Ksp Rp1 First Orbit

[Nell Barreto]

FirstOrbit is a 2011 feature-length, experimental documentary film about Vostok 1, the first human space flight around the Earth. By matching the orbit of the International Space Station to that of Vostok 1 as closely as possible, in terms of ground track and time of day, documentary filmmaker Christopher Riley and European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli were able to film the view that Yuri Gagarin saw on his pioneering 1961 orbital space flight. This new footage was cut together with the original Vostok 1 mission audio recordings sourced from the Russian State Archive of Scientific andTechnical Documentation. The film features the music of composer Philip Sheppard.

Further calculations confirmed that opportunities to film this trajectory, with the correct sun angles, at this exact time of day, only came around once every six weeks. According to Riley, the second challenge was fitting these filming opportunities into crew time on board the space station. "The astronauts have a busy schedule; conducting a packed programme of experiments, Earth observations and activities like sleep, exercise and meal times. This meant that accommodating the extra filming request for First Orbit was yet another challenge for the ESA mission directors," he told BBC news in a March 2011 interview.[1] On the final flight path back towards Gagarin's landing site, the scenes shot for First Orbit are slightly to the east of the original Vostok 1 trajectory. Because the vantage point is so high, the vista was similar to that of Gagarin's vantage point.

Mission directors Roland Luettgens and Giovanni Gravili worked closely with the team to turn the filming opportunities into precise technical notes which translated Chris's camera directions into instructions for the crew. After a brief test shoot in November 2010, conducted by NASA's Expedition 25 astronaut Doug Wheelock, European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli filmed most of the footage for the project in early January 2011. This new footage showed the Earth as Gagarin would have seen it almost exactly fifty years before. The film does include views of the Moon, though. When Gagarin flew into the nightside of the Earth on 12 April 1961, there was a crescent moon and, according to his 1960s autobiography, Road to the Stars, Gagarin tried looking for the Moon out of curiosity, to see what it looked like from space. Unfortunately, it was not in his field of view. The filmmakers added the Moon into the scene as a tribute.[2]

The music in First Orbit was composed by Philip Sheppard and was taken from his album Cloud Songs. Riley first worked with Sheppard in 2006 on the Sundance award-winning feature documentary film, In the Shadow of the Moon. Since that time, he had worked on a new suite of music inspired by space flight, which he donated to this new film project.

Coincidentally, the music in the film was taken on board the ISS by NASA astronaut Catherine Coleman before it was used in the film. Catherine Coleman flew to the ISS with astronaut and First Orbit cameraman Paolo Nespoli without either of them knowing about the other's connection to the film project.[3]

The producers sourced portions of Gagarin's original mission audio for First Orbit from the Russian State Archive. These historic recordings principally document the conversation between Yuri Gagarin on board Vostok 1 and Sergei Korolev on the ground. According to Riley, it is the first time that such quantities of the flight have been heard outside Russia.[1] Additional archive audio in the film comes from a Radio Moscow report broadcast during the flight and news bulletins from the BBC and the Information Telegraph Agency of Russia TASS.[citation needed] The Russian recordings in the film are subtitled in English.[citation needed]

Luna 10 was the first spacecraft to go into orbit around the Moon, and the first human-made object to orbit any body beyond the Earth. The primary objectives were to achieve the first lunar orbit, gain experience in orbital operations, presumably as a precursor to astronaut orbital missions, and study the lunar environment. The launch was timed so that the spacecraft would come around on its first orbit just as the Twenty-third Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was convening for its morning session.

Luna 10 was designated a Ye-6S spacecraft, consisting of a Ye-6 bus with a fueled mass of about 1350 kg attached to a cylindrical pressurized 245 kg lunar orbiter module. The module was probably taken from the Cosmos Earth-orbiting series. It was 1.5 meters tall and 75 cm in diameter at the base. The main propulsion systems for lunar orbit insertion were on the bus, and the science payload was carried on the orbiter module. The payload comprised seven instruments: a gamma-ray spectrometer for energies between 0.3--3 MeV, a triaxial magnetometer (on the end of a 1.5 meter boom), a piezoelectric micrometeoroid detector, gas discharge counters, devices for measuring infrared emissions from the Moon, low energy X-ray detectors, and a bank of charged particle detectors. Additionally, the radio system was used for gravitational and radio occultation studies. Luna 10 was battery powered and communications were via 183 MHz and 922 MHz aerials.

Following the failure of an identical mission on 1 March 1966 which never left Earth orbit and was designated Cosmos 111, Luna 10 was launched on 31 March 1966 at 10:48 UT. It was injected into a 200 x 250 km, 52 degree Earth orbit and launched towards the Moon from its Earth orbiting platform. Following a mid-course correction on 1 April, Luna 10 turned around at a distance of 8000 km from the Moon and fired its rockets, slowing by 0.64 km/sec. It entered lunar orbit at 18:44 UT on 3 April 1966 and separated from the bus 20 seconds later. The initial orbit was 349 x 1015 km with a period of 2 hours 58 minutes and an inclination of 71.9 degrees. It completed its first orbit on April 4, Moscow time.

The data returned showed a weak to non-existent magnetic field, cosmic radiation of 5 particles/cm2/sec, 198 micrometeoroid impacts, no discernable atmosphere, and a highly distorted gravity field, suggesting a non-uniform mass distribution. The gamma-ray spectrometer gave compositional information on the Moon'ssurface, showing it to be similar to terrestrial basalt. Luna 10 operated for 56 days, covering 460 lunar orbits and 219 active data transmissions before the batteries were depleted and radio signals were discontinued on May 30, 1966. The orbit at that time was 378 x 985 km with an inclination of 72.2 degrees. The orbit would have decayed fairly rapidly, it is assumed that Luna 10 impacted the surface of the Moon sometime in 1966 at an unknown location.

At the Communist Party Congress, the "Internationale" was played over loudspeakers for the assembled 5000 delegates on the morning of 4 April, ostensibly broadcast live from Luna 10 as it rounded the Moon. In fact, it was revealed thirty years later that it was a recording from Luna 10 from the previous night, used because the controllers did not trust a live broadcast and because in a session earlier that morning it was discovered that a note was missing in the transmission from the solid-state oscillators programmed to reproduce the notes of the song.

In February 1962, the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union was in full swing. Both nations had developed spacecraft to send humans into space and selected a group of pilots to fly those spacecraft. The Soviets leaped ahead by placing the first man, Yuri A. Gagarin, in space on April 12, 1961, on a one-orbit flight around the Earth aboard his Vostok spaceship. The United States responded with two suborbital piloted Mercury missions, launched atop Redstone rockets. The Soviets next kept a cosmonaut in space for a full day. On Feb. 20, 1962, astronaut John H. Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth during the three-orbit Mercury-Atlas 6 mission, aboard the spacecraft he named Friendship 7.

Left: At Launch Pad 14, astronaut John H. Glenn squeezes into the Friendship 7 capsule. Right: Liftoff of Friendship 7 with Glenn aboard atop an Atlas rocket from Launch Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, now Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, in Florida.

Left: Friendship 7, with astronaut John H. Glenn inside, a few minutes after splashdown. Middle: Sailors aboard the destroyer U.S.S. Noa lift Friendship 7 with Glenn still aboard onto the ship, the deployed landing bag visible at the bottom of the capsule. Right: Aboard the Noa, after removing his spacesuit Glenn, center, inspects his Friendship 7 capsule.

Left: Astronaut John H. Glenn relaxes aboard the U.S.S. Noa awaiting his helicopter ride to the U.S.S. Randolph. Right: A helicopter view of Friendship 7, amidships aboard the destroyer U.S.S. Noa. Image credit: Courtesy U.S. Navy.

Left: Astronaut John H. Glenn being hoisted onto a helicopter for the short flight from the U.S.S. Noa to the prime recovery ship, the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Randolph. Middle: Astronaut John H. Glenn, center, being welcomed aboard the U.S.S. Randolph. Right: Glenn, center, with medical staff aboard the U.S.S. Randolph.

Left: Astronaut John H. Glenn, center, welcomed by five of his fellow Mercury astronauts at Grand Turk Island, Turks and Caicos Islands. Image credit: Courtesy of AP Photo. Middle: Glenn undergoing medical tests on Grand Turk Island. Right: Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, right, arrives at Grand Turk

Island to escort Glenn back to the United States.

Left: President John F. Kennedy, left, presenting astronaut John H. Glenn with the NASA Distinguished Service Medal outside Hangar S. Middle: President Kennedy, left, and Glenn leave the Mercury Control Center. Right: President Kennedy, left, and Glenn prepare to depart after touring Launch Complex 14.

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