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ROBERT CENKER (BOB) Hand Signed Autograph CUT With 4X6 Photo - NASA ASTRONAUT
$ 2.9
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NASA ASTRONAUT - ROBERT CENKER (BOB) Hand Signed. Cut with 4X6 Photo . is Hand Signed by ROBERT CENKER (BOB) . %100 Authentic Autograph ! The Autograph is BOLD & Looks AMAZING ! ROBERT CENKER (BOB) Also wrote BEST WISHES STS- 61C . NICE INSCRIPTION. The photo is in GREAT condition & is a High Quality photo . Will look Fantastic framed together. Will be shipped SUPER FAST to you & will be Well packaged . I will ship to you . The SAME DAY you pay :) YES... I even ship on Saturday . Payment MUST be made in 3 days or less after this listing ends ! Combined s&h is Extra each additional listing . In the 3 day Period . Check out my other Low priced autographs & my Fantastic Feedback :) Ad my store to your follow list . I do list NEW Low priced Autographs EVERY DAY ! Upon Request . I do offer my Lifetime Guarantee COA . Just message me at Checkout. Thank you :) AmandaRobert Joseph "Bob" Cenker (born November 5, 1948) is an American aerospace and electrical engineer, aerospace systems consultant, and former astronaut. Cenker worked for 18 years at RCA Astro-Electronics, and its successor company GE Astro Space, on a variety of spacecraft projects. He spent most of his career working on commercial communications satellites, including the Satcom, Spacenet and GStar programs. In January 1986, Cenker was a crew member on the twenty-fourth mission of NASA's Space Shuttle program, the seventh flight of Space Shuttle Columbia, designated as mission STS-61-C. Cenker served as a Payload Specialist,[a] representing RCA Astro-Electronics. This mission was the final flight before the Challenger disaster, which caused the Space Shuttle program to be suspended until 1988, and impacted NASA's Payload Specialist program for even longer. As a result, Cenker's mission was called "The End of Innocence" for the Shuttle program. Following the completion of his Shuttle mission, Cenker returned to work in the commercial aerospace field. Since his flight, he has made numerous public appearances representing NASA and the Shuttle program, in the United States, as well as internationally.Spaceflight experience STS-61-C crew As an incentive for a spacecraft owner to contract with NASA to use a Shuttle launch instead of an unmanned, commercial launch system, NASA permitted contracting companies to apply for a Payload Specialist seat on the same mission. When RCA contracted with NASA to launch Satcom Ku-1, RCA Astro-Electronics' manager of systems engineering for the Satcom-K program Bob Cenker, and his co-worker Gerard Magilton, were selected to train as Payload Specialists so that one of the pair could accompany Satcom Ku-1 into space.Cenker and Magilton trained with career astronauts as well as other Payload and Mission Specialists, including those scheduled for the next scheduled flight, that of the Challenger mission, STS-51-L. This flight of Columbia was originally scheduled to occur in August 1985, but the timeline slipped. In July 1985 the payload was finalized to include the RCA satellite, and Cenker was assigned to the mission, now designated as STS-61-C. Magilton was assigned as the back-up. STS-61-C launch Prior to its successful launch, Columbia had several aborted launch attempts, including one on January 6 which was "one of the most hazardous in the Shuttle’s operational history"to that point. As documented in Crewmember Bill Nelson's book "Mission: An American Congressman's Voyage to Space", and as reported in Spaceflight Insider, "The launch attempt on Jan. 6, 1986 was halted at T-31 seconds. The weather was perfect for the scheduled launch at dawn, but a failure of a liquid oxygen drain valve prevented it to close properly. The valve was then closed manually, but not quickly enough to prevent a low temperature in one fuel line." However, Nelson says that what really happened was that "the valve did not close because it was not commanded to close", and that it was later determined that the Rogers Commission, investigating the series of mistakes that forced this second scrub, recognized that the problems were personnel-related, caused by fatigue from overwork: One potentially catastrophic human error occurred 4 minutes 55 seconds before the scheduled launch of mission 61-C on January 6, 1986. According to a Lockheed Space Operations Company incident report, 18,000 pounds of liquid oxygen were inadvertently drained from the Shuttle external fuel tank due to operator error. Fortunately, the liquid oxygen flow dropped the main engine inlet temperature below the acceptable limit causing a launch hold, but only 31 seconds before lift-off. As the report states, "Had the mission not been scrubbed, the ability of the orbiter to reach a defined orbit may have been significantly impacted. There was another near-catastrophic launch abort three days later. Referring to the January 9 abort, pilot Charlie Bolden later stated that it "...would have been catastrophic, because the engine would have exploded had we launched. In all, it took a record eight attempts to get Columbia off the ground.Columbia finally launched and achieved orbit on January 12, 1986, with a full crew of seven. Along with Cenker, the crew included Robert L. "Hoot" Gibson, future NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden, George D. Nelson, Steven A. Hawley, Franklin R. Chang-Diaz, and US Representative Bill Nelson.Cenker and his crewmates traveled over 2.5 million miles in 98 orbits aboard Columbia and logged over 146 hours in space. RCA SATCOM Ku-1 deployment During the six-day mission, January 12–18, Cenker performed a variety of physiological tests, operated a primary experiment – an infrared imaging camera – and assisted with the deployment of RCA Americom's Satcom Ku-1 satellite, the primary mission objective. Satcom Ku-1 was deployed nearly 10 hours into the mission, and Satcom later reached its designated geostationary orbital position at 85 degrees West longitude where it remained operational until April 1997, the last major commercial satellite deployed by the Space Shuttle program. In a 2014 video of the "Tell Me a Story" series titled "Close My Eyes & Drift Away", posted to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex YouTube channel, Cenker tells a humorous story regarding a zero-g sleeping problem he faced on his mission. The next Shuttle launch, ten days after the return of Columbia, resulted in the destruction of the Challenger with the loss of all aboard, including Cenker's counterpart from Hughes Aircraft, civilian crew member and Payload Specialist Greg Jarvis. Accordingly, commander Gibson later called the STS-61-C mission "The End of Innocence" for the Shuttle program. Following the Challenger disaster, the Shuttle fleet was grounded until 1988.Even after Shuttle missions resumed, civilian Payload Specialists like Cenker were excluded until the Payload Specialist program was reinstated on December 2, 1990 when Samuel T. Durrance, an Applied Physics Laboratory astrophysicist and Ronald A. Parise, a Computer Sciences Corporation astronomer, flew aboard STS-35. By that time, RCA had been purchased by General Electric, and RCA Astro-Electronics became part of GE. Following two additional ownership transitions, the facility was closed in 1998. As a result, Cenker was the only RCA Astro-Electronics employee, and only employee in the history of the facility under all of its subsequent names, to ever fly in space. NASA's Payload Specialist program has been criticized for giving limited Shuttle flight positions to civilian aerospace engineers such as Cenker and Greg Jarvis (killed aboard Challenger), politicians such as Bill Nelson, and other civilians such as Teacher in Space Christa McAuliffe (also killed aboard Challenger). Even the flight of former Mercury astronaut and US Senator John Glenn was questioned. The concern was that these people had replaced career astronauts in very limited flight opportunities, and some may have flown without fully understanding the level of danger involved in a Shuttle mission.