RocketSTEM Issue #2 - April 2013 | Page 46

Pre-flight briefing for our mission to clear the Eastern Range of unwanted guests for the SpaceX COTS-2 launch. 920th Rescue Wing Airmen ready a HH-60G Pave Hawk to fly our range-clearing mission. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket ignites to send their Dragon spacecraft on the first commercial spaceflight to the International Space Station, as shot from a 920th Rescue Wing Pave Hawk helicopter - call sign Jolly 1. 44 44 Haston’s unique experience supporting launches is, as he put it, “not the sort of thing you pick up in Air Force regulations,” but rather tricks of the trade. We went through the same routine as we did for the first launch attempt, but this time the crew gave me a pair of night-vision goggles so I could see what they see and shoot some photos to give viewers their perspective. The night vision goggles help amplify the available light from the Moon and stars by up to 5,000 times onto a green phosphorous screen; the human eye can distinguish more shades of green than any other color. There was no moon this night, and even 60 miles out over the ocean in the darkest black I have ever seen, the goggles illuminated everything, I could even see the ripple of waves on the ocean’s surface. We took to the skies two hours before launch, heading up the coast of Brevard County towards Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, where SpaceX Launch Complex 40 and their Falcon 9 rocket stood fully fueled. We hovered a short distance away from the rocket for a few minutes, allowing me to shoot some exclusive photos from our unique vantage point before heading out to sea to clear boat traffic off the range. Our orders were to clear an area about 20 miles wide and 6 0 miles long around the launch site. “They (range control) want us to clear 8-10 miles away from the azimuth. With a small rocket like this, it’s a small box, but because it’s brand new we need to keep it pretty clear,” said Lt. Col. Haston. The night was fairly quiet, there was not much boat traffic getting in the way, but it was interesting to come within a couple hundred feet of a Carnival cruise ship and tell them to hurry up and get into Port Canaveral before the launch. I can only imagine the surprise people onboard must have felt when they saw, or heard, us circling overhead. Lights go off in the Pave Hawk during night-ops. Small fluorescent tubes reference our emergency exits, and the cockpit controls and displays - as well as the LCD screens on our cameras and cell phones - were the only lights we had. The pitch black view 60 miles out over the Atlantic allowed the Milky Way to shine brightly in the sky, and the sound of our rotors with no visual of anything was very strange, even eerie. At one point I lost all reference of direction and could not even see the camera gear I had strapped to me. Eventually the lights of Florida’s Space Coast began to shine, and the unmistakeable sight of xenon lights on the Falcon 9 rocket came back into view. Even from 30 miles out, on a dark moonless night, NASA’s massive Vehicle Assembly Building stood out like a sore thumb many of my friends and colleagues were on the roof to cover the historic launch. We arrived at the shoreline north of Kennedy Space Center about 20 minutes before launch, at which point we headed south along the beach, over Apollo/Shuttle launch pads 39B and 39A before hovering one final time next to the Falcon 9 for some last minute photos. We then proceeded to fly over KSC, at which point Lt. www.RocketSTEM.org