pale blue dot
On July 5, 1966, the first Apollo orbital mission, AS-203 was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida. It was an uncrewed flight of the vehicle’s second stage, the S-IVB stage (it was the 3rd stage of Saturn V, which carried humans to the Moon), to test it under orbital conditions and to obtain flight …
Continue reading “AS-203, the first Apollo orbital mission was launched on July 5, 1966”
NASA’s robotic spacecraft Mars Pathfinder landed on Mars on July 4, 1997. It was carrying a small rover named Sojourner and with that landing, Sojourner became the first operational rover on another planet.
On July 2, 1990, European Space Agency’s (ESA) Giotto spacecraft performed the first-ever earth gravity-assisted maneuver to be retargeted for its destination, Comet P/Grigg-Skjellerup.
NASA’s Cassini space probe entered Saturn’s orbit on July 1, 2004, and became the first spacecraft to orbit the ringed planet.
On June 30, 1908, at about 7:14 A.M., around the Tunguska River, a gigantic fireball devastated hundreds of square kilometers of uninhabited Siberian forest. It was about a ~12 megaton explosion, which means the blast was around 800 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
On June 29, 1971, after completing its record-breaking 20th day in orbit, the crew of Soyuz 11, Georgy T. Dobrovolski (Commander), Viktor I. Patsayev, and Vladislav N. Volkov departed from the Salyut 1 space station, the first space station in the history of space exploration, on June 29, 1971. Unfortunately, the mission ended in disaster …
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On June 27, 1972, Atari Inc. was founded in Sunnyvale, California by American businessman and electrical engineer Nolan Bushnell (born February 5, 1943) and American electrical engineer Ted Dabney (May 2, 1937 – May 26, 2018). One the most recognized and celebrated brands in the world, the company is a pioneer in arcade games, home …
On June 22, 1978, Pluto’s moon Charon was discovered by United States Naval Observatory astronomer James Christy (born September 15, 1938).
On June 21, 1948, Manchester Baby, the world’s first electronic stored-program computer ran its first program.
On June 20, 1944, a German A-4/V-2 rocket became the first human-made object to travel into space by crossing the Kármán line with the vertical launch of MW 18014, attaining an apogee of 176 kilometers (109.3 miles). The Kármán line commonly represents the boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. It lies at an altitude of 100 kilometers (62 …
