The mission of Soldiers magazine is to provide, in print format, accurate and timely information about Army operations and policies to Soldiers, their families and select members of government.

Soldiers Magazine is distributed monthly to a worldwide audience of approximately 525,000.

FEATURES
Rocket Pioneers 4
The success of America’s space program today rests on the work of people like rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun, who made space travel a reality.

Space Soldiers 10
Soldiers like Lt. Col. Robert Shane Kimbrough play a valuable role as astronauts, supporting U.S. military commanders and civilian organizations.

Army Astronauts 20
Soldiers assigned to NASA’s Astronaut Detachment — working to complete construction of the International Space Station and charting new frontiers.

America’s Haunted Army 26
Some Army bases are believed to be haunted by the unidentified paranormal and by Soldiers of the past.

Building Smart 28
Construction on many Army installations is booming, and that construction is environmentally and people friendly.

IED Interrogation Arm 30
The Army is detecting and neutralizing deadly improvised explosive devices with an effective device known as the Interrogation Arm.

Man of the Year 32
The national governing body for amateur wrestling in the United States has named an Army civilian at Fort Campbell, Ky., its Man of the Year.

Space Soldiers ...
Serving on the final frontier

Cover Image
Design by Peggy Frierson using NASA images

Download Soldiers Magazine, October 2008

PDF format, 7.2MB, 36Pages.

Army Astronauts
Story by Heike Hasenauer

JUST as the Army has its “navy,” — something that sounds like a misnomer but isn’t — it has its space, not a prescribed area of land but limitless avenues in the universe that have yet to be charted.

Active-duty and retired Soldiers of NASA’s Astronaut Detachment are among some 90 astronauts (which include members of the other services and civilians) at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, who are today’s space pioneers. As they work to complete construction of the International Space Station, they’re charting new frontiers.

In the not-too-distant future, the ISS will be a home base in space from which space travelers will further explore the universe — the Moon, Mars, Jupiter and beyond, said Astronaut Detachment spokeswoman Lou Moss.

Col. William McArthur Jr. (Ret.) has traveled into space four times, beginning in 1993, and he said each mission was unique. The first time he went up aboard the shuttle Columbia. The crew performed cardiovascular, cardiopulmonary, metabolic and musculoskeletal experiments on themselves and 48 rats to learn more about how spaceflight affects humans and animals.

Besides conducting other experiments, they made contact with school children and amateur radio operators around the world, through the Shuttle Amateur Radio experiment.

On his second mission, McArthur flew aboard Atlantis, which rendezvoused and docked with the Russian Space Station Mir in November 1995. In addition to conducting numerous experiments, the crew attached a permanent docking module to Mir and transferred 1.5 tons of supplies to the space station.

MacArthur’s third trip up, this time aboard Discovery in October 2000, took him to the International Space Station, to attach parts using Discovery’s robotic arm, readying the ISS for its first resident crew.

He performed four spacewalks, logging 13 hours and 16 minutes outside the spacecraft.

The October flight, STS-92, was only the third shuttle flight dedicated to building the ISS at a time when, according to McArthur, “nobody was onboard and no one had visited.”

His September 2005-to-April-2006 mission brought him back to the ISS, this time via the Russian Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

He remained at the station for six months. ...

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