NASA began demolishing part of its own history over the weekend. Crews at the Marshall Space Flight Center are removing the Propulsion and Structural Test Facility and the Dynamic Test Facilities. These structures prepared the engines for the space shuttle and the Apollo moon missions. APR listeners heard from retired NASA engineer Kenny Mitchell in 2019. He said the Apollo tests were massive.
“But the ground was being shaken here because we were holding this monster down for several 100 seconds,” said Mitchell. “And people could feel the ground trembling in Birmingham, they started calling around when it first happened. Nobody knew what was happening. Then they found out, oh, they just ran a rocket test.”
Among those who heard those rocket tests was a young Jimmy Wales of Huntsville. The Alabama native would go onto create the online encyclopedia “Wikipedia.” On APR Notebook, he recalled hearing those tests that confirmed that the Saturn-V rocket was ready to carry astronauts like Neil Armstong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins on their way to moon.
“I mean, pretty aware,” said Wales. “I mean, I always say it was like our hometown sports team, you know, like everybody was pretty excited about it. Huntsville, of course, is where a lot of the rocket scientists were, Wernher Von Braun and all that. And we lived close enough to the to where they would test the Saturn five rockets that sometimes the windows would rattle in the house, you know, when they were testing. It was quite, quite a big deal. So it was all very exciting. And I do think that's a part of why I got into technology. You know, it was just like, Oh, wow. The future is very optimistic, and amazing things can happen.
Kenny Mitchell recalled how the original rocket test stand at the Marshall Space Flight Center. That is, until a rocket firing sent shockwaves that blew out the windows.
“We turned it around so it faced Decatur, and it was about 25 miles away. We said it'll be safe now. So we would fire this thing for over 200 seconds, and Birmingham would think they were in an earthquake. It was vibrating the ground all the way to Birmingham.”
As one era of space history is ending, another with connections to the Marshall Space Flight Center may begin as soon as next month. The Huntsville NASA facility helped design, test, and manage the space agency’s new super rocket called the Space Launch System, or SLS. It’s latest mission is to carry four astronauts around the Moon on the mission of Artemis-2. APR news helped CBS-TV’s streaming service cover the initial test flight called Artemis-1. Now, a four member crew is preparing to go.
NASA’s upcoming moonshot commander Reid Wiseman said there’s a good chance he and his crew will be the first to lay eyeballs on large swaths of the lunar far side that were missed by the Apollo astronauts a half-century ago. Their observations could be a boon for geologists, he noted, and other experts picking future landing sites.
Launching early in the year, the three Americans and one Canadian will zip past the moon, do a U-turn behind it, then hustle straight back to Earth to close out their 10-day mission. No stopping for a moonwalk — the boot prints will be left by the next crew in NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration program.
More robotic moon landings are on the books by China as well as U.S. companies. Early in the year, Amazon founder Bezos is looking for his Blue Origin rocket company to launch a prototype of the lunar lander it’s designing for NASA’s astronauts. This Blue Moon demo will stand 26 feet (8 meters), taller than what delivered Apollo’s 12 moonwalkers to the lunar surface. The Blue Moon version for crew will be almost double that height.
Back for another stab at the moon, Astrobotic Technology and Intuitive Machines are also targeting 2026 landings with scientific gear. The only private entity to nail a lunar landing, Firefly Aerospace, will aim for the moon’s far side in 2026.
China is targeting the south polar region in the new year, sending a rover as well as a so-called hopper to jump into permanently
