Reservists make history, again, in Mongolia Published Sept. 20, 2011 By Master Sgt. Linda Welz 452 AMW Public Affairs MARCH AIR RESERVE BASE, Calif. -- There was no beeping noise as the pickup truck backed up to the large cargo jet; it was just a Mongolian driver and a U.S. Air Force Reserve loadmaster using hand signals to communicate. Delta II rocket debris had fallen out of space in August of last year and crash landed in Mongolia. The mission was to collect the debris--a second-stage fuel tank and two hydrogen spheres--and return them to the Space and Missile Systems Center at Los Angeles Air Force Base, Calif. As if out of the pages of a science fiction book, the return of the rocket parts to Earth was reported to authorities within hours and that started the wheels in motion for recovery of the debris, as required in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and the Rescue and Return Treaty of 1968. One year after the debris fell into Mongolia, the harsh winter submitted to the country's three months of fair weather, which would enable a military cargo aircraft to land without fear of getting ice on its wings. (The Chinggis Khaan International Airport in Mongolia's capitol of Ulaanbaatar is not equipped to handle the de-icing.) The 729th Airlift Squadron from March Air Reserve Base, Calif., received the recovery mission assignment earlier this summer. The 15-person crew began forming and planning after a request from the Space and Missile Systems Center came in. Team March consisted of three pilots, four loadmasters, two aerial porters and, just to be safe, a six-person maintenance crew with a pallet of spare parts and equipment for the C-17 Globemaster III. Master Sgt. Lance Augustine, 729 AS loadmaster, said he wanted to fly this mission because it was something different. It would be the first time he had ever hauled satellite parts. "Most cargo is already weighed, certified and secured on a pallet," Augustine said. "But, here we only had a rough idea of what we were getting, so we had to use the skills we learned over the years to get the job done." One of those skills was to bring pallets, netting and dunnage on the mission that would help stabilize the sight-unseen cargo. Another skill-set necessary for the trip belonged to the pilots, who not only had to arrange for diplomatic clearances through South Korea and Mongolia before the trip, but encountered a communications challenge while in-flight over China. "The radios were antiquated and air traffic control had unusual methods," said Capt. Averie Payton, the mission's aircraft commander. "They were not responding to our calls and the timing was suspicious during that one to two hour portion of the flight. We were concerned." Landing in Mongolia was another challenge according to Payton. "The (air traffic control) instrument procedure was very non-standard and it required intense study of the terrain and the approach," he said. "You are surrounded by mountains and on a two and a half percent slope. There is only one way in and one way out." Payton said even with the reverse thrusters on, the jet was gaining speed. In spite of it all, the landing was smooth and without incident, thanks to the professionalism and training of the aircrew, he added. Upon arrival at the only international airport in the country, the crew had their first look at the space debris they had traveled 5,500 miles to pick up. The debris was already loaded into the back of a small pickup truck, a task that had been accomplished by hand since it wasn't palletized and there wasn't a forklift available. "I was a little underwhelmed," said Payton. "It looked like half of a barbeque container and two metal balls, like buoys. I thought it would be more than what it was." Appearing weathered, damaged and old, the largest of the three parts was the rocket booster, a 480-pound piece of rusty metal the size of a Smart Car, which had been flattened on one side from the impact. Tech. Sgt. John Lowe, 50th Aerial Port Squadron, weighed and measured it along with two separate metallic balls, one the size of a large beach ball and the other a large exercise ball. With other crewmembers, Lowe discussed ideas on how to best get all of it loaded onto the C-17. Lowe carried the two smaller pieces, 20 and 60 pounds, respectively, to the jet first where they were palletized by the crew. Tech. Sgt. Ronald Dunn, 729 AS loadmaster, then directed the driver of the truck as the driver backed his vehicle up to the jet's ramp. "Despite the language barrier, the driver picked up on my hand signals pretty quickly," said Dunn. "I think it went pretty smooth." It took several of the crew members to lift the rocket booster, by hand, out of the truck and onto the pallet on the jet. Once in place, the joint inspection team, responsible for supervising and inspecting the pallet buildup, secured it. "We figured a chain gate would work fine," said Dunn. "It wobbled a bit, so we used dunnage underneath." THE FIRST TRIP TO MONGOLIA The Air Force Reserve's first mission to Mongolia was the opposite of the space debris recovery mission in many ways. First, it was a delivery mission and not a recovery. It was to uncharted territory, rather than to an established international airport. There was no American Embassy to assist with documents and interpreters. The crew was from the 730th Airlift Squadron, a Reserve unit from Norton Air Force Base. On July 22, 1991, pilots landed a C-141 Starlifter in the remote central Asian country, landlocked by Russia and China. They were delivering nearly 20 tons of medical supplies to the Mongolian citizens, who were experiencing a severe shortage as a result of their first free elections and transition to a free market economy the year before. With the absence of forklifts and K-loaders to remove entire pallets of cargo at a time, the Reserve crew worked with more than 100 Mongolian clinic volunteers who broke down the pallets and individually hoisted 500-pound boxes into dated, oversized, wooden-sided Russian pickup trucks they had backed up to the rear of the plane. "Only one person spoke English out of the whole group [of Mongolians]," recalled Senior Master Sgt. Lonnie Kimball, 729 AS loadmaster. Kimball, who went on that first mission as a 730 AS loadmaster, said there were Russian helicopters and planes there and it looked like an old Russian air base turned into a civilian airport. "From the air [Mongolia] looked like Montana with rolling hills and lots of grass," said Kimball. "We saw the great wall of China from the air. It was awesome because you could see it in the distance, as far as you could see, from both sides." The crew Kimball flew with used photocopies of civilian airliner charts to guide them across the Chinese airways, since Defense Department charts covering the area were not yet available. They also had to convert their altitude measurements from feet to meters and their fuel measurements from pounds to liters. When the aircraft refueled, the pilot paid the bill with some of the $20,000 in cash he carried from the U.S., because the usual credit arrangements were not yet in place between the two countries. During the mission twenty years later, pickup trucks, hand signals and volunteers were still the method used for loading and unloading U.S. military cargo planes there. Although Mongolia has survived as a democracy since their independence, the old Russian helicopters and planes still sit on the airport property as ghosts of days long gone. SPACE DEBRIS Nick Previsich retired from the 452nd Maintenance Squadron's Avionics section in June 2008 and is now the lead logistic manager for special assignment airlift missions at the Space and Missile Systems Center. He said the Air Force tracks all all space debris to try to determine what will re-enter the atmosphere and where it will land. "Our space debris lands on a recoverable area only two or three times a decade," the former Air Force reservist said. "Most of the earth is made up of water." He said the last debris to come out of orbit ended up in a remote area of Antarctica and that Mongolia was the first recoverable location any debris had landed since he began his position in 2006. A C-17 from the 729 AS will be flying to Uruguay for another space debris retrieval mission later this month. Keep up with what's going on at March through the base website, Twitter and Facebook.