Three November Twelfths

Three moments, all on 12 November, from 1981 to 2014.

Columbia flies again

Stardate 1082.8269 (NOVEMBER 12, 1981)

On the morning of 12 November 1981, Columbia rose from Pad 39A for a second time. Joe Engle and Richard Truly rode the same orbiter that had flown seven months earlier, the first reuse of a crewed spacecraft.

The mission was meant to last five days and was cut short when a fuel cell failed. Even so, the flight showed that a winged vehicle could leave Earth, return, and leave again. Reusability, once an idea on paper, had become a practiced thing.

Catching a lost satellite

Stardate 1240.6405 (NOVEMBER 12, 1984)

On 12 November 1984, Joseph Allen flew a manned maneuvering unit out from Discovery and met Palapa B-2, a communications satellite stranded in the wrong orbit. He steadied it with a capture probe, and with Dale Gardner brought it into the payload bay.

It was the first time a satellite had been retrieved from orbit to be carried home. The work was slower and more manual than planned, and that was part of its meaning. Spaceflight, at its best, is careful hands making good on an earlier miss.

A quiet landing on a comet

Stardate 2818.4614 (NOVEMBER 12, 2014)

On 12 November 2014, a small lander named Philae left the Rosetta orbiter and drifted toward Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Seven hours later it touched the nucleus at Agilkia, the first time a spacecraft had landed on a comet.

The harpoons did not hold, and Philae bounced before coming to rest in shadow. Even so, it worked through its battery life and returned measurements from a world of ice and dust. The day remains a reminder that exploration often succeeds in ways no one quite planned.