OSIRIS-REx, launching on an Atlas V 411 from SLC-41 on 8th September 2016, as seen from the LC-39A gantry. Photo by Lupi.
It was the first week of September when my family descended upon Cocoa Beach for one last hurrah of summer. We’d gone twice prior that year: once for a beach week in July, and a short trip to watch NROL-61 and surf. I had been hoping beyond hope that the second launch I got to witness would be a Falcon 9, with the AMOS-6 launch scheduled for the night we arrived. The second launch scheduled for that week, OSIRIS-REx, was in my eyes a bonus, an afterthought. I didn’t know anything about it, and my first Atlas launch had been a let-down, leaving me less excited for it than I was for Falcon.
That focus changed September 1st, the day before we climbed into the car. Space Twitter erupted with reports of an explosion at Pad 40, followed by USLaunchReport’s notorious video capturing the fiery affair. This was a bit disappointing at the time, but accidents and delays happen in spaceflight on a regular basis, and I still had another launch to look forward to! I just happened to know a lot less about it, or what I was an amazing experience I was in for.
After a surf competition and several sunny days of seaside book-reading, my first day at the Visitors’ Complex was Wednesday, September 7th, and it was only then that I really began to get a feeling of how high-profile this mission was. The entire park was adorned with information about the launch, ULA and NASA were displaying exhibits in every venue, and there were a lot of people with Launch Team apparel exploring the place and enjoying the festivities. I later learned that the entire Banana River Viewing Site had been reserved for program engineers and their families to watch the launch; This turned out to be why I couldn’t have purchased tickets there even if I’d wanted to. I had spent some time checking out the assorted exhibits about the launch in the Atlantis and Journey to Mars buildings, and a special show in the Astronaut Encounter Theater – I can’t remember which displays I visited on which days, but the more I learned, the more excited I got for a mission I had never heard about before.
OSIRIS-REx is a probe mission to the asteroid Bennu, not unlike missions such as Hayabusa, Rosetta, and Dawn. It’ll be spending time orbiting the asteroid, observing solar pressure and studying all sorts of things with its slew of instruments, until one day where they deploy a pogo-stick like sample collection device and just barely boop the rock, using gas pressure to blow some dust into its storage material. Then, like Hayabusa, it’ll come back, and drop the sample capsule off at the Utah Test Range. Unlike the others, it got a weird backronym, not a name:
Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security – Regolith Explorer.
The others sound a lot better, but this one got to have a dinosaur mascot, so I guess it’s a tradeoff.
My viewing tickets had been purchased in an excited rush on August 30th, just as soon as they’d gone online; given that the Banana River Viewing Area had been reserved, my options were the LC-39 Viewing Gantry and the NASA Causeway, the latter of which seems to mostly be brought out for high profile launches where they need the seating. It was a tough choice for a novice launch tourist; the Gantry cost more and didn’t have direct line of sight to the rocket on the pad, but it was closer. The Causeway was cheaper and further away, and it had a clear direct line of sight across the Banana River to pad 41. Ultimately, the seller for me at the time? The Gantry viewing ticket came with food and a shirt, and to me, that was worth it. I’m a sucker for shirts almost as much as I am for pins. I have never been so happy over a shirt-based decision since.
I got an early start at 8am Thursday for the 45 minute drive to the Visitors’ Complex. Launch days are the busiest it gets, and I had heard at some point that they projected attendance to be in excess of 15,000 for the launch, which was significantly more than the 12,000 that had attended for NROL-61. Given how packed the park was that day, I was expecting the worst, and was very glad to have knocked out most of the other exhibits the previous day. The big ticket item was Bill Nye’s speech, which I remember very little of other than some talk about Lightsail-2 and the naming competition for Bennu, OSIRIS-REx’s asteroid target. The subsequent line in the Atlantis building to get a photo with him was not worth my time, so I spent my time talking with docents and other assorted individuals instead.
As the crowds faded, I sat under Atlantis with nervous purport, Chromebook in lap trying to collect my thoughts in a twitlonger post. Just 5 years prior, I had so nearly missed the last space shuttle launch, a launch I so desperately wanted to see; now I sat under the very same vehicle whose launch I had missed, counting down to the next rocket launch I was hoping for. The writing helped me come to terms with those feelings, and I soon closed the lid and went off to adventure out a bit more; it was noon, so I had about five hours to kill doing this and that.
Eventually, boarding time came and we shipped out to the LC-39 Viewing Gantry, a location I wasn’t terribly familiar with until then, aside from the likelihood of sitting on concrete or grass; I had prepared for this, and packed a beach towel. The first thing off the bus was a self-serve burger bar type thing (also included in our ticket), so I fixed myself something, set my stuff down, and went into the shop to redeem my shirt voucher. Our shirts were different from the ones you could buy, so at some point I additionally hit up The Space Shop to get the one I missed. I don’t have a shirt problem.
With my affairs well and truly in order, I spread out my towel and began rifling through what equipment I had brought in preparation to snap a few pictures. From my vantage point in the grass, right up against the fence at the front of the viewing area, I had the NASA TV cameraman to my right, filming the crowd as the tension and excitement built in the fading sun.
The ground loop blasted over the site’s speakers as liquid oxygen vented from the Atlas standing a mere two miles from where I sat, forming a dense white cloud against the skeletal, oddly-shaped service tower. Each announcement, each callout, each check contributed to the building excitement in the crowd, and all eyes were on Atlas as the count slowly drew towards its explosive conclusion. It’s here that I find it harder and harder to put my memories and feelings into words; the experience was surreal, the excitement through the roof. Everything became a blur, a homogenous hum of happiness as the final minutes ticked down. Soon, the crowd was chanting in eager report… Ten! Nine! Eight…
At precisely 7:05 PM local time, it all came to a peak. Smoke billowed from the pad as the Atlas V’s RD-180 main engine ignited, followed by its single solid booster. It lept from the pad to the sound of wild cheering, as it takes a few moments for the sound to travel those 2.1 miles. Once it arrived, it started as a faint rumble and rapidly building into a deafening roar, a crescendo of channeled chaos, an air-ripping arpeggio of superchilled and solid fuel burning and crackling that quickly drowned out the hubbub at our viewing area. I snapped a few pictures, managed to record a quick video, and recall vaguely trying to answer questions for the child next to me. As it rose into the sky on a pillar of smoke and steam, it soared not just towards a distant asteroid, but to the very core of my being.
OSIRIS-REx was a personal redemption, an affirmation to me that I had my passion in the right place. I had previously been burned by missing STS-135, by the disappointing experience the NROL-61 launch had been, and most recently the loss of AMOS-6. As I sat there, eyes fixated on the slowly-scattering trail the Atlas had left in the sky, I found that doubt, that bitterness and spite that had underpinned previous launch viewing fading with it. This was what I wanted to see, what I wanted to do. I wanted more of this rush, this feeling of awe as a titanic machine roared into the air before me, off to advance our world in one way or another.
This was where it began.
– Lupi