Portugal’s first flag in space
The story goes that the American flag carried in 1969 by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the Moon was handed by a Portuguese woman, from Sosa, Vagos, who was then emigrated to the USA. Maria Isilda Ribeiro, with whom oi talked years ago, sewed a few years old hems, ordered by NASA and those from Annin & Company, New Jersey, were chosen, at least according to the ancient history passed to workers and reported in America and then here, Already in 2009, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Man’s journey to the Moon, NASA had no records of who had made the existence of a flag in the Sea of Tranquility. Isilda, who leaves Portugal in her early 20s, remembered those times: “Again, they are stubborn. I did not embroider the flag, it was stamped”, she said. But the seams on the flag were hers, she confirmed. “Yes, I made them”. She noticed it when The New York Times reported on the factory. «By chance it was also a Portuguese who stamped it, older», I outline then. «It all started at the end of 1968. We started to make special flags, in glass yarn, we only knew they were for experiments».
The cloth cost $5.50 at Annin. He was deluded for half an hour on the Singer machine, which was worth just over 40 cents on the dollar. The fabric already came with the ‘perforated’ to sew. The rush, to enter the lunar surface, cost 75 dollars. An additional stick was selected horizontally to enlarge the panorama. As it would not allow more than 180 degrees centigrade travel, it had to be protected by a steel fiber mortality. It is also known that 12 people were needed to install the flag kit on board the Eagle.
Fast forward to 202: August 4th2 recorded as the day of the cross recorded the first orbital trip of a Portuguese, Mário Ferreira from the first trip to the frontier of the atmosphere, photographs taken by the Douro Azul entrepreneur. A process planned for the time it would have available in zero gravity, almost four minutes. «They have been asking a lot what objects are seen in the black of space, in the last photo I published with the flag, what you see is just the reflection of my arm illuminated by another window, here in this photo you can see the reflection of other windows. As the last one said being in zero gravity, looking for the flag to keep the balance was not easy to find, but it didn’t find but fun social networks. «The camera was a GO Pro 10, I programmed to capture 5 photos followed by each click». The camera was taken at his request, along with other personal effects, which weighed less than 1.5 kg. «Che with so much need for precision, as for precision, to go to zero, to cross the line, to lose the notion that there was a lack of gravity and that of everything that we also quickly lost the notion of time, losing the notion that it was at a gravity distance and the adrenaline is such that we quickly lost track of the time of loss. Arranged with my traveling companion Clint to let me know when we were reaching altitude range so I could capture the moment, and in return I would take a photo, which I did and luckily his photo came out fabulous… »
«Next and according to my plan, then I released the Portuguese flag that I had in my space, a moment went to the window in which it was possible and different with the possibility of researching a difficult between the camera angle, reflections of light and position of my body, as it was capsuled, like photos of different bodies and often white fur or else, when on the opposite side of the sun, like very striking photos and very distinct deep space.»
At Nascer do SOL, in an interview that you can read in this edition, the entrepreneur was commissioned to seamstresses who make the Douro Azul flags, hand-embroidered, 30 centimeters long, to fit in the pocket. When the time came for a release, in zero gravity, she unwrapped herself. She still doesn’t know what fate will give her, but there are “many requests”, she confesses.
The opening of the bottle of vintage Port wine, which for the first time passed the barrier of the atmosphere, is also not scheduled, but the curiosity is a lot.
The owner of TVI, the first Portuguese space tourist aboard Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin mission 22, is for now on the list of the first thousand men to go to space: since the first flight of Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961 , a mission that at the time lasted 108 minutes, today there are more than 600 ‘astronauts’, the vast majority professionals, of which 12 walked on the Moon. The lunar sequel is set for 2025 on NASA’s Artemis III mission.