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85-535: Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous – Shoemaker ( NEAR Shoemaker ), renamed after its 1996 launch in honor of planetary scientist Eugene Shoemaker , was a robotic space probe designed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory for NASA to study the near-Earth asteroid Eros from close orbit over a period of a year. It was the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid and land on it successfully. In February 2000,

170-530: A yo-yo de-spin mechanism to slow the rotation before payload release. The stage would also contain an S-band transmitter, batteries, and a sequencer to command the stage events. Two third-stage options were available, both consisting of a single solid rocket motor. The most common by far was the Star 48, flying on over 70 missions. The Star 48, also referred to as the Payload Assist Module-Delta (PAM-D),

255-482: A 13-month heliocentric orbit which closely matched the orbit of Eros. A rendezvous maneuver was completed on February 3 at 17:00 UT, slowing the spacecraft from 19.3 to 8.1 m/s relative to Eros. Another maneuver took place on February 8, increasing the relative velocity slightly to 9.9 m/s. Searches for satellites of Eros took place on January 28 and February 4, and 9; none were found. The scans were for scientific purposes and to mitigate any possible collision with

340-451: A 50 × 50 km orbit on April 30, 2000, and decreased to 35 × 35 km on July 14, 2000. The orbit was raised over succeeding months to a 200 × 200 km orbit and then slowly decreased and altered to a 35 × 35 km retrograde orbit on December 13, 2000. The mission ended with a touchdown in Eros's "saddle" region on February 12, 2001. Some scientists claim that the mission's ultimate goal

425-645: A Delta II and the final launch from SLC-17A at Cape Canaveral occurred in 2009. The GRAIL Launch in 2011 marked the last Delta II Heavy launch and the last from Florida. The final five launches would all be from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California . On 16 July 2012, NASA selected the Delta II to support the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2), Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP), and Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS-1 – NOAA-20) missions. This marked

510-624: A derivative of the Thor ballistic missile as were all Delta rockets until the Delta IV . The RS-27 used on the 6000-series Delta II produced 915 kN (206,000 lbf) of thrust, while the upgraded RS-27A used by the 7000-series produced 1,054 kN (237,000 lbf). The stage was 26.1 meters (86 ft) long and 2.44 meters (8.0 ft) wide, had a mass of 101.8 tonnes (224,000 lb) when fueled, and burned for 260 seconds. The main engine, which could not throttle, provided pitch and yaw control for

595-429: A four-digit system to generate its technical names: For example, a Delta 7925H-10L used an RS-27A, nine GEM 46 boosters, a PAM third stage, and a lengthened 10 ft (3.0 m) diameter fairing. A Delta 6320–9.5 is a two-stage vehicle with an RS-27 first-stage engine, three Castor 4A boosters, a 9.5 ft (2.9 m) diameter fairing, and no third stage. Earth-orbiting Extra-planetary The last Delta II launch

680-431: A mass of 950 kg (2,090 lb) when empty, and 6,954 kg (15,331 lb) when fully fueled. For low Earth orbit missions, Delta II was not equipped with a third stage. Payloads bound for higher energy orbits such as GTO or to reach Earth escape velocity for trans-Mars injection or other destinations beyond Earth used an HTPB solid propellant third stage, situated inside the fairing during launch. This stage

765-510: A multi-spectral camera fitted with a CCD imaging detector, a laser rangefinder , and a magnetometer . A radio science experiment was also performed using the NEAR tracking system to estimate the gravity field of the asteroid. The total mass of the instruments was 56 kg (123 lb), requiring 80 watts of power. NEAR was the first robotic space probe built by Johns Hopkins University 's Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). A previous plan for

850-412: A peak launch rate of 12 launches in a single year, although its infrastructure was capable of supporting up to 15 launches per year. While all completed Delta II rockets were launched, many flight-qualified spare parts remained in inventory. These spare parts were assembled, alongside a few structural simulators, to create a nearly complete Delta II for exhibition in its 7320-10C configuration. The rocket

935-503: A planetary astronomer at age 51. She continued the work until her death in 2021. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) hired Shoemaker in 1950, and he maintained an association with the organisation for the rest of his career. His first assignment was to search for uranium deposits in Utah and Colorado. His next mission was to study volcanic processes, since other investigators had already noticed that uranium deposits were often located in

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1020-511: A preparatory mission for the future crewed landing. Shoemaker was then chosen to be the principal investigator for the Surveyor program 's television experiment, and then the lunar geology principal investigator for Apollo 11 , Apollo 12 , and Apollo 13 . Shoemaker was also involved in the training of the American astronauts . He himself was a possible candidate for an Apollo Moon flight and

1105-412: A row, with the last failure being GPS IIR-1 in 1997. In the late 1990s, Delta II was developed further into the unsuccessful Delta III , which was in turn developed into the more capable and successful Delta IV , though the latter shares little heritage with the original Thor and Delta rockets. In the early 1980s, all United States expendable launch vehicles were planned to be phased out in favor of

1190-424: A satellite. NEAR went into a 321×366 km elliptical orbit around Eros on February 14. The orbit was slowly decreased to a 35 km circular polar orbit by July 14. NEAR remained in this orbit for ten days and then was backed out in stages to a 100 km circular orbit by September 5, 2000. Maneuvers in mid-October led to a flyby of Eros within 5.3 km of the surface at 07:00 UT on October 26. Following

1275-406: A side, with four fixed gallium arsenide solar panels in a windmill arrangement, a fixed 1.5 m X-band high-gain radio antenna with a magnetometer mounted on the antenna feed, and an X-ray solar monitor on one end (the forward deck), with the other instruments fixed on the opposite end (the aft deck). Most electronics were mounted on the inside of the decks. The propulsion module was contained in

1360-470: A slow controlled descent to the surface of Eros, ending with a touchdown just to the south of the saddle-shaped feature Himeros on February 12, 2001, at approximately 20:01 UT (3:01 p.m. EST). To the surprise of the controllers, the spacecraft was undamaged and operational after the landing at an estimated speed of 1.5 to 1.8 meters per second (thus becoming the first spacecraft to soft-land on an asteroid). After receiving an extension of antenna time on

1445-586: A string of two failures and one partial failure, along with the development of the much more powerful Delta IV , led to the cancellation of the Delta III program. The upgraded boosters would still find use on the Delta II, leading to the Delta II Heavy. On 28 March 2003, the Air Force Space Command began the process of deactivating the Delta II launch facilities and infrastructure at Cape Canaveral once

1530-694: A team at the USGS center in Menlo Park, California , to generate the first geologic map of the Moon using photographs taken by Francis G. Pease . Shoemaker also helped pioneer the field of astrogeology by founding the Astrogeology Research Program . He was prominently involved in the Lunar Ranger missions to the Moon, joining the television imaging team of Harold Urey and Gerard Kuiper , which turned into

1615-454: A total delta-V potential of 1450 m/s. Attitude control was achieved using the hydrazine thrusters and four reaction wheels. The propulsion system carried 209 kg of hydrazine and 109 kg of NTO oxidizer in two oxidizer and three fuel tanks. Power was provided by four 1.8 by 1.2 meter gallium arsenide solar panels, which could produce 400  watts at 2.2  AU (329,000,000 km), NEAR 's maximum distance from

1700-629: A variety of jobs. George hated living in big cities, and was quite satisfied to take a job as director of education for a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp in Wyoming. His wife soon found life in a remote cabin quite unsatisfactory. They compromised, when Muriel got a teaching job in Buffalo. She could teach in the Buffalo School of Practice of the State Teachers College at Buffalo during

1785-589: Is credited by the Minor Planet Center with the co-discovery of 183 minor planets between 1977 and 1994. Delta II Delta II was an expendable launch system , originally designed and built by McDonnell Douglas , and sometimes known as the Thorad Delta 1. Delta II was part of the Delta rocket family, derived directly from the Delta 3000 , and entered service in 1989. There were two main variants,

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1870-530: Is displayed vertically at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex , and bears its popular "shark teeth" livery on its fairing, which was painted on past Delta II rockets for the GPS launches. The first stage of the Delta II was propelled by a Rocketdyne RS-27 or RS-27A main engine burning RP-1 and liquid oxygen . This stage was technically referred to as the "Extra-Extended Long Tank Thor",

1955-562: Is inscribed with images of Comet Hale–Bopp ("the last comet that the Shoemakers observed together"), the Barringer Meteor Crater, and a quotation from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet reading And, when he shall die Take him and cut him out in little stars And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun. The fatal crash happened when Hale-Bopp

2040-568: Is located at the Kennedy Space Center rocket garden . The only person on record ever hit by space debris was hit by a piece of a Delta II rocket. Lottie Williams was exercising in a park in Tulsa on 22 January 1997 when she was hit in the shoulder by a 15-centimeter (6 in) piece of blackened metallic material. U.S. Space Command confirmed that a used Delta II rocket from the April 1996 launch of

2125-491: The Deep Space Network , the spacecraft's gamma-ray spectrometer was reprogrammed to collect data on Eros's composition from a vantage point about 4 inches (100 mm) from the surface where it was ten times more sensitive than when it was used in orbit. This increase in sensitivity was in part due to the increased ratio of the signal from Eros compared to the noise generated by the probe itself. The impact of cosmic rays on

2210-472: The Midcourse Space Experiment had crashed into the atmosphere 30 minutes earlier. The object tapped her on the shoulder and fell off harmlessly onto the ground. Williams collected the item and NASA tests later showed that the fragment was consistent with the materials of the rocket, and Nicholas Johnson, the agency's chief scientist for orbital debris, believes that she was indeed hit by a piece of

2295-892: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration . Eugene Merle Shoemaker He was killed in a car accident while visiting an impact crater site in Australia. After his death, some of his ashes were carried to the Moon with the Lunar Prospector mission. Shoemaker was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Muriel May (née Scott), a teacher; and George Estel Shoemaker, who worked in farming, business, teaching, and motion pictures. His parents were natives of Nebraska. During Gene's childhood they moved between Los Angeles, New York City, Buffalo, New York and Wyoming, as George worked on

2380-495: The Nevada Test Site , notably Jangle U in 1951 and Teapot Ess in 1955. In 1960, Edward C. T. Chao and Shoemaker identified shocked quartz ( coesite ) at Meteor Crater, proving the crater was formed from an impact generating extremely high temperatures and pressures. They followed this discovery with the identification of coesite within suevite at Nördlinger Ries , proving its impact origin. In 1960, Shoemaker directed

2465-706: The Space Shuttle , which would be responsible for all government and commercial launches. Production of Delta, Atlas-Centaur , and Titan 34D had ended. The Challenger disaster of 1986 and the subsequent halt of Shuttle operations changed this policy, and President Ronald Reagan announced in December 1986 that the Space Shuttle would no longer launch commercial payloads, and NASA would seek to purchase launches on expendable vehicles for missions that did not require crew or Shuttle support. McDonnell Douglas, at that time

2550-416: The solar wind , possible current activity as indicated by dust or gas, and the asteroid spin state. This data was used to help understand the characteristics of asteroids in general, their relationship to meteoroids and comets , and the conditions in the early Solar System. To accomplish these goals, the spacecraft was equipped with an X-ray / gamma-ray spectrometer , a near-infrared imaging spectrograph,

2635-546: The 1960s. She had tried teaching school before they married, but found the work unsatisfying. She also traveled sometimes with Gene, but stopped after she noticed that her absence affected the children. After their children were grown, Carolyn wanted something meaningful to combat the "empty nest" feeling. By then, Gene suggested that she take up astronomy and join his team looking for asteroids approaching Earth. A student working at Lowell Observatory commenced teaching her astronomy. She showed great potential and launched her career as

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2720-613: The Castor 4A thanks to a lengthening of 3 meters (9.8 ft). In addition, the GEM boosters also boasted a lower dry mass than the Castors due to the former's carbon composite construction. In 2003, the Delta II Heavy debuted, featuring larger GEM 46 motors from the abandoned Delta III program. These new motors allowed the vehicle to carry over 1,000 kg (2,200 lb) of extra payload into low-Earth orbit. Only Cape Canaveral Space Launch Complex 17B

2805-473: The Delta 6000 and Delta 7000, with the latter also having "Light" and "Heavy" subvariants. During its career, Delta II flew several notable payloads, including 24 Global Positioning System (GPS) Block II satellites, several dozen NASA payloads, and 60 Iridium communication satellites. The rocket flew its final mission, ICESat-2 , on 15 September 2018, earning the launch vehicle a streak of 100 successful missions in

2890-501: The Delta II featured fixed nozzles, meaning the first stage was solely responsible for vehicle control during the initial portions of the flight. The second stage of Delta II was the Delta-K , powered by a restartable (up to six restarts) Aerojet AJ10 -118K engine burning hypergolic Aerozine-50 and N 2 O 4 . These propellants are highly toxic and corrosive, and once loaded the launch had to occur within approximately 37 days or

2975-539: The Moon. In 1993, he co-discovered Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 using the 18-inch Schmidt camera at Palomar Observatory . This comet was unique in that it provided the first opportunity to observe the planetary impact of a comet. Shoemaker–Levy 9 collided with Jupiter in July 1994. The resulting impact caused a massive "scar" on the face of Jupiter . Shoemaker spent much of his later years searching for and finding several previously unnoticed or undiscovered impact craters around

3060-682: The Sun and 1800 watts at one AU (150,000,000 km). Power was stored in a nine-ampere-hour, 22-cell rechargeable super nickel-cadmium battery. Spacecraft guidance was achieved through the use of a sensor suite of five digital solar attitude detectors, an inertial measurement unit (IMU), and a star tracker camera pointed opposite the instrument pointing direction. The IMU contained hemispherical resonators gyroscopes and accelerometers. Four reaction wheels (arranged so that any three can provide complete three-axis control) were used for normal attitude control. The thrusters were used to dump angular momentum from

3145-419: The abort of the first burn and loss of communication made this impossible. A new plan was put into effect in which NEAR flew by Eros on December 23, 1998, at 18:41:23 UT at a speed of 965 m/s and a distance of 3827 km from the center of mass of Eros. The camera took images of Eros, data were collected by the near IR spectrograph, and radio tracking was performed during the flyby. A rendezvous maneuver

3230-403: The aft skirt, the latter of which also contained a gyroscope for vehicle stability. For additional thrust during launch, the Delta II used solid boosters. For the 6000-series, Delta II used Castor 4A boosters (sometimes stylized as "Castor IVA"), while the 7000-series used GEM 40 Graphite-Epoxy Motors manufactured by Alliant Techsystems (ATK). Like its predecessors, the Delta II 6000-series

3315-597: The age of thirteen. He completed high school in three years. During that time he also played violin in the school orchestra, excelled in gymnastics, and got a summer job as an apprentice lapidary . Shoemaker enrolled in the Caltech in 1944, at the age of sixteen. His classmates were older, more mature and on a fast track to graduate before serving in World War II. Shoemaker thrived in the fast pace and earned his bachelor's degree in 1948, at age nineteen. He immediately undertook

3400-413: The asteroid after a year of orbital study. He was previously honored with the asteroid 2074 Shoemaker , discovered and named by his colleague, Eleanor F. Helin . In their 2020 album, Human. :II: Nature. , Finnish metal band Nightwish paid tribute to Shoemaker in the song "Shoemaker". Composer Tuomas Holopainen says he was inspired by his biography, which moved the entire band to tears. Shoemaker

3485-418: The burnout and jettison of the first six. The Castor 4A boosters were an improvement over the Castor 4 motors flown on the earlier Delta 3000 rocket, replacing the propellant with more modern HTPB -based propellant and providing an 11% increase in performance. The GEM 40 boosters on the 7000 series further improved Delta II's performance by each featuring 2.5 tonnes (5,500 lb) of extra propellant than

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3570-402: The cause of the crater, and it remained the conventional wisdom until Shoemaker's investigations half a century later. For his PhD degree at Princeton (1960), under the guidance of Harry Hammond Hess , Shoemaker studied the impact dynamics of Barringer Meteor Crater . Shoemaker noted Meteor Crater had the same form and structure as two explosion craters created from atomic bomb tests at

3655-509: The crewed Moon landings, "With humanity about to set forth upon this new world, geologists and astronomers were divided as to whether the lunar surface was a result of volcanic forces from beneath, or cosmic forces from above. In 1949, Ralph Baldwin had articulated that the Moon's craters were mostly of impact origin and Gene Shoemaker revived the idea again around 1960. He saw craters on the Moon as logical impact sites that were formed not gradually, in eons , but explosively, in seconds." He

3740-411: The final purchase of Delta II. OCO-2 was launched on 2 July 2014, Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) was launched on 31 January 2015, and JPSS-1 was launched on 18 November 2017. All three of these launches were placed into orbit from SLC-2 at Vandenberg. The Delta II family launched 155 times. Its only unsuccessful launches were Koreasat 1 in 1995, and GPS IIR-1 in 1997. The Koreasat 1 launch

3825-473: The first major deep space maneuver, a two-part burn of the main 450 N thruster. This decreased the velocity by 279 m/s and lowered perihelion from 0.99  AU to 0.95 AU. The Earth gravity assist swingby occurred on January 23, 1998, at 7:23 UT. The closest approach was 540 km, altering the orbital inclination from 0.5 to 10.2 degrees and the aphelion distance from 2.17 to 1.77 AU, nearly matching those of Eros. Instrumentation

3910-542: The first part of its cruise phase. NEAR spent most of the cruise phase in a minimal activity "hibernation" state, which ended a few days before the flyby of the 61 km diameter asteroid 253 Mathilde . On June 27, 1997, NEAR flew by Mathilde within 1200 km at 12:56 UT at 9.93 km/s, returning imaging and other instrument data. The flyby produced over 500 images, covering 60% of Mathilde's surface, as well as gravitational data allowing calculations of Mathilde's dimensions and mass. On July 3, 1997, NEAR executed

3995-518: The first time on that occasion. Carolyn was born in Gallup, New Mexico, in 1929, but the Spellman family moved to Chico soon afterward. Carolyn earned degrees from Chico State College in history and political science. She never exhibited an interest in scientific subjects while growing up, and took one geology course in college, which she found boring. Nevertheless, the couple kept in touch while Shoemaker spent

4080-422: The flyby, NEAR moved to a 200 km circular orbit and shifted the orbit from prograde near-polar to a retrograde near-equatorial orbit. By December 13, 2000, the orbit was shifted back to a circular 35 km low orbit. Starting on January 24, 2001, the spacecraft began a series of close passes (5 to 6 km) to the surface and, on January 28, passed 2 to 3 km from the asteroid. The spacecraft then made

4165-505: The interior. The decision to mount instruments on the body of the spacecraft rather than using booms resulted in the gamma-ray spectrometer needing to be shielded from noise generated by the craft. A bismuth germanate shield was used, although this proved only moderately effective. The craft was three-axis stabilized and used a single bipropellant ( hydrazine / nitrogen tetroxide ) 450 newton (N) main thruster, and four 21 N and seven 3.5 N hydrazine thrusters for propulsion, for

4250-486: The last of the second-generation GPS satellites were launched. However, in 2008, it instead announced that it would transfer all the Delta II facilities and infrastructure to NASA to support the launch of the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) in 2011. On 14 December 2006, with the launch of USA-193 , was the first launch of the Delta II operated by United Launch Alliance . The last GPS launch aboard

4335-458: The launch of three Earth-observing satellites. The first Delta II launch occurred on 14 February 1989, with a Delta 6925 boosting the first GPS Block II satellite ( USA-35 ) from Launch Complex 17A (SLC-17A) at Cape Canaveral into a 20,000 km (12,000 mi) high medium Earth orbit . The first Delta II 7000-series flew on 26 November 1990, replacing the RS-27 engine of the 6000-series with

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4420-444: The loss of the spacecraft due to a lack of solar orientation and subsequent battery drain. Contact between the spacecraft and mission control could not be established for over 24 hours. The root cause of this incident has not been determined, but software and operational errors contributed to the severity of the anomaly. The original mission plan called for the four burns to be followed by an orbit insertion burn on January 10, 1999, but

4505-423: The manufacturer of the Delta family, signed a contract with the U.S. Air Force in 1987 to provide seven Delta II. These were intended to launch a series of Global Positioning System (GPS) Block II satellites, which had previously been manifested for the Space Shuttle. The Air Force exercised additional contract options in 1988, expanding this order to 20 vehicles, and NASA purchased its first Delta II in 1990 for

4590-428: The mission closed in on the asteroid and orbited it. On February 12, 2001, Shoemaker touched down on the asteroid and was terminated just over two weeks later. The primary scientific objective of NEAR was to return data on the bulk properties, composition, mineralogy , morphology, internal mass distribution, and magnetic field of Eros. Secondary objectives include studies of regolith properties, interactions with

4675-407: The mission was for it to go to 4660 Nereus and do a flyby of 2019 van Albada en route. In January 2000, it would rendezvous with Nereus, but instead of staying, it would visit multiple asteroids and comets. Some of the choices that were discussed were 2P/Encke , 433 Eros (which became the mission's primary target), 1036 Ganymed , 4 Vesta , and 4015 Wilson–Harrington . The Small-Body Grand Tour

4760-624: The more powerful RS-27A engine. Additionally, the steel-cased Castor 4A solid boosters of the 6000 series were replaced with the composite-cased GEM 40 . All further Delta II launches except three were of this upgraded configuration, and the 6000-series was retired in 1992 with the last launch being on July 24. McDonnell Douglas began Delta III development in the mid-1990s as increasing satellite mass required more powerful launch vehicles. Delta III, with its liquid hydrogen second stage and more powerful GEM 46 boosters, could bring twice as much mass as Delta II to geostationary transfer orbit , but

4845-616: The next year in Princeton, followed by a two-week vacation touring the Colorado Plateau. She reportedly told others that listening to Shoemaker explain geology turned a boring subject into an exciting and interesting pursuit of knowledge. The couple married on August 17, 1951. The Shoemakers had three children: two daughters and one son. Carolyn saw her work as keeping house and raising the children especially after they settled in Flagstaff in

4930-511: The reaction wheels, as well as for rapid slew and propulsive maneuvers. Attitude control was to 0.1 degree, line-of-sight pointing stability is within 50 microradians over one second, and post-processing attitude knowledge is to 50 microradians. The command and data handling subsystem was composed of two redundant command and telemetry processors and solid state recorders, a power switching unit, and an interface to two redundant 1553 standard data buses for communications with other subsystems. NEAR

5015-554: The results can be extrapolated to bodies in space. NEAR did not prove or disprove this link to the satisfaction of scientists. Between December 1999 and February 2001, NEAR used its gamma-ray spectrometer to detect gamma-ray bursts as part of the InterPlanetary Network . After launching on a Delta 7925-8 (a Delta II launch vehicle with nine strap-on solid-rocket boosters and a Star 48 (PAM-D) third stage) on February 17, 1996, and exited from Earth orbit, NEAR entered

5100-652: The school year while keeping Gene with her, then both would return to Wyoming during the summers. Gene's passion for studying rocks was ignited by the science education courses offered by the Buffalo Museum of Education. He enrolled in the School of Practice in the fourth grade, and began collecting samples of minerals. Within a year, he was also taking high-school-level evening courses. The family moved back to Los Angeles in 1942, where Gene enrolled in Fairfax High School at

5185-450: The sensor was also reduced by about 50%. At 7 p.m. EST on February 28, 2001, the last data signals were received from NEAR Shoemaker before it was shut down. A final attempt to communicate with the spacecraft on December 10, 2002, was unsuccessful. This was likely due to the extreme −279 °F (−173 °C, 100 K ) conditions the probe experienced while on Eros. The spacecraft has the shape of an octagonal prism, approximately 1.7 m on

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5270-531: The service—at NASA's request—commercially, making Shoemaker's ashes the first private delivery to the lunar surface. Celestis is the memorial spaceflight company that flew the ashes of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry into space, as well as Star Trek actor James Doohan ("Scotty"), Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper and hundreds of other people from around the world. Shoemaker is the only person whose remains have been placed on any celestial body outside Earth. The brass foil wrapping of Shoemaker's memorial capsule

5355-433: The stage would have to be refurbished or replaced. This stage also contained a combined inertial platform and guidance system that controlled all flight events. The Delta-K consisted of stainless steel tanks and a lightweight aluminum structure. The tanks were pressurized with helium gas, and the stage featured nitrogen thrusters for roll control during burns and for complete attitude control during coasts. The stage had

5440-434: The study of Precambrian metamorphic rocks in northern New Mexico , earning his M.Sc. degree from Caltech in 1949. While Shoemaker was attending Caltech, his roommate was Richard Spellman, a young man from Chico, California . Although Shoemaker had already enrolled in a doctoral program at Princeton University, he returned to California to serve as best man at Richard's wedding in 1950. He met Richard's sister, Carolyn , for

5525-402: The vehicle during ascent using hydraulic gimballing. In addition, two Rocketdyne LR-101-NA-11 vernier engines provided roll control for the first stage during ascent and continued firing after the main engine shut down to stabilize the vehicle before stage separation. The two first-stage tanks were constructed from aluminum isogrid panels, providing high strength at a lower mass. Nitrogen gas

5610-506: The vehicle's flight termination system. No one was injured, and the launch pad itself was not seriously impacted, though several cars were destroyed and a few buildings were damaged. In 2007, Delta II completed its 75th consecutive successful launch, surpassing the 74 consecutive successful launches of the Ariane 4 . With the launch of ICESat-2 in 2018, Delta II reached 100 consecutive successful launches. During its career, Delta II achieved

5695-642: The vents of ancient volcanoes. This study led him to explore the Hopi Buttes of Northern Arizona, which happened to be near Meteor Crater . Daniel Barringer , an entrepreneur and mining engineer who had discovered Meteor Crater in 1891, had postulated that it had been caused by the impact of a meteor. About the same time, G. K. Gilbert , the chief geologist of the USGS, examined the crater and announced that it had been created by an explosive venting of volcanic steam. A majority of scientists accepted Gilbert's explanation of

5780-426: The world. During one such expedition, on July 18, 1997, he died in a head-on car collision on the remote Tanami Track , a few hundred kilometers northwest of Alice Springs , Australia. Shoemaker's wife Carolyn was severely injured in the crash. On July 31, 1999, some of his ashes were carried to the Moon by the Lunar Prospector space probe in a capsule designed by Carolyn Porco . Celestis , Inc. provided

5865-452: Was spin-stabilized and depended on the second stage for proper orientation prior to stage separation, but was sometimes equipped with a hydrazine nutation control system to maintain proper spin axis. The third stage would be spun up using small rocket motors and then released by the second stage to perform its burn. The third stage also included a yo-weight system to induce tumbling in the stage after payload separation to prevent recontact, or

5950-437: Was a partial failure caused by one booster not separating from the first stage, which resulted in the satellite being placed in a lower-than-intended orbit. By using reserve fuel, it was able to achieve its proper geosynchronous orbit and operated for 10 years. The GPS IIR-1 was a total loss as the Delta II exploded 13 seconds after launch. The explosion occurred when a damaged solid rocket booster casing ruptured and triggered

6035-423: Was a plan to visit two asteroids and two comets over a decade with the spacecraft. The mission's primary goal was to study the near-Earth asteroid 433 Eros from orbit for approximately one year. Eros is an S-type asteroid approximately 13 × 13 × 33 km in size, the second largest near-Earth asteroid. Initially, the orbit was circular with a radius of 200 km. The orbit radius was brought down in stages to

6120-442: Was active at this time. The first of four scheduled rendezvous burns was attempted on December 20, 1998, at 22:00 UT. The burn sequence was initiated but immediately aborted. The spacecraft subsequently entered safe mode and began tumbling. The spacecraft's thrusters fired thousands of times during the anomaly, which expended 29 kg of propellant, reducing the program's propellant margin to zero. This anomaly almost resulted in

6205-709: Was awarded the John Price Wetherill Medal from the Franklin Institute in 1965. Coming to Caltech in 1969, he started a systematic search for Earth orbit-crossing asteroids , which resulted in the discovery of several families of such asteroids, including the Apollo asteroids . Shoemaker advanced the idea that sudden geologic changes can arise from asteroid strikes and that asteroid strikes are common over geologic time periods. Previously, astroblemes were thought to be remnants of extinct volcanoes – even on

6290-499: Was capable of flying the Heavy configuration, as it was previously reinforced to handle the Delta III. The Castor motor nozzles were angled 11° from vertical to aim their thrust into the vehicle's center of gravity, while the GEM motors had a slightly lower 10° tilt. On the nine-engine configuration, the three air-lit motors featured longer nozzles to allow the boosters to perform better in the upper atmosphere. All solid motors that flew on

6375-401: Was only offered in nine-booster configurations. However, with the arrival of the 7000-series, variants with three and four boosters were introduced to allow Delta II to fly small payloads for cheaper. When three or four boosters were used, all ignited on the ground at launch, while models that used nine boosters would ignite six on the ground, then the remaining three would ignite in flight after

6460-415: Was performed on January 3, 1999, involving a thruster burn to match NEAR 's orbital speed to that of Eros. A hydrazine thruster burn took place on January 20 to fine-tune the trajectory. On August 12, a two-minute thruster burn slowed the spacecraft velocity relative to Eros to 300 km/h. Orbital insertion around Eros occurred on February 14, 2000, at 15:33 UT (10:33 EST) after NEAR completed

6545-670: Was published in the Congressional Record . The memorial credited Shoemaker with being either the discoverer or co-discoverer of 820 asteroids and comets during his career. A ring-like topographic feature in Western Australia, an astrobleme previously named the "Teague ring" was renamed " Shoemaker Crater " in honor of Shoemaker. The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous space probe was renamed "NEAR Shoemaker" in his honor. It arrived at asteroid 433 Eros in February 2000, and landed on

6630-509: Was set to be the first geologist to walk on the Moon but was disqualified due to being diagnosed with Addison's disease , a disorder of the adrenal gland . Shoemaker would train astronauts during field trips to Meteor Crater and Sunset Crater near Flagstaff. He was a CBS News television commentator on the early Apollo missions, especially the Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 missions, appearing with Walter Cronkite during live coverage of those flights. According to David H. Levy , just before

6715-536: Was still visible to the naked eye, having passed perihelion and having moved into the southern celestial hemisphere. Shoemaker received a large number of awards for his professional work. According to the obituary published by the USGS Astrogeology Science Center , these included: On July 24, 1997, a memorial for Shoemaker and Jurgen Rahe was presented in the U.S. House of Representatives by California representative George E. Brown Jr. The memorial

6800-659: Was the ICESat-2 satellite in September 2018. In 2008, ULA indicated that it had "around half a dozen" unsold Delta II rockets on hand, but ULA CEO Tory Bruno stated in October 2017 that there are no complete, unbooked Delta II rockets left in the ULA inventory; and though there are leftover Delta II parts, there are not enough to build another launch vehicle. The final Delta II rocket, made of these leftover parts alongside some simulated parts,

6885-415: Was the first APL spacecraft to use significant numbers of plastic encapsulated microcircuits (PEMs), and the first to use solid-state data recorders for mass storage—previous APL spacecraft used magnetic tape recorders or magnetic cores. The solid-state recorders are constructed from 16 Mbit IBM Luna-C DRAMs . One recorder has 1.1 gigabits of storage, and the other has 0.67 gigabits. The NEAR mission

6970-634: Was the first launch of NASA's Discovery Program , a series of small-scale spacecraft designed to proceed from development to flight in under three years for a cost of less than $ 150 million. The construction, launch, and 30-day cost for this mission is estimated at $ 122 million. The final total mission cost was $ 224 million, which consisted of $ 124.9 million for spacecraft development, $ 44.6 million for launch support and tracking, and $ 54.6 million for mission operations and data analysis. The science payload includes: [REDACTED]  This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of

7055-525: Was the more powerful of the two options, producing an average thrust of 66.4 kN (14,900 lb f ) during its 87.1-second burn. The stage would end up flying primarily on the more powerful Delta variants and never flew on a three-booster configuration. The other third-stage option was the Star 37FM. This stage flew four times, and only on three- and four-booster configurations of Delta. The Star 37FM produced 45.8 kN (10,300 lb f ) of thrust during its 66.4-second burn. The Delta II family used

7140-399: Was to link Eros, an asteroidal body, to meteorites recovered on Earth. With sufficient data on chemical composition, a causal link could be established between Eros and other S-type asteroids, and those meteorites believed to be pieces of S-type asteroids (perhaps Eros itself). Once this connection is established, meteorite material can be studied with large, complex, and evolving equipment, and

7225-479: Was used to pressurize the tanks. These tanks were stretched a total of 148 inches (3.8 m) from those of the Extended Long Tank Thor that flew on older Delta rockets, providing more propellant. Between the two tanks was the "center body", where first-stage avionics and communications equipment were housed. The solid rocket booster attachment points were located on the outside of the liquid oxygen tank and

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