A little over 30 years ago I watched in awe as history was made with the launch of the first space shuttle (Columbia) on April 12, 1981. I was 18 years old and was a freshman at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. I don’t think anyone that I was watching that launch with fully grasped just what the Space Shuttle Program would come to mean to the U.S.; both from a perspective of tremendous success and horrible tragedy. Last week I watched, with tears in my eyes, the launch of Atlantis on July 8, fully realizing that this was the last time we would see this. (Just a note as you read on. This blog is on the longer side, but I think the event deserves it and it also does have a connection to soil...)
For me, this is the second time I have seen the close of an era of space flight. I think I have my parents to thank for being as aware of the space program as I was early in my life, which has continued on since then. On July 20, 1969 my mom sat my brother and I down in front of the TV and told us we needed to watch. I was 7 years old and my brother was 5 (my sister was just way too young). We were none too pleased to be pulled inside and away from playtime in the middle of summer. My Mom assured us that we would thank her some day for making us do this. (So Mom, Thank You!) What I am referring to is the Apollo Program that took us to the moon; I watched that day as Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong walked on the moon for the first time. He was also joined on that walk by Buzz Aldrin. Amazing stuff in 1969 to be able to watch someone on the moon on a black and white TV that on any given day may or may not work (it was all tubes in the TVs back then). I do remember thinking it looked awfully dusty on the moon as the astronauts were bouncing around – my first interest in soils?
Just as a point of reference, the Apollo Program ended in 1972 with Apollo 17, but contributed volumes to the knowledge and experience of space flight. I should note that there were two other manned space programs that I count in my first “era”, those being Gemini and Mercury. The Mercury Program, which was prior to the Gemini and Apollo Programs ended in 1963 with Mercury-Atlas 9 that was in space for 34+ hours to assess how one day in space might affect an astronaut. The Gemini Program was the bridge between Mercury and Apollo and really concentrated on putting man in space for an extended period (up to 14 days) to see if he could survive and what the effects might be. That program ended in 1966. One other note, since we are on the history track here, is that Skylab was our first space station that operated during 1973/74. I continue to be amazed that in my lifetime we have seen the progression from 15 minute flights in the Mercury program to people living and working on the International Space Station for many months at a time – and I am not yet 50.
When the Space Shuttle Program began in 1981, I think, to me, it was just a really cool thing that was happening, but didn’t necessarily affect me – after all I really never wanted to be an astronaut. But I did know from a young age that I wanted to be a scientist so there was still a connection there for me. I think I am too connected on some level to the earth and while I can appreciate what space exploration is and does, I prefer to do my science here on earth. In any case I was still in my first year of college in April 1981 and while the space shuttle was cool, college, classes and new friends were more my focus at the time. Little did I know how that the shuttle program would touch my life in different experiences in the next 30 years.
It was interesting that for the first little while of the shuttle program a lot of people tuned in to watch the space shuttle launches. But as most new things do, the novelty wore off. There was, however, some renewed interest in a planned 1986 launch of Challenger when NASA decided to send a teacher into space. The launch of that Challenger mission was on January 28, 1986. I remember I was in the soil physics lab (in grad school at that time) doing bulk density samples when a friend came into the lab with the news that the shuttle and crew were lost shortly after the launch. We all ran down to the student union to watch the TV in shock. It is one of those pictures that is burned in my memory even when I wish it wouldn’t be there. Challenger became for me one of those events in life that you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing when it happened. As you go through life you tend to collect events like this in your memory, there aren’t many of them and some are good, others bad. It is interesting for me to note that I have about 7 of these events that stick in my mind; 3 have to do with NASA.
The next years were quiet albeit busy as the shuttle program got back on track and moved forward. I went on and finished my PhD and then went to environmental consulting to start my career. In the mid-90s I wrote a grant proposal for a NASA project with a group of co-workers and university partners and we were funded. I was one of the principle investigators on the project, which included a lot of remote sensing technology, which meant we worked closely with NASA personnel at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. Stennis Space Center housed a core of remote sensing expertise, hardware and software that we would have been hard pressed to find elsewhere and we were able to tap into this expertise as part of our project. During the time working with NASA there was an additional opportunity to evaluate the ability to correlate remotely sensed data with soil moisture. We were interested to know if we could use the airborne platform on the NASA jet to collect data on soil moisture over shallow bedrock that could then indicate depth to bedrock via soil moisture. Unfortunately we didn’t get a good statistical correlation between the two with the technology at the time although I see they are making more progress using remote sensing for soil moisture now. However, one interesting thing on that part of the project (and yes I digress here) was that the NASA jet was in a hangar in Kiln, Mississippi. You know who is from there? Brett Favre! (Sorry – it’s a Packer fan thing…) The other completely amazing thing about Stennis Space Center is the fact that they tested the space shuttle main engines at that facility. I was lucky enough to be down at Stennis on several occasions when they were testing. To this day, watching those main engine tests is one of the most memorable and remarkable things I have ever done. It is by far the loudest and most body encompassing sound I have ever experienced; you don’t just hear the sound of the engine; you actually feel it as part of you. And then it rains.
The Challenger memory came back to haunt me in 2003 when I was watching the landing of Columbia on February 1st that year. As I watched what should have been a routine landing that morning, I couldn’t help but know the outcome was equally as devastating as Challenger; the images looked too similar to the pattern of debris I saw in 1986. At that time I still had a close association with the Minnesota office of Tetra Tech EMI (TTEMI). TTEMI was an EPA contractor and as such, were pretty much on call 24 hours a day for emergency response. EPA was one of the agencies involved in the recovery of the debris from Columbia and so TTEMI got a call asking for people to come to Texas to search. While this may sound exciting, keep in mind that you didn’t know what you would find and how utterly sad this search and recovery job would be. TTEMI ended up sending some people from the office and I can only tell you that I think they came back changed, but glad they had been able to help reconstruct what happened. It was extremely difficult work in fairly harsh conditions. The pieces found were small for the most part and the cataloging of finds was very detail-oriented with flagging the location, providing GPS coordinates and ensuring that the recovery team could locate the item or wait for them to arrive.
The Columbia mission was STS-107. That particular mission was full of science experiments and one of them was entitled “Using Microgravity to Understand Soil Behavior”. This was a Mechanics of Granular Materials research project whose investigators were a mix of university and NASA scientists. (The link to the synopsis of that research in included at the end of this blog in the listing of NASA soil research.) My background is in soil physics, so I found this particular experiment to be pretty interesting. The experiment was basically looking at the processes involved in soil liquefaction, which is important in soil mechanics, earthquake studies, wind and water erosion, slope stability, and many other applications. The advantage of performing tests in space is that “the weightless environment of space allows soil mechanics experiments at low effective stresses with very low confining pressures. In space, specimen weight is no longer a factor and the stress across the specimen is constant.” This allows a study of soils from the standpoint of relationships between load, deformation and changes or affects on fluid pressure that lead to stresses and structure changes that cannot be done in the presence of gravity. In fact results have shown that gravity tends to mask the true friction between sand grains and the pattern of stress or shear zones is different than what was expected (http://spaceresearch.nasa.gov).
We look around now as we near the end of the space shuttle era and find ourselves with an International Space Station, which really is a very large and unique laboratory. I continue to be in awe and completely amazed at what we can do and have done through our space programs; not only the shuttle and space station, but other exploration into our solar system and deeper space. One thing I do know is that when we explore, soil science will be a large part of any research project completed because, for example, knowing the soil can tell the story of the mineralogy resident within that body, provide clues to how that planet or asteroid formed and perhaps a bit of history. Soil is a constant here on earth and beyond and it is, and will be, exceedingly important to understand soil in many different contexts as we strive to understand our environment both here and elsewhere.
And so it will likely be with tears that I watch Atlantis land at 5:57 AM EDT on July 21; tears that reflect 30 years of memories, joys, heartache and the knowledge of how far we’ve come. I would encourage all of you to get up early and watch this historic event – you’ll thank me someday – I say with a smile. In the meantime, think about (and I really mean think about) the technology, work and people that made this program not only work but excel. Thank you to all for that success – and the full team that sustained the shuttle program was supported by people that reside in 37 states, did you know that?
And now we get to see what is next.
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Also check out some of the links below. These are only soil/earth science related, but you might be surprised at all the different research that has been going on over the years. You can also search for research in environment, remote sensing, biology, etc. on http://www.nasa.gov.
NASA Research in Soils
Columbia research on Soil Behavior:
Listing of other soil research that NASA is involved in:
Space station search of soil research:
