SPACE FLIGHT 1999
United States Space Activities
The four reusable shuttle vehicles of the U.S. Space Transportation System (STS) continued carrying people and payloads to and from Earth orbit for science, technology, operational research, systems maintenance and station logistics, accomplishing several difficult and important missions during the year. After having moved into actual orbital assembly in the preceding year, with First Element Launch (FEL) in November and the link-up of the first with the second building-block, the International Space Station (ISS) program moved forward on its schedule with further development steps.
The U.S. space program also suffered a sad loss in 1999 when former Gemini and Apollo astronaut Charles P. "Pete" Conrad died on July 8 of injuries sustained during a motorcycle accident. Conrad, a Navy test pilot and instructor, joined NASA as an astronaut in 1962 and flew his first mission on Gemini 5 in August 1965, completing 120 Earth orbits in eight days. The following September, he commanded the Gemini 11 mission, setting a new altitude record of almost 1360 km (850 miles) above the Earth. In 1969, he became the third man to walk on the moon as commander of the Apollo 12 mission, and in 1973 he flew into space for the last time, as the commander of the first crew to live and work on the experimental space station Skylab.
Also during 1999, NASA issued a request for proposals (RFP) for a launch services contract that would be worth more than $5 billion to winning contractors. It covers a broad range of planned NASA expendable launch vehicle needs across light, medium and heavy payloads. Awards were expected to be made by mid-2000.
The Mercury capsule "Liberty Bell 7", Astronaut Gus Grissom's spacecraft which sank about 145 miles (230 km) east-northeast of the Bahamas in the Atlantic Ocean in 1961 at the conclusion of the suborbital Mercury 4 mission, was successfully recovered on 7/21 from a depth of 16,000 ft. (4875 m), 38 years to the day after it was lost.
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