112 Million Miles Away


Meanwhile, 112 million miles away from Mars, back here on Earth at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), real helicopters are performing real missions supporting many of NASA’s earthly and space-bound initiatives. And so it goes, as the Airbus H135 launches itself on a first-time endeavor to support space exploration.


From 1949 to 1961, the U.S. military was performing missile launch testing from Cape Canaveral. Then in 1961, President John F. Kennedy launched the national goal of a lunar landing before 1970. This effort would facilitate the need for larger facilities that could accommodate much larger rockets, like that of the massive Saturn V rocket weighing in at 6,540,000 pounds. So in 1962, NASA began acquiring nearby land on adjacent Merritt Island from the State of Florida to develop what would become the KSC.


Today the KSC covers 144,000 acres of land and is home to over 700 facilities, launch pads, and buildings: the Launch Control Center, astronaut crew quarters, a visitors center, and the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). Its 130,000,000 cubic feet make it the


seventh-largest building on earth by volume. Most of the Cape’s 219 square miles are a restricted area and only 9% of the land is developed. So the site also serves as an important wildlife sanctuary and home to a variety of species like bald eagles, American alligators, wild boars, eastern diamondback rattlesnakes, the endangered Florida panther, and Florida manatees.


Helicopters have been used as part of KSC and Cape operations since 1980, when NASA purchased a fleet of military surplus Bell UH-1 Hueys with a primary role of supporting the developing Space Shuttle program. The Hueys have flown many mission profiles and have served NASA aviation operations well for 40 years. However, as technologic advances are impacting space


exploration, so


too are they ushering in a new era of modern helicopters.


GOOD TO KNOW INFO:


As early as the late ‘60s, astronauts received helicopter training in the Bell 47 in order to build hand-eye coordination in preparation for operations like controlling the lunar landing module and docking spacecraft.


48


Jan/Feb 2021


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