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

commander for Apollo 14, and commander for Apollo
17, becoming the eleventh and (so far) penultimate person
to step onto the Moon’s surface and the last to leave
his footprints there. Afterward, he served as special assistant
to the manager of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project
before resigning from NASA and the Navy on July 1,
1976, to become an executive of Coral Petroleum of
Houston, Texas. Later he formed the Cernan Corporation,
an aerospace consultancy firm, in Houston. In
1999, he published his autobiography, The Last Man on
the Moon. 44
Chaffee, Roger Bruce (1935–1967)
An American astronaut selected by NASA to fly on the
first Apollo manned mission. Unfortunately, Chaffee
never got the chance. He died on January 27, 1967, along
with crewmates Gus Grissomand Edward White, during
a launch pad test at the Kennedy Space Center. Chaffee
received a B.S. in aeronautical engineering from Purdue
University in 1957 and immediately joined the Navy.
Photographs taken while he piloted a U-2 spy plane in
1963 proved conclusively that the Soviet Union had
installed offensive missiles in Cuba and were displayed
by President Kennedy during a televised address. That
same month, Chaffee was selected by NASA as a member
of its third group of astronauts. He was assigned with
Grissom and White to fly the first Apollo capsule on an
11-day mission in Earth orbit. However, a month before
their scheduled launch, all three were killed aboard their
capsule during a countdown rehearsal, when a flash fire
raced through their cabin.
Chalet/Vortex
The second generation of U.S. Air Force SIGINT (signals
intelligence) satellites, launched between 1978 and
1989, that replaced Canyon. The program was renamed
Vortex after the code name Chalet appeared in The New
York Times. It was superseded by Magnum and Mercury
ELINT.
Challenger
(1) Space Shuttle Orbiter that first flew on April 4, 1983
(STS-6). Among the milestones of the Challenger Orbiter
were the first spacewalk from a Shuttle (STS-6), the flight
of the first American female astronaut (STS-7), the flight
of the first African-American astronaut (STS-8), the first
use of free-flying Manned Maneuvering Units during a
spacewalk (STS-41B), and the first in-flight repair and
redeployment of a satellite (STS-41C). See Challengerdisaster.
(2) Nickname of the Apollo 17 Lunar Module. (3)
British Navy research vessel that made a prolonged study
of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans between 1872 and
1876, and after which the two spacecraft were named.
Chandra X-ray Observatory 73
Challenger disaster
On January 28, 1986, the 25th Space Shuttle mission
(STS-51L) ended in tragedy 73 seconds after launch; the
Challenger Orbiter was destroyed and its seven-member
crew killed. A presidential commission set up to investigate
the accident concluded that a failure had occurred in
the joint between the two lower segments of the right
Solid Rocket Booster (SRB). The rubber seal, or O-ring,
had hardened overnight in freezing weather and failed
when the boosters ignited at launch. The escaping flame
breached the External Tank, and the vehicle broke apart
as the propellants ignited. The commission also concluded
that there were flaws in the Shuttle program.
Many changes in the SRB and Orbiter design, as well as
in management, were made to improve safety. 298
chamber pressure
The pressure of gases in the combustion chamber of a
rocket engine, produced by the burning of fuel. The
engine’s thrust is proportional to the chamber pressure.
CHAMP (Challenging Minisatellite Payload)
A small German satellite mission for geoscientific and
atmospheric research and applications, managed by GFZ
Potsdam. Using an advanced GPS (Global Positioning
System), CHAMP measures how its orbit changes in
response to Earth’s gravitational pull, enabling
researchers to map indirectly the density of Earth’s crust.
By mapping the density to a high precision over many
years, scientists can detect changes in variables such as
seawater level, the thickness of the polar ice caps, and
even the density of the atmosphere.
Launch
Date: July 15, 2000
Vehicle: Cosmos-3M
Site: Pletesk
Orbit: 421 × 476 km × 87°
Mass: 522 kg (total), 27 kg (science payload)
Chandra X-ray Observatory
One of NASA’s four Great Observatories. After being
launched by the Space Shuttle, Chandra was boosted
into a high elliptical orbit from which it can make longduration,
uninterrupted measurements of X-ray sources
in the universe. It uses the most sensitive X-ray telescope
ever built, which consists of four pairs of nearly cylindrical
mirrors with diameters of 0.68 to 1.4 m, to observe
X-rays in the energy range of 0.1 to 10 keV. These mirrors
focus X-rays onto two of Chandra’s four science
instruments: the High Resolution Camera and the
CCD (charge-coupled device) Imaging Spectrometer.