This story was updated at 11:59 p.m. EDT.
At times,
NASA's attempts to launch a new Ares I-X rocket Tuesday seemed surreal — with
bad weather, a stuck sensor sock and a wayward cargo ship offshore appearing to
conspire to prevent the booster's liftoff. But believe it or not, there have
been stranger things to pop up in NASA's launch history.
There was
an astronaut who peed in his spacesuit before liftoff — a seemingly
inauspicious start to what became the first American manned spaceflight. Bats
and vultures have besieged space shuttles at the launch pad, not to mention
lightning, which tried and failed to tackle NASA's mightiest rocket.
NASA is hoping
for better weather — and luck — on Wednesday morning, when it has another
four-hour window to try and launch the $445 million Ares I-X rocket. The rocket
launch is NASA's first suborbital test of the new Ares I booster to launch
astronauts to space aboard its shuttle successor, the Orion craft.
The launch
was delayed several times due to weather and some unexpected oddities like a
stubborn sock-like cover that forced engineers into a tug-of-war battle with
the Ares I-X until it finally came free. At one point, when weather finally
cleared, an errant cargo ship strayed into the danger zone on the Eastern Range, a patch of restricted waters on the Atlantic Ocean over which rocket launches
fly.
The
Ares I-X delays were frustrating to say the least. But here's a look at
some of the weirder moments, many from recent missions, in NASA's manned launch
history:
No potty
breaks
The
pinnacle of manned space oddities may be one of the first. On May 5, 1961, NASA
astronaut Alan Shepard — one of the original seven Mercury spaceflyers — was
ready to become the first
American in space. Clad in a bright silver spacesuit, he climbed into his
capsule Freedom 7 and engineers bolted the hatch shut behind him. The launch
was delayed over and over, and then he had to pee.
Shepard,
who died in 1998 at age 74, related the experience in the book "Moonshot,"
which he wrote with fellow Mercury astronaut Deke Slayton.
'I've got
to pee. I've been in here forever," Shepard radioed launch control. "The gantry
is still right here, so why don't you guys let me out of here for a quick
stretch?''
But the
answer was no. Shepard ultimately opted to urinate in his shiny spacesuit, but
asked launch control to switch the power off to his medical sensors first.
Astronauts can now add adult diapers to their spacesuits to avoid similar
embarrassing situations. There is a Russian tradition among cosmonauts,
however, to intentionally pee on the bus taking them to the Soyuz launch pad
that dates back to the first-ever human space launch by cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin,
who launched a month earlier than Shepard.
A
doomed, stowaway bat
More
recently, a small bat seemingly tried
to stow away on the space shuttle Discovery when it launched into space
last March.
Cameras and
an inspection team spotted the bat clinging to the side of Discovery's 15-story
external tank as it was being fueled with propellant — super-cold liquid
hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Some experts thought the bat may have been frozen
in place because of the cryogenic temperatures, but it changed position every
now and then.
The bat was
still hanging on for dear life when Discovery blasted off on March 15 of this
year, and likely met its doom.
"Based
on images and video, a wildlife expert who provides support to the center said
the small creature was a free tail bat that likely had a broken left wing and
some problem with its right shoulder or wrist," NASA officials said after
the launch. "The animal likely perished quickly during Discovery's climb
into orbit."
More bat
weirdness: Riding aboard Discovery during the March launch was Japanese
astronaut Koichi Wakata on his second spaceflight. Another bat tried to stow
away on his first shuttle launch in 1996, but flew away just before liftoff.
Lightning
vs. Saturn V
There's
good reasoning behind NASA's weather rules for launching spacecraft. No one
wants to get hit by lightning, but that's what happened to the massive Saturn V
rocket launching the Apollo 12 mission — the second manned moon landing — on Nov.
14, 1969. A bolt hit the rocket 36 seconds after liftoff, causing some tense
moments.
"I don't
know what happened here, we had everything in the world drop out," Apollo 12
commander Pete Conrad radioed Mission Control. "I'm not sure we didn't get hit
by lightning."
The bolt
did not cause serious damage and Apollo 12 went on to make a successful,
pinpoint landing on the moon near an old unmanned Surveyor probe.
An
Astronaut Alligator?
Sometimes,
NASA astronauts have to find a good luck charm and the crew of the shuttle
Endeavour apparently picked a
lazy alligator that crossed their path while they were headed to the launch
pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The reptile
rendezvous occurred in June of this year, when astronauts were trying to launch
on NASA's STS-127 mission to the International Space Station. After two false
starts due to a gas leak, they were riding in NASA's silver Astrovan and
spotted the alligator on the road in front of them. The toothy beast quickly
became the crew's mascot, so taken were the spaceflyers by its abrupt appearance.
The
alligator offered no extra luck, however. The seven Endeavour astronauts were ultimately
delayed until July, when they flew a marathon delivery flight to the space
station. NASA's Kennedy Space Center shares a boundary with the Merritt Island
Wildlife Nature Refuge, which is a habitat for more than 310 species of birds,
25 species of mammals, 117 species of fish and 65 species of amphibians and
reptiles.
Door
defeats shuttle?
Actually
no, but it was almost the case in November 2006, when a launch pad technician
forgot to secure a door in the White Room leading to the space shuttle
Endeavour just before launch.
NASA was
worried the door, which is attached to the gantry structure of the launch pad,
might swing wildly during liftoff and damage Endeavour as it blasted off. For a
brief moment, launch controllers considered delaying the launch because of that
risk. But engineers decided that the damage risk was not to Endeavour, but to
the gantry structure near the door. It was deemed acceptable and Endeavour
blasted off successfully.
After
launch, a quality inspector told launch director Michael Leinbach that he was
the one who forgot to lock the door down.
"It's
a testament to the team that when we do know that we've made a mistake, we own
up to it and we go out and we fix that," Leinbach said then. "And I
guarantee you we will never see that issue again."
Vexing
vultures
It seems
that many of the weird space launch tales involve some sort of hapless animal.
This one is no different. One problem NASA has tackled in recent years has been
the proliferation of large turkey vultures around its Kennedy Space Center launch
site.
In July
2005, a large vulture hit
the space shuttle Discovery's external tank during liftoff and sadly met
its demise. But the odd incident, which occurred on NASA's first shuttle flight
since the tragic 2003 Columbia accident, was a wake up call since similar bird
strikes could create tank foam debris that could damage a launching shuttle.
NASA hit
the challenge hard. The space agency built a bird radar to scan for flocks that
could fly through a shuttle's launch path and pose an impact risk. There are
sound cannons in place to scare avian interlopers at the Shuttle Landing
Facility near the launch site so returning astronauts won't hit any birds
during landing (sparing the birds and preventing damage to the shuttle).
The agency
also asks employees at the Kennedy Space Center to report any road kill at the
space center that can attract large groups of the big turkey vultures.
But wild
tales are by no means the norm for human spaceflight and NASA is hoping for a
less eventful day of launch attempts for Ares I-X on Wednesday.
The rocket
has a 60 percent chance of good weather, but NASA will be sure to watch the
high upper level winds, cloudy weather and a static electricity risk called
triboelectrification — which can interfere with the telemetry and electronics
on Ares I-X — during the next attempt.
SPACE.com
will provide full coverage of NASA's Ares I-X test flight with Staff Writer
Clara Moskowitz in Cape Canaveral, Fla., and Managing Editor Tariq Malik in New
York. Click here for live launch
coverage and mission coverage. Live coverage begins at 5 a.m. EDT.
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