50 years ago today John Glenn became the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth.  A few are confused on this point thinking Glenn was the first American in space, that distinction belongs to Alan Shepard who flew the first (sub-orbital) spaceflight.  Incidentally, Shepard was the only Mercury Astronaut to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 14 mission.  Anyway, the confusion might arise because of the name of the capsule Glenn flew: Freedom 7.  These two names are enough alike, well you get the idea.

The Mercury program used two different rockets to put the capsules into space: the Redstone and the Atlas. The program suffered some early failures: the first launch of a Mercury capsule on an Atlas rocket exploded and the first Redstone flight only achieved an altitude of about four inches. To be sure the program was safe for humans, the first beings to fly in the Mercury capsules were not men but a rhesus monkey named Sam and two chimps named Ham and Enos. Sam flew a “Little Joe” rocket, Ham a Redstone and Sam an Atlas. Even though all the primates made it back safely, the men chosen to fly were extremely brave and all had a active role in making the rockets and spacecraft safe.

You may have noticed the names both include a “7″.  Ever wonder why?  The Mercury program was named after the fleet-footed Roman god.  Each of the manned capsules were named by the astronauts who flew them.  The number “7″ was first added by Alan Shepard because his capsule was the seventh made.  The other program astronauts followed suit to honor the first seven project astronauts named by the fledgling NASA.

Credit: NASA / Video source

Oh, man!  You have to look at this:

NASA - ISS Station crew

Here’s the text from NASA:

With hardware from the Earth-orbiting International Space Station appearing in the near foreground, a night time European panorama reveals city lights from Belgium and the Netherlands at bottom center. the British Isles partially obscured by solar array panels at left, the North Sea at left center, and Scandinavia at right center beneath the end effector of the Space Station Remote Manipulator System or Canadarm2. This image was taken by the station crew on Jan. 22, 2012.

Image Credit: NASA

Artist's concept of NASA's Voyager spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

It’s pretty amazing, who would have thought after all these years we’d be getting updates on the Voyager spacecrafts?

The update below continues with the theme of power saving to stretch out the mission. The mission could extend to 2025 after which data collection and transmission will probably cease.

Actually even more amazing than the Mission time of 15 years is the mere fact we can still communicate with the Voyager. The radio signal must be incredibly weak, the transmitter only puts out 20 watts at best and the spaceship is over 17,966,400,000 km or 11,163,800,000 miles away! Radio signals take over 33 hours to go to Voyager and back!

Here’s the update from JPL (click for Voyager site):

PASADENA, Calif. — In order to reduce power consumption, mission managers have turned off a heater on part of NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft, dropping the temperature of its ultraviolet spectrometer instrument more than 23 degrees Celsius (41 degrees Fahrenheit). It is now operating at a temperature below minus 79 degrees Celsius (minus 110 degrees Fahrenheit), the coldest temperature that the instrument has ever endured. This heater shut-off is a step in the careful management of the diminishing electrical power so that the Voyager spacecraft can continue to collect and transmit data through 2025.

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