred W. NASA June 15, 1987
Bourke, Roger D. JPL June 24, 1987
Bundy, McGeorge NYU June 28, 1984
Casani, E. Kane JPL Mar. 13, 1995
Dec. 15, 1995
Casani, John R. JPL June 24, 1987
Chahine, Moustafa T. JPL June 18, 1984
June 19, 1987
Jan. 6, 1989
Colby, William E. CIA (ret.) Apr. 17, 1984
Collins, Richard F. JPL June 29, 1987
Collins, Stewart A. JPL June 25, 1987
Davies, Merton E. RAND Mar. 14, 1995
Dec. 19, 1995
Diaz, Alphonso JPL Jan. 27, 1988
Draper, Ronald F. JPL Aug. 28, 1989
Dunne, James A. JPL June 18, 1987
Fimmel, Richard O. Ames Mar. 4, 1988
Ford, John P. JPL June 23, 1987
French, Bevan M. NASA Jan. 28, 1988
Friedman, Louis D. Planetary Society Feb. 13, 1988
Gavit, Sarah JPL Dec. 14, 1995
Giberson, W. E. JPL June 30, 1987
Goldfine, Milton JPL June 29, 1987
Haynes, Norman JPL June 23, 1987
Jacobson, Allan S. JPL June 26, 1987
James, J. N. JPL Jan. 22, 1988
Janesick, James JPL June 14, 1984
Johnson, Nicholas L. Teledyne Brown June 22, 1984
Johnson, Torrence V. JPL June 17, 1987
Katz, Amrom RAND (ret.) June 16, 1984
June 2, 1984
Khrushchev, Sergei Brown University Nov. 27, 1995
Kukkonen, Carl A. JPL June 16, 1987
Land, Edwin Polaroid (ret.) Oct. 27, 1984
Lane, Arthur L. JPL June 22, 1987
June 29, 1987
Ledebuhr, Arno G. Livermore National Lab Dec. 11, 1995
Lehman, David H. JPL Dec. 21, 1995
Lovell, Bernard Jodrell Bank June 13, 1969
Lyman, Peter T. JPL June 29, 1987
Mark, Hans University of Texas May 6, 1985
McLaughlin, William I. JPL June 25, 1987
Feb. 23, 1988
Jan. 4, 1989
Meeks, Willis G. JPL June 17, 1987
Meinel, Aden JPL July 2, 1987
Meinel, Marjorie JPL July 2, 1987
Morrison, David Ames Jan. 18, 1989
Murray, Bruce Caltech Dec. 21, 1995
Nelson, Jerry UC Berkeley June 6, 1984
Pickering, William H. JPL (ret.) Feb. 18, 1988
Jan. 5, 1989
Pike, John Federation of American Scientists June 27, 1983
Pleasance, Lyn Livermore National Lab Dec. 11, 1995
Rabi, I. I. Columbia University (ret.) May 15, 1987
Rea, Donald G. JPL June 19, 1987
Scoville, Herbert, Jr. CIA (ret.) Apr. 12, 1984
Shapiro, Robert NYU Sept. 16, 1987
Shirley, Donna JPL Dec. 19, 1996
Smrekar, Suzanne JPL Dec. 18, 1995
Standish, E. Myles JPL July 1, 1987
Stewart, Homer J. Caltech (ret.) July 2, 1987
Jan. 5, 1989
Stofan, Ellen R. JPL Mar. 17, 1995
Tatarewicz, Joseph N. National Air and Space Museum Mar. 7, 1988
Vane, Gregg JPL Dec. 14, 1995
Wagoner, Paul D. USAF June 21, 1984
Wasserburg, Gerald Caltech Feb. 24, 1988
Wilson, Barbara JPL Dec. 18, 1995
Taped Meetings
AIAA/JPL Conference on Solar System Exploration, May 19–21, 1987.
Fisk, Lennard A. “The Role of Robotic Precusors in Human Exploration,” “Pathways to the Planets” conference, Washington, D.C., June 1, 1989.
“Future of Space Sciences in the United States” (organized by James A. Van Allen), American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, Chicago, 1991.
Helfand, David J. “Astropolitics: Science in the Backseat at NASA,” New York Academy of Sciences, April 27, 1989.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WILLIAM E. BURROWS has reported on aviation and space for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, and has had articles in The New York Times Magazine, The Sciences, and other publications. He is a contributing editor at Air & Space/Smithsonian and the author of seven other books, including Deep Black, the classic work on spying from space, and Exploring Space, an award-winning history of solar system exploration.
Mr. Burrows is a professor of journalism at New York University and the founder and director of its graduate Science and Environmental Reporting Program.
The first Landsat was launched in 1972. Its successors and similar French, Russian, and other civilian remote sensing satellites have revolutionized the way we see and use Earth. This photograph of the Manix Basin area of the Mojave Desert in California was taken in the summer of 1988. The outskirts of Barstow are barely visible in the blowup. The large white area at the top of the picture is Coyote Dry Lake. The dark, ghostly circles immediately to the southeast of the lake are abandoned fields with little vegetation. (NASA)
From the Earth to the Moon. Jules Verne’s fiction became a reality on July 16, 1969, when Apollo 11 was sent to the Moon by this colossal Saturn 5. The photograph of Earth, taken 98,000 miles from home, shows most of Africa, the Middle East, and part of Europe against the icy void of space. It and others like it became the icons of the environmental movement. Four days later, Buzz Aldrin was photographed standing on the Sea of Tranquility by Neil Armstrong. The plaque they left behind said that they represented “all mankind,” but they planted the Stars and Stripes. Things did not go so well nine months later, when an oxygen tank exploded on Apollo 13, nearly killing Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise. Cheering erupted in Houston the instant they splashed down in the Pacific. Gene Cernan took a spin around Taurus-Littrow in a lunar rover during the final, Apollo 17, mission in December 1972. (NASA)
The blurry ball was the best view of Mars obtainable from Earth as late as 1939. It and others were used by astronomers to map the Red Planet. Differences in succeeding images were interpreted as meaning that vegetation was spreading and large bodies of water were changing shape. H. Spencer Jones, Britain’s Astronomer Royal, concluded that there was almost certainly vegetation on Mars. (Alton Blakeslee collection)
This “priceless Rembrandt,” as JPL’s Jurrie van der Woude called it, was the first image returned to Earth from Mars and was ten times better than the best picture taken with a telescope. It was made by Mariner 4 in July 1965. The picture, which hangs at JPL, is in effect a number painting made of thin strips of paper that were glued to a board and colored with pencils according to tiny numbers that corresponded to various tones. (JPL)
Mariner 4, an ungainly cousin of Ranger and ancestor of Viking, looked like a one-eyed bat from this angle. Solar panels extended out from the bus and an antenna sprouted on top of it. (JPL)
The dreaded Great Galactic Ghoul, seen here about to turn Mariner 7 into an hors d’oeuvre, was conceived by Time reporter Donald Neff and painted by contractor artist G. W. Burton. The voracious beast was a metaphor for otherwise unexplainable problems that happened around Mars. It found Soviet spacecraft particularly delicious. (JPL)
Two Vikings, which orbited and landed on the Red Planet in 1976, were the most successful Mars missions and returned an immense amount of data (but no sign of life). The orbiter is seen here on the bottom and is carrying the lander inside a bioshield on its back. Together, they weighed 7,760 pounds and were the last heavy Mars explorers. Viking was also the last billion-dollar unmanned mission. (JPL)
The first complete picture of the Martian surface was taken by the Viking 1 lander minutes after it touched down on Chryse Planitia on July 20, 1976. Before it raised its sights, the camera caught rocks, sand, dust, and one of the lander’s own pads. Geologists quickly found evidence of wind. (JPL)
Its sights raised, the camera took in this richly detailed panorama. Meanwhile, the orbiter was photographing Olympus Mons, the highest mountain in the solar system and wider than Missouri; Valles Marineris, a valley the length of the United States; and unmistakable signs that there was once water on the planet. Evidence of a great deal of water moving quickly was found twenty-one years later by Pathfinder’s Sojourner, the first rover from Earth to roam the Martian surface. (JPL)
Viking’s rich legacy is evident in this image of the Tempe Fossae region of Mars’s northern hemisphere sent back by the orbiter and as it appeared in the Mars Landing Site Catalog. It not only shows dead volcanoes and fracture lines, indicating a once-active interior, but the possibility of “subsurface water for potential use by manned landing mission.” The area was therefore chosen as a good place to send a Mars sample return in the search for evidence of life and a promising landing site for human explorers. (NASA)
The Viking 1 lander dug this trench and scooped up soil samples for onboard testing for signs of life and then photographed the hole. No life signs were found. (JPL)
NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher and President Nixon posed at San Clemente on January 5, 1972, the day the President formally approved the Space Transportation System. They held a model of the more expensive design, which consisted of two reusable vehicles, and which was therefore not built. (NASA)
Challenger, hanging from a crane in the VAB like a lifeless bird on a string, was lowered for mating with its external tanks and SRBs in early December 1982, in preparation for its maiden flight and the sixth shuttle mission on April 4, 1983. The picture is distorted because the VAB is so big that the photographer had to use a very wide-angle lens. (NASA)
Columbia, attached to its external tank and solid rocket boosters and framed by the Vehicle Assembly Building’s enormous doorway, inched toward Pad 39A in late December 1980 for the first manned test flight the following April 12. The size of the people standing on the crawler-transporter around the shuttle gives some idea of the VAB’s size. (NASA)
This rare view of two shuttles poised for liftoff—Columbia on the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A (foreground) and Discovery on 39B—was taken in early September 1990. Discovery went first, on October 6, carrying the European-American Ulysses solar research spacecraft to orbit. From there, Ulysses went to Jupiter with a rocket booster and then, with gravity assist, on to the Sun. (NASA)
This massive N-1 Moon rocket was launched from Tyuratam at night to hinder Western intelligence. Within two minutes, its first stage failed, sending it back down in a huge ball of fire that could be seen for many miles. The last N-1 test was on November 23, 1972, two weeks before the last Apollo launch, and also ended in disaster. (RSC Energia)
The formidable Energia super-booster, a Buran orbiter attached, stood on its pad at Tyuratam in November l988. It was designed to be flexible enough to carry either a shuttle and its crew or unmanned spacecraft. It lifted this unmanned Buran to orbit on November 15. The Soviet shuttle was virtually identical with its American counterpart. (RSC Energia)
The unmanned Buran launched by the Energia made two orbits and landed safely back at Tyuratam. With the end of the cold war and the collapse of the Russian economy, the shuttle was dropped in both senses of the word. (NASA)
Western intelligence was not hindered, since Tyuratam was routinely photographed from space. This image, taken on September 24, 1969, by the last KH-4A from an altitude of 111 miles, shows the sprawling launch facility exactly as the photointerpreter received it. “1052-1” is the mission number; “Top Secret Ruff” is the classification. (CIA)
Magnified, the center of the image showed the quarter-mile-long rocket assembly building (dark structure at the top), which was linked by an S-shaped railroad track to a launch complex (bottom left center). Higher magnification revealed N-1s and, in four instances, their charred remains. (CIA)
Public relations has been a NASA staple from the beginning. Here, the crew for Challenger’s flight posed for an “F-Troop” portrait while taking a “break in training” in April 1983. The idea, according to a release that accompanied the picture, was that the mission was STS-6 and “F” is the sixth letter of the alphabet. In fact, the elaborate costumes and props suggested that the astronauts were riding across a new and exciting frontier. Donald Peterson, kneeling in front, and Story Musgrave, standing with trumpet, were mission specialists. Paul Weitz, seated, was the commander of the mission. Karol Bobko, standing next to Musgrave, was the pilot. (NASA)
Sharon Christa McAuliffe, a high school teacher from New Hampshire, was one of seven crew members killed when Challenger exploded seventy-three seconds after liftoff on January 28, l986, in the worst single accident of the space age. Her mother later said that Christa told her the day before the explosion that the space agency was under so much pressure to launch that it was going to, no matter how cold it was. (NASA)
A Journalist in Space was supposed to follow the Teacher in Space. The deadline for applications was thirteen days before the Challenger accident. More than seventeen hundred journalists applied for the ride, which was quietly abandoned. (William E. Burrows)
Rockwell tech reps at the Kennedy Space Center who saw this scene from Pad 39B on television monitors likened it to “something out of Dr. Zhivago,” and specifically to an ice-encrusted house in Siberia, as they urged that the launch be postponed. The temperature at launch was thirty-six degrees Fahrenheit, fifteen degrees colder than the coldest previous launch. (NASA)
The death of Challenger. The orbiter and external tank were hidden in the heart of the explosion, while one solid rocket booster raced up and to the left, and debris shot to the right. (NASA)
A skeptical Richard P. Feynman listened to testimony at a session of the Rogers Commission at the Kennedy Space Center. The theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate became an instant celebrity when he dropped a piece of Oring rubber into his ice water to demonstrate that it “had no resilience whatever when you squeezed it.” (NASA)
Magellan and the Hubble Space Telescope were two stars of the science program. Magellan’s radar collected the first comprehensive imagery under Venus’s cloudy shroud. These domical hills, or lava domes, that turned up in the planet’s Alpha Regio region in November 1990, have no counterparts on Earth. Though they look as if they belong under a microscope, they average fifteen miles across. (JPL)
A star is born. This spectacular giant star incubator, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in April 1995, is seven thousand light-years away in the Eagle Nebula. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year: five trillion nine hundred billion miles. Dense hydrogen and dust inside these towering “elephant trunks” condense into lumps and then ignite under their own colossal gravitational pressure, turning into stars. The largest of the pillars is about a light-year high. HST, the “Cyclops in the Sky,” can see to the edge of the universe. (Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen/STSI)
The Voyager flights to the outer planets, including Voyager 2’s unprecedented “Grand Tour” of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune from 1979 to 1989, were the most spectacular feats of exploration in history. Saturn and its six largest moons, imaged by Voyager 1 during an encounter in November 1980, were set in this montage at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which conducted the tour. (JPL)
