Northrup Strip landing proud moment for HAFB

  • Published
  • By Arlan Ponder
  • 49th Wing Public Affairs
HOLLOMAN AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. --  (This is part two of a series on Holloman's role in the Space Shuttle program.)

With the passing of Astronaut C. Gordon Fullerton on Aug. 21, the story of Holloman's role in NASA's Space Shuttle Program was once again highlighted. Fullerton was the pilot of the only shuttle mission, STS-3, to ever land at the White Sands Northrup Strip.

"White Sands Missile Range and Holloman have a long and successful history with space programs. The two bases have tested and evaluated rocket systems and space flights since the 1940s," said Jim Burrett, 49th Wing historian. "The STS-3 landing was a proud moment for Team Holloman members. The work to get the equipment out to the landing site was a tremendous undertaking and showed Holloman's dedication to the Space Shuttle Program."

Though the shuttle landed at WSMR, the impact on the operation was felt on the neighboring base with over 1,300 Team Holloman members contributing 36,000 man-hours in the effort. Countless vehicles convoyed 13 miles out to the strip in the middle of the range. Vehicles and personnel also assisted with unloading two 40-car trains that arrived with equipment from the Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

The build up for the landing began two weeks prior to the actual landing as NASA and the Columbia crew chose to land at White Sands over Kennedy Space Center, Fla. The crew is alleged to have picked White Sands because all of their training missions had been on that runway.

The area was first used by Northrup Aviation in the 1940s to test military target drones. In 1963, NASA established the White Sands Test Facility, which is part of the Johnson Space Center Complex. In 1976, NASA selected Northrup Strip as the site for its shuttle pilot training. A second runway was added at that time, and the area became the primary training area for space shuttle pilots to practice approaches and landing in the Shuttle Training Aircraft and T-38 chase aircraft.

From day one of the shuttle program, two landing sites were considered for the primary end-of-mission landings--Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., and Kennedy Space Center, Fla. In March 1979, NASA selected a third, or tertiary, site to land in the event both primary locations were unavailable. The tertiary site was WSTF's Northrup Strip, thanks in large part to the near-perfect year round weather and long runways.

Two operational runways that are 35,000 feet long (approximately 6.6 miles) and 900 feet wide are built on an area between the San Andres Mountains on the west and the Sacramento Mountains on the east. This area is known as Alkali Flats, which is part of the now-dry Lake Otero, a lake that filled the bottom of the Tularosa Basin during the last ice age. The area provides "excellent margins of safety" on the compacted salt and gypsum, according to the NASA web site. The added benefit of color, size and near-perfect weather meant astronauts could see the strip from space, making it an easy target to hit if an emergency arose.

Northrup Strip was normally held as the emergency landing site should the shuttle need an immediate return to Earth after the first orbit.

"Should the orbiter not be in a safe orbit, the spacecraft would be slowed down by a de-orbit burn, high over the South Pacific, east of Samoa," a NASA press release from 1982 stated. "The flight path would cross Baja California and the Mexican state of Senora, until the spacecraft was in the denser atmosphere and the crew would fly it, 'dead stick,' into Northrup Strip."

In April 1982, the U.S. House of Representatives renamed Northrup Strip to White Sands Space Harbor in honor of the STS-3 landing.

The site was initially considered for the landing of STS-116, which was a Discovery shuttle mission to the International Space Station, in December 2006. The 14-day mission was hampered by high crosswinds at Edwards and clouds and rain at Kennedy Space Center. With the two primary sites down, the possibility of the first landing at WSSH since STS-3 came about.

Though it had been 24 years since the last shuttle landing, Team Holloman members were standing by to assist with the recovery mission. This would continue to be the norm until the last shuttle mission in 2011.

(Additional material for this story provided by the 49th Wing History Office and the New Mexico Museum of Space History.)