![]() The second mission Bruce flew was named STS-49, and it launched in May 1992. That was just like, wow… You never forget that.” “Exploration benefits everyone on the planet” “The high point on my very first mission was seeing Earth for the first time. “They were looking at big fire suppression systems on the Space Station, but you just don’t need it, because a flame will just put itself out.” So it just makes a fireball, and oxygen can’t get to the heat source so the fire goes out.” When you strike a match in space it makes a flame, but the fire doesn’t go up because you’re in zero gravity. “What was cool about it was that it saved a lot of money and weight on the International Space Station because we didn’t know how a flame would propagate in space. A blaze aboard a spacecraft usually spells disaster, but this carefully controlled fire provided NASA with some interesting results. But it didn’t work in space – we thought we had the cure – all for osteoporosis in space.”Īnother experiment involved igniting a piece of paper, and studying how the flames behaved. “We had some white rats on which we were trying out a proprietary protein, that actually created living bone tissue inside a rat on Earth. Photo: Kennedy Space Visitor ComplexĪlthough STS-41 was fairly short in comparison to other missions, the team managed to squeeze a variety of experiments into a couple of days before their landing at Edwards Air Force Base. Bruce Melnick relaxing onboard the Space Shuttle during STS-41. It transmitted back swathes of new data about the Sun, in addition to providing observations of Jupiter and a handful of comets. Ulysses would remain in operation until 2009- over four times its intended lifespan. The satellite, Ulysses, was a joint venture between NASA and the ESA, designed to collect data from the previously sparsely studied polar regions of the Sun. It was a very short mission we took off, six hours later we got the satellite out of the payload bay, and about half an hour later we pushed the button to send it on its way to Jupiter and eventually the Sun.” “Our primary objective was to launch a satellite into a polar orbit around the sun, using a gravitational assist around Jupiter. His first mission, STS-41, was aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in October 1992. “Seeing Earth for the first time… You never forget that” Before NASA, he served in the United States Coast Guard – where he logged over 5,000 flying hours and received numerous awards. Melnick flew two missions for NASA in the early 90s, and now holds the role of Ambassador for the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. On a cold, Manchester morning in late January, hundreds of miles from the sun-baked asphalt of the Kennedy Space Center launch pads, I was lucky enough to meet Bruce Melnick, a former NASA astronaut.
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