1960
IBM computers provide data for launching and tracking
Project
Echo, the
pioneering U.S. experiment in space communications. Echo
I is a plastic and aluminum balloon, 100 feet in diameter,
that circulates the Earth. Predicting the fluctuating
orbits of the lightweight satellite is a challenge to
these early computers but they succeed.
A new IBM
7090 data
processing system is acquired by NASA to perform key design
and development calculations for Project Saturn — the
development of a super booster with a thrust of 1.5-million
pounds to power flights to the Moon. The solid-state 7090 is
expected to provide the most accurate and detailed trajectory
simulations ever plotted. It furnishes data from storage
in 2.18 millionths of a second and adds 13,740,000 figures
a minute.
1961
NASA launches two Project Mercury manned suborbital flights.
IBM computers make millions of calculations a minute to
help flight controllers make vital decisions throughout
the missions.
1962
Mercury Astronaut John Glenn in Friendship
7 becomes
the first American to orbit the Earth. His historic four-hour,
three-orbit flight is monitored in real-time by IBM computers,
which: calculate the path of the spacecraft during launch
to assist flight controllers with the "go, no go" decision;
process incoming data from the worldwide tracking network;
produce information to operate orbital and location displays
at the mission control center; advise tracking stations
where to look for the spacecraft; and indicate when retro-rockets
should be fired to bring the spacecraft down in the desired
recovery area.
IBM receives the contract for the first guidance
computer for the Saturn series
of launch vehicles.
IBM begins work on the guidance computer that will help
steer the two-man Gemini capsule
(The IBM Federal Systems Division contract is worth some
$36 million, and results in about 1,500 man-years over
the next four years to build and maintain a computer system
that is 15 times more powerful than the IBM computer complex
used to support Project Mercury. The system handles over
25 billion calculations a day during the time when the
Gemini capsules are in flight.)
Using the Telstar satellite,
IBM sends computer information back and forth between
Endicott, N.Y. and La Gaude, France.
1963
IBM employees and computers help NASA track the 22-orbit
flight of Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper in Faith
7.
1964
A 99-pound IBM computer becomes the first onboard computer
to guide a vehicle from launch into space. Mounted onboard
the Saturn SA-6, the IBM system handles the thousands
of complex calculations needed to determine the position
and velocity of a vehicle during launch, even compensating
for an emergency engine shutdown by issuing a command
to redirect the thrust of other engines.
The
Ranger VII satellite televises
the first close-up pictures of the Moon, assisted by computer-calculated
mid-course adjustments to its trajectory.
IBM's Federal Systems Division is awarded a contract
for part of the Saturn launch vehicles, the largest space
contract in company's history to date.
1965
An IBM guidance computer is used
on all Gemini flights,
including the first spaceship rendezvous, with Gemini
6 (Astronauts Walter Schirra and Thomas Stafford) and
Gemini 7 (Astronauts Frank Borman and James Lovell). Weighing
just 59 pounds and occupying only 1.35 cubic feet of space,
the onboard system performs some 7,000 calculations a
second to bring the two vehicles nose-to-nose, 120-feet
apart, 185 miles above Hawaii. The computer features a
memory system capable of holding nearly 20,000 bytes of
information.
Intercontinental television arrives when the Communications
Satellite Corporation (Comsat) launches the Early Bird
satellite into a stationary orbit above the Earth. Calculations
produced by an IBM computer help put Early Bird into its
elliptical temporary orbit and then help to decide the
exact moment for firing the small engine to kick the satellite
into its synchronous orbit.
The Mariner
IV satellite flies
to within 6,100 miles of Mars and sends back to Earth
photographs of the Martian surface in binary code. An
IBM computer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory analyzes
the data for accuracy and produces a corrected tape from
which finished pictures are produced.
The IBM 2361 Core Storage Unit,
the largest computer memory ever built by the company,
is shipped to NASA space center in Houston. Featuring
nearly 20 million doughnut-shaped ferrite cores and capable
of storing 2.6 megabytes of information, the 2361 consists
of a cabinet only five by 2.5 feet standing less than
six feet high.
NASA's Real Time Computer
Complex, developed by IBM for the Gemini
program, features five linked 7094 Model
II computer systems, five 2361 Core Storage Units, and
two 1460s for off-line support.
IBM scientists complete the most precise computation
of the Moon's orbit.
1966
For the first time, a Gemini spacecraft
is automatically guided through reentry by an onboard
computer system. The IBM computer,
barely larger than a bread box, successfully calculates
and triggers the rocket firings to bring Astronauts Conrad
and Gordon in Gemini 11 down closer to the recovery carrier
than any previous flight had been able to do.
The Apollo program launches three unmanned Saturn 1 uprated
launch vehicles controlled and monitored by the IBM-fabricated
Instrument Unit (IU).
The IU guides the Saturn into orbit, and in actual lunar
missions, guides the spacecraft into a proper trans-lunar
path. The IU also monitors and controls vehicle environment
and systems performance. (IBM is under contract to NASA
to provide 27 IUs in total -- 15 for uprated Saturn Is
and 12 for the Saturn V launch vehicles.)
The
Surveyor satellite
makes the first U.S. soft lunar landing. IBM computers
are used to clarify the thousands of photographs Surveyor
relays to Earth.
The Real Time Computer
Complex in
Houston begins replacing its 7094s with
IBM System
360/Model 75s to
meet the increased demands of the Apollo program.
1967
IBM plays a key role in the successful Saturn
V test
flight.
1968
A two-ton, three-foot high, 21-foot diameter, IBM-assembled
Instrument Unit guides
the Apollo 8 astronauts in the first manned circumlunar
flight. IBM computers in Houston monitor almost every
phase of the mission, including the heartbeats of the
astronauts. The computers, five System/360
Model 75s at
the Manned Spacecraft Center, work in real-time — so
fast there is virtually no time between receiving and
solving an Apollo computing problem.
NASA delves deeper into theoretical space exploration,
becoming the first customer to receive an IBM
System/360 Model 91.
The computer, the fastest, most
powerful ever put into user operation, is used for deep
space simulations. 1969
The Apollo
11 astronauts
make the first manned landing on the Moon with the help
of IBM computers.
An onboard computer in the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory
II operates for a full year.
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