Make Your Career Soar
Fifty-one years ago this week, Project Mercury Astronaut John H. Glenn, Jr. became the first American to orbit the Earth. Glenn’s spacecraft name and mission call sign was Friendship 7. Mercury-Atlas 6 (MA-6) lifted-off from Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 14 at 14:47:39 UTC on Tuesday, 20 February 1962. It was… Read More
Five years ago this month, a United States Navy STANDARD Missile SM-3 Block IA intercepted and destroyed a failed NRO satellite at an altitude of 133 nautical miles. The relative velocity at intercept was in excess of 22,000 mph. The United States Navy/Raytheon Missile Systems SM-3 (RIM-161) is the sea-based arm of the Missile… Read More
Thirty-eight years ago this month, an USAF F-15A Eagle reached an altitude of 30 km (98,425 feet) 207.8 seconds from brake release. The pilot for the record-breaking mission was USAF Major Roger Smith. Operation Streak Eagle was a mid-1970’s effort by the United States Air Force to set eight (8) separate time-to-climb records… Read More
Twenty-seven years ago today, the seven member crew of STS-51L were killed when the Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds after launch from LC-39B at Cape Canaveral, Florida. It was the first fatal in-flight accident in American spaceflight history. In remarks made at a memorial service held for the Challenger Seven in Houston, Texas on Friday,… Read More
Four years ago this month, US Airways Flight 1549 successfully ditched in the Hudson River following loss of thrust in both turbofan engines. Incredibly, all 155 passengers and crew members survived. US Airways Flight 1549 lifted-off from Runway 4 of New York’s LaGuardia Airport at 18:25:56 UTC on Thursday, 15 January 2009. The Airbus 320-214 (N106US) was making its… Read More
Fifty-five years ago this month, a XSM-64 Navaho G-26 flight test vehicle flew 1,075 miles in 40 minutes at a sustained speed of Mach 2.8. It was the 8th flight test of the ill-fated Navaho Program. The post-World War II era saw the development of a myriad of missile weapons systems. Perhaps the most… Read More
Forty-eight years ago this month, NASA successfully completed the unmanned Gemini-Titan 2 (GT-2) space mission. The suborbital spaceflight served as a final test preparatory to the first manned Gemini mission (GT-3) flown several months later. The Gemini Program was America’s second manned space project. Gemini pioneered key technologies required to… Read More
Forty-six years ago this month, the Northrop HL-10 lifting body made its first unpowered free flight. Following drop from NASA’s venerable NB-52B launch aircraft, test pilot Bruce A. Peterson successfully landed the HL-10 on Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards Air Force Base, California. A lifting body is a wingless, aircraft-like… Read More
Twenty-eight years ago this month, the first DARPA/Grumman X-29A Forward Swept Wing experimental aircraft took to the air. The flight originated from Edwards Air Force Base with Grumman Chief Test Pilot Chuck Sewell at the controls. The X-29A was designed to flight test the forward-swept wing (FSW) concept as applied… Read More
Eight years ago today, NASA’s storied NB-52B Stratofortress launch aircraft was retired following 44 years of service to the American flight research community. Although it was on flying status for nearly 50 years, the aircraft accumulated a total of only 2,443.8 flight hours. The aircraft that became the NASA NB-52B… Read More
