The Complete Book of Spaceflight: From Apollo 1 to Zero Gravity

eration heavy-lift booster should take place from Plesetsk
in 2003. Meanwhile, commercial space operations using
the existing launch vehicles are set to be intensified at
Plesetsk.
Plum Brook Research Station
A rocket propulsion test site, located at Sandusky, Ohio,
and operated by the Glenn Research Center. It hosts the
world’s largest space environment simulation chamber,
in which upper-stage engines can be tested under conditions
like those encountered beyond Earth’s atmosphere.
Among Plum Brook’s other facilities are a large hypersonic
wind tunnel and a tank for experimenting with
cryogenic fuels. NASA is currently decommissioning two
experimental nuclear reactors at Plum Brook that were
used in the 1960s to study the effects of radiation on
materials used in spaceflight.
Pluto/Kuiper Belt mission
Also known as New Horizons, the first mission to the
outermost planet, Pluto, and its only moon, Charon. The
design of this spacecraft, whose future had seemed threatened
on several occasions because of NASA budget cuts,
is being conducted at the Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Laboratory, by a team that also includes
members from NASA and various other academic institutions.
By mid-2002, the mission had successfully completed
its first major product review. New Horizons is
working toward a 2006 launch, arrival at Pluto and
Charon in 2015, and exploration of various objects in the
Poe, Edgar Allan 325
Kuiper Belt, beyond Pluto’s orbit, up to 2026. Mission
planners are anxious to intercept the ninth planet while it
is still in the near-perihelion (closest to the Sun) part of
its orbit; at greater distances from the Sun, Pluto’s atmosphere
may completely freeze and any surface activity,
such as ice geysers, become less frequent.
PMG (Plasma Motor/Generator)
An experiment that involved lowering a 500-m-long
space tether from a spent Delta upper stage into the
lower part of the thermosphere where atmospheric gas
exists in a plasma, or ionized state. The tether consisted
of a conducting wire with hollow electrodes at either end.
An electric current was produced in the tether in line
with expectations, demonstrating the potential of this
technique to generate power that could be used by satellites
or space stations in low Earth orbit.
Launch
Date: June 26, 1993
Vehicle: Delta 7925
Site: Cape Canaveral
Orbit: 185 × 890 km
Poe, Edgar Allan (1809–1849)
An American author and a pioneer of the mystery and
science fiction genres. His Unparalleled Adventure of One
Hans Pfaal 234 (1835) ranks among the first scientifically
serious tales of spaceflight and had a powerful influence
Pluto/Kuiper Belt mission An
artist’s rendering of a probe flying
through the Pluto-Charon
system. NASA/JPL