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