AirSpaceMag.com

Enterprise gets ready for the trip north. (Bill Ingalls/NASA)

If the reaction of Washingtonians to last week’s space shuttle flyover is anything to go by, New Yorkers are in for a thrill.

Space shuttle Enterprise is scheduled to fly over New York City between 9:30 and 11:30 on Friday morning, riding on the back of a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft on its way from the National Air and Space Museum’s Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center to its new home at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum on the Hudson River. NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration won’t say exactly what the flight path will be, but they intend to fly over familiar landmarks like the Statue of Liberty (photo op!). These folks claim to have advance knowledge of the route, and offer advice on the best viewing spots.

Honestly, though, it didn’t much matter where you were standing in Washington last week. Discovery flew several slow loops over much of the metro area, and millions of people had the chance to get a close-up view, even if they hadn’t expected to. I had stationed myself on the roof of our office building, just a block off the National Mall (a prime spot!) when I got a call from my daughter Eleanor, on a school field trip about 30 miles south of the city. “Hey Dad, we just saw the space shuttle fly right over our bus!” What??!

It’s okay, I got a great view, too. And it’s a visual spectacle you should be sure to catch if you’re in New York tomorrow.

Washingtonians can now see Discovery for themselves on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center, or, if you really need to keep constant watch over it, bookmark this live webcam.

Also, the app-ized version of our Shuttle Collector’s Edition is now available on iTunes: The Space Shuttle Era: Stories From 30 Years of Exploration. For the iPad, we were able to add lots more photos and multimedia—including a spectacular time-lapse video of Discovery being prepared for launch—to the in-depth features and dozens of first-hand astronaut stories that appeared in the magazine version.

We did not, however, include this panoramic photo of Discovery and Enterprise together at the Udvar-Hazy Center, taken during last week’s ceremonies by photographer Mark Usciak of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Usciak had shot more than 40 shuttle launches over 30 years, starting with STS-1. So you know he had to be there for Discovery‘s retirement.

Click for the full-size version. (Photo: Mark Usciak)

Update, Friday April 27, 9:56 a.m.

Enterprise is in the air, headed for New York.

CNN has a live video feed here. And they’re asking people to submit their photos here.

Almost home: Discovery coming in over Chantilly, Virginia.

All over Washington D.C. yesterday morning, cameras were clicking, texters were OMG’ing, and fingers were pointing at the town’s newest celebrity: Space Shuttle Discovery, which flew in from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to go on permanent display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles airport, starting Thursday. Follow us on Twitter (@airspacemag) as we report on the day’s festivities.

If you missed Discovery and its carrier aircraft as they flew wide circles over the metro area for about an hour, you can see pictures here and here. New Yorkers will get to see a similar show when shuttle Enterprise arrives on Monday, April 23 at its new home at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum.

This clip from the Smithsonian Channel explains why all the fuss.

We’ve seen several of these air traffic trackers over the years, but this one, from Boeing, is especially nifty. You can customize it to show all the Boeing aircraft flying at different times of the day, or just one particular model.

What's underneath? And what's that red stuff? Thera Macula, as seen by the Galileo spacecraft.(NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

The news that Russian scientists have finally drilled through the thick ice covering Antarctica’s mysterious Lake Vostok got me thinking, naturally, of Europa. Biologists hope to find previously unknown forms of life in Vostok, whose waters have effectively been sealed off from the outside world for eons. So, too, Jupiter’s moon might someday yield clues about — or even our first glimpses of — life beyond Earth. Europa is one of the first places to go if you’re searching for aliens, since it also has an ice-capped ocean.

Unfortunately, NASA’s planetary program is broke.

More about that in a minute. First, though, what could we do if we had the money? A team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has come up with a concept for a Europa Lander that could be launched as soon as 2021. There are other, competing Europa concepts — an orbiter and a multiple flyby mission — but the lander is to me (forgive my childishness) the coolest. And, as JPL’s Dave Senske told NASA’s Outer Planets Assessment Group yesterday, it would be the “most definitive way to assess what’s on the surface.”

The team envisions a six-legged spacecraft weighing about 100 pounds, which could last on Europa for about a month (Jupiter’s intense radiation limits the lifetime). Equipped with cameras, spectrometers, and a seismometer, the lander would drill or jackhammer a few inches into the ground to collect samples from below the radiation-contaminated zone. One likely landing site, called Thera Macula (above), is streaked with intriguing reddish material that may indicate the presence of organics. There’s reason to suspect that pockets of liquid water exist less than two miles below the surface at Thera Macula. Reaching those underground lakes might be a job for some future Europa cryobot, but not this first lander.

Nobody knows how rough the landing site would be. Galileo and Voyager photos aren’t detailed enough to answer the question, and according to some thinking, Europa’s icy surface could be as rugged as Death Valley’s “Devil’s Golf Course” (pictured below), which poses an obvious risk to a legged lander. Potential sites would have to be scouted from orbit during the month before landing, using a camera similar to the HiRISE now orbiting Mars.

Rough landing zone. (Photo of the "Devil's Golf Course" by Lluís Ribes Portillo)

The JPL team tried very hard to design a mission using technology that’s already, or almost already, in hand. True, nobody’s ever done a precision landing on another planet using LIDAR for last-minute hazard avoidance. But as study team members pointed out at the OPAG meeting, such technology has been in development for more than a decade. They think it’s doable. Which is exciting.

Now the bad news. The Europa Lander would cost as much as $3.5 billion, not counting launch. And NASA has no money for such ambition. The agency’s planetary exploration budget has just been slashed, partly a victim of its own excesses. The Mars program has been among the biggest offenders of late, but advocates of missions to the outer planets have proven little better at bringing down costs. NASA’s top science official, John Grunsfeld, was briefed about the new Europa concepts yesterday, and reportedly liked what he heard. The orbiter and flyby estimates both came in under $2 billion, which is better than previous Europa concepts. Still, Grunsfeld could only quip to the JPL briefers, “Now we just need $2 billion.”

Until something changes, then, we’ll have to settle for Lake Vostok, or science fiction — like this upcoming film, The Europa Report, which takes place, presumably, in some distant, less economically pinched future.

Researching yesterday’s post about Albert Berry’s first parachute jump from an airplane, 100 years ago today, made me curious about the other claimant to that honor — Grant Morton — who by some accounts jumped from a Wright Model B airplane flown by Phil Parmelee over Venice, California, in 1911. Most authors have left the matter unresolved as to who really was first. After a little more digging, I think I can settle it.

Testing Berry's chute before the March 1, 1912 jump. (NASM)

It was “Bert” Berry, by almost two months. And Morton may not even have been second.

One of the main publications covering aviation at the time was Aeronautics, which put Berry on its March 1912 cover, with the headline “First Parachute Leap From an Aeroplane.” I suppose the magazine’s editors could have been unaware of an earlier jump, but it seems unlikely. And Benoist, the manufacturer of the biplane that Berry leapt from, trumpeted the feat in advertisements for the next couple of issues. No readers came forward to correct them.

Meanwhile, I’ve found no mention, either in newspapers or magazines, of Morton’s jump until April 29, 1912. On that day, at least three newspapers — The Evening World (New York), The Evening Standard (Ogden City, Utah), and The Boston Evening Transcript — carried the news of a parachute jump by “William M. Morton, a professional aeronaut” over Venice the day before. The pilot was indeed Phil Parmelee, and Morton jumped from 2,600 feet. According to The Evening Standard, “The parachute landed in some electric wires and Morton was dropped to the ground, about ten feet, slightly injuring himself. About 40,000 people cheered the feat.” The Boston paper’s headline was “ANOTHER JUMP FROM BIPLANE,” which almost certainly refers to Berry’s leap two months earlier.

Searching through news accounts from the spring of 1912, it’s clear that Berry’s feat led other parachutists, who for years had been jumping from hot air balloons at county fairs, to try to duplicate his stunt. Rodman Law, who had already parachuted from the Statue of Liberty and a Wall Street skyscraper, jumped “from a Burgess-Wright hydroaeroplane flown in Marblehead Harbor by Philip W. Page,” on April 13, according to the April 1912 issue of Aeronautics. By year’s end, Law and his pilot, Harry Bingham Brown, were taking out display ads in the magazine to tout their act.

As for Morton, it’s not clear whether he ever tried another airplane jump. Parmelee died in a crash that June, so Morton would have had to find another pilot.

But if his earlier career as a jumper from balloons is any guide, Morton wouldn’t have been daunted by any setback. Newspaper accounts from the early 1900s — which variously name him as “W.L. Morton,” “Professor W.M. Morton,” “W.N. Morton,” and “Grant Morton” — are full of disasters and near disasters.

All you need are the headlines:

AERONAUT HITS TELEGRAPH POLE (San Francisco Call, May 15, 1905)

THOUSANDS SAW A HORRIBLE ACCIDENT ([Riverside] Press and Horticulturalist, June 30, 1905)

AERONAUT IS DASHED AGAINST TREE LIMB (San Francisco Call, July 3, 1905)

AERONAUT LANDS IN NEST OF WIRES (Los Angeles Herald, October 22, 1906)

With each mishap, the reporters seemed more eager to count Morton out. My favorite lead (maybe in any story, ever) is this one, in the 1905 Press and Horticulturalist article: “Grant Morton, parachute jumper, was probably fatally injured yesterday…”

Then there’s the Los Angeles Herald story from April 28, 1908, under the headline “BALLOONIST CALMLY AWAITS FOR DEATH,” where we learn (four years before his airplane jump, remember) that “W.L. Morton, the Venice balloonist, now lies dying in the Santa Monica Bay Hospital. Morton has been making almost daily ascensions for a long time past at Venice, dropping to earth in a parachute and taking all kinds of chances at falling on heavily charged live wires or blowing out to sea. He didn’t care, and said so. Yesterday his parachute threw him against a pole near the old alligator place.”

After that, who would mind jumping from a moving biplane?