This Day in Spaceflight History

[The Raging Sandwich]

May 25

1961: President Kennedy called for a manned landing on the Moon and a return to Earth in a message to Congress. 

1964: Ivan Bella, the first Slovak cosmonaut, was born. He flew on Mir Stefanik. 

1973: Skylab 2 and its crew of Charles Conrad, Joseph Kerwin, and Paul Weitz was launched on a repair mission of the Skylab 1 space station. After rendezvousing with the station, a fly-around was conducted to assess the damage. The solar wing 2 was completely missing and the solar wing 1 was just slightly deployed. The CSM docked to the station to plan activities. An hour later, it undocked for an EVA to fully deploy solar wing 1, which failed. On attempt to redock to the station, it took 8 attempts before docking was achieved. EVAs would later be held to fix solar wing 1 and to deploy a solar shield in place of the lost meteoroid shield, which brought the temperatures down in the station.

2001: The Galileo spacecraft did a flyby of Callisto.

2008: The Phoenix lander landed in the Mars polar region of Vastitas Borealis.

 

[The Raging Sandwich]

May 26

1951: Astronaut Sally Ride was born. She flew on STS-7 and STS-41-G. Spaceflight achievement was being the first American woman in space.

1951: Cosmonaut Mohammed Faris was born. He flew on Mir EP-1. Spaceflight achievement was being the first Syrian in space.

1961: The Freedom 7 spacecraft in which Alan Shepard flew in on a suborbital flight was displayed at the Paris Air Show.

1969: Apollo 10 and its crew landed back in the Pacific after a mission to the Moon.

1973: Skylab 2 performed its first EVA in which Paul Weitz attempted to free a jammed solar wing. It was the first and failed attempt to do so.

1980: Soyuz 36 and its crew of 2 launched into orbit on a mission to the Salyut 6.

1981: Soyuz T-4 and its crew of 2 landed back at Earth.

1991: Soyuz TM-11 and its crew of 3 landed back at Earth. 

[The Raging Sandwich]

Oh boy I've got a lot of catching up to do.

May 27

1962: Astronaut Scott Carpenter and Walter Williams were awarded the NASA Distinguished Service Medal.

1969: Development of a lunar roving vehicle for use on Apollo lunar landing missions was authorized.

1999: STS-96 and its crew of 7 was launched into orbit on a 10-day mission. It delivered supplies to the interior and exterior of the ISS.

2009: Soyuz TMA-15 and its crew of 3 launched into orbit on a mission to the ISS.

 

May 28

1959: A quick-release explosive hatch was designed for the Mercury spacecraft.

1971: The Russian Mars 3 was launched. It carried with it a French experiment called Spectrum 1 on its way to Mars orbit. Before the orbital insertion, the lander COSPAR 1971-049F was released and made a soft-landing on Mars. The spacecraft entered an 11-day inclined orbit.

2013: Soyuz TMA-09M and its crew of 3 was launched to the ISS.

2014: Soyuz TMA-13M and its crew of 3 launched to the ISS.

 

May 29

1897: Johannes Winkler was born. He launched the first liquid-fuel rocket from Europe on February 21, 1931.

1961: 30-day centrifuge training was conducted for the Mercury-Atlas flights.

1974: Luna 22 was launched. It was a lunar orbiter for imaging the surface, studying the magnetic field, and studying gamma ray emissions from the surface.

1996: STS-77 and its crew of 6 landed back at Earth.

2000: STS-101 and its crew of 7 landed back at Earth.

 

May 30

1934: Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov was born. He flew on Voskhod 2 and Soyuz-ASTP. He became the first man to do an EVA in space on Voskhod 2 and flew in the first US/USSR mission. He was a good candidate for a circumlunar or landing flight on the Moon before the Soviet Moon program was cancelled.

1966: Surveyor 1 was launched on the first operational Atlas/Centaur booster. It was the first in the Surveyor series which would develop soft-landing techniques on the Moon. It made the first successful US soft-landing on the Moon when it landed on June 2. It took a little over 11,150 clear photos of the Moon's surface.

1971: Mariner 9 was launched. It was the first spacecraft to orbit another planet. It was supposed to be a combined mission with Mariner 8. The failed launch of Mariner 8 prompted 9 to take up both mission objectives. It arrived at Mars on November 14. It mapped the surface of Mars for Mariner 8 but was delayed to a dust storm which had picked up in September. It also measured data about the atmosphere and surface.

 

May 31

1975: The European Space Agency (ESA) was founded.

1998: The Galileo spacecraft did a flyby of the moon Europa.

2008: STS-124 and its crew of 7 launched into orbit on a 14-day mission. It delivered the Japanese Kibo module to the ISS, the main component of the Japanese portion of the station. It docked to the ISS on June 2. Kibo was attached to the station on June 4. The shuttle undocked from the station on the 11th and landed on the 14th. 

[cubinator]

I thought this was dead! And I thought the Doctor was dead too!

[The Raging Sandwich]

Have I got news for you

[The Raging Sandwich]

June 1

1921: Robert Goddard starts experimenting with liquid rockets under a grant from Clark University. 

1928: Cosmonaut Georgiy Dobrovolsky was born. He flew on Soyuz 11 where he was in the first crew to stay in a space station but died while landing.

1937: Theodore von Karman founded the Cal Tech Rocket Research Project, the forerunner of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

1949: The Redstone Arsenal was selected for rocket research.

1959: The contractors for the Dyna-Soar were selected to be Boeing for the spacecraft and Martin Company for the launcher.

1961: The Soviet Moon program was given a go-ahead to start in response to the US's start. A booster for a circumlunar flight was to be designed.

1966: The Gemini 9 Atlas/Augmented Target Docking Adapter (ATDA) was launched. It was the backup for 9's Agena Target Vehicle. Gemini 9 was postponed for 2 days after its planned launch. An anomaly was reported after launch of the target. Only after Gemini 9 rendezvoused with it did it reveal that the payload fairings had failed to deploy all the way.

1970: Soyuz 9 and its crew of 2 was launched into orbit on an 18-day flight. Experiments in a long orbital flight came inconclusive due to slow sun-orientating rotation to keep the cosmonauts from being sick.

1971: The decision was made for the shuttle to be a partially reusable orbiter with external fuel tank.

 

[The Raging Sandwich]

June 2

1930: Charles "Pete" Conrad Jr. was born. He flew on Gemini 5 and 11, Apollo 12, and Skylab 2. He became the third man to step on the Moon on Apollo 12. 

 

1957: The Manhigh I balloon flew to 97,000 feet with Joseph Kittinger aboard.

1978: Yi So-yeon was born. She was the first Korean in space and flew on ISS Expedition 14.

1983: Venera 15 was launched in a joint mission with Venera 16 to map Venus. Both were inserted into a polar orbit just one day apart from another.

1998: STS-91 and its crew of 6 was launched into orbit on a 10-day mission. It was the final Shuttle-Mir mission. It recovered US astronaut Andy Thomas from the station and took Russian space chief Valeri Ryumin to the station for inspection. 

2003: Mars Express, the ESA's first Mars spacecraft, was launched. It carried with it the Beagle 2 which failed to land successfully. 

 

June 3

1965: Gemini 4 and its crew of Jim McDivitt and Ed White was launched into orbit on a 4-day mission. It was the second manned mission in the Gemini program. The planned stationkeeping exercise was scrapped. 4 and a half hours into the flight, Ed White stepped out of the spacecraft to conduct America's first Extravehicular Activity (EVA). He floated around connected by a tether for 20 minutes with a maneuvering gun. Computer problems caused the capsule to have to come in at a different trajectory when landing. 

1966: Gemini 9 and its crew of Gene Cernan and Tom Stafford was launched into orbit on a 3-day mission. They tested 3 different types of rendezvous with the Gemini ATDA. Docking was to be attempted but the ATDA docking shroud had not deployed correctly. Cernan attempted an EVA to fly the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) on the back of the ship. Heat loads, exhaustion, his visor fogging up, and the lack of handholds on the spacecraft led to the EVA almost ending in disaster. 

1977: Cosmonaut Aleksandr Lysenko died in an aircraft crash. He was a proposed Buran shuttle cosmonaut.

1980: Soyuz 35 and its crew of 2 landed back at Earth.

[The Raging Sandwich]

June 4

2010: SpaceX's Falcon 9 commerical booster was first launched.

 

June 5

1919: James Fletcher was born. He was the NASA Administrator from 1971-1977 and 1986-1989.

1927: Johannes Winkler formed The Society for Space Travel, or VfR, the first society for space travel. Early European space pioneers like Hermann Oberth and Walter Hohmann would come to join the group.

1966: Gene Cernan attempted an EVA on Gemini 9. The planned test of the MMU was cancelled after Cernan became fatigued, hot, and his visor got fogged over to where he couldn't see.

1980: Soyuz T-2 and its crew of 2 launched into orbit on a 4-day mission. It was a test flight of the new Soyuz-T spacecraft where they docked with Salyut 6.

1991: STS-40 and its crew of 7 launched into orbit on a 9-day mission. It carried the Spacelab module in the payload bay for the duration of the flight for the crew to conduct experiments in.

2002: STS-111 and its crew of 7 launched into orbit on a 14-day mission. The launch was delayed 5 times from May 2. It switched out the Expedition 4/5 crews and delivered the MBS Mobile Base System, exterior equipment racks, and the Leonardo MPLM module.

2004: Ronald Reagan, the US President from 1981-'89, died. He initiated the "Star Wars" program and overwhelmed the Soviet Union with a vast aerospace buildup that helped it collapse.

[The Raging Sandwich]

June 6

1932: David Scott was born. He flew on Gemini 8, Apollo 9, and Apollo 15. He flew with Neil Armstrong on Gemini 8 to become the first crew to dock in space. He became the 7th man to walk on the Moon on Apollo 15 and the first to drive the lunar rover.

1966: Gemini 9 and its crew of Gene Cernan and Tom Stafford landed back at Earth.

1967: Astronaut Edward Givens Jr. died in a car accident. He was selected in 1966 to be an astronaut but never flew into space.

1971: Soyuz 11 and its crew of 3 launched into orbit on a 24-day mission. It was the first manned mission to a space station, Salyut 1. The flight would be cut short a couple of days before a fatal reentry.

1979: Soyuz 34 was launched into orbit. It was an unmanned mission to Salyut 6 for a return vehicle for the Soyuz 32 crew after Soyuz 33's propulsion system failure.

1985: Soyuz T-13 and its crew of 2 launched into orbit on a mission to Salyut 7.

1999: STS-96 and its crew of 7 landed back at Earth.

 

June 7

1962: Wernher von Braun recommended to the NASA Office of Manned Spaceflight that a lunar orbit rendezvous method be used for Apollo lunar landing missions.

1965: Gemini 4 and its crew of Jim McDivitt and Ed White landed back at Earth. It landed 40 miles away from its target site after a guidance computer failure.

1971: Soyuz 11 docked automatically with Salyut 1.

1973: The Skylab 2 crew conducted an EVA to release a jammed solar panel.

1983: Venera 16 was launched. It was a joint mission with Venera 15. Both entered Venus orbit 4 degrees apart to map the surface.

1988: Soyuz TM-5 and its Soviet/Bulgarian crew of 3 launched into orbit on a mission to Mir. It docked to the station on June 9.

2011: Soyuz TMA-02M and its crew of 3 launched into orbit on a mission to the ISS. It docked to the station on June 9.

[The Raging Sandwich]

June 8

1937: Bruce McCandless II was born. He was an astronaut from 1966 to 1990. He flew on STS-41-B and STS-31. He flew an MMU on 41-B to do the first untethered spacewalk. 

1961: A rocket belt made by Bell Aerosystems was demonstrated publicly for the first time by Harold Graham.

1965: Luna 6 was launched. It was an attempted landing mission but missed the Moon entirely after it accidentally fired all its fuel at one time during a mid-course correction on June 9.

1975: Venera 9 was launched. It was an orbiter/lander mission. After achieving orbit, the lander separated from the orbiter on October 20. A successful landing was achieved on the 22nd.

2007: STS-117 and its crew of 7 launched into orbit on a 14-day mission to the ISS. It delivered two truss segments. 4 spacewalks were conducted. Astronaut Clayton Anderson transferred for a stay on the station and Suni Williams returned to Earth in his place.

 

[CatastrophicFailure]

On 7/11/2017 at 9:20 AM, The Raging Sandwich said:

 

 

Dat Saturn V in the background doe! For me at least, it's always a bit of a mental shift to realize both the programs were running concurrently to an extent. 

 

Also, I wonder if a date is going to come along, the such&such of such&such, when the only entry will be "nothing interesting ever happened on this day, forget it exists." Pretty impressed you're finding so much to fill all of these!

[cubinator]

4 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Also, I wonder if a date is going to come along, the such&such of such&such, when the only entry will be "nothing interesting ever happened on this day, forget it exists." Pretty impressed you're finding so much to fill all of these!

Haven't there already been a few of those?

[CatastrophicFailure]

6 hours ago, cubinator said:

Haven't there already been a few of those?

No ones ever accused me of being able to count. 

[The Raging Sandwich]

15 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Also, I wonder if a date is going to come along, the such&such of such&such, when the only entry will be "nothing interesting ever happened on this day, forget it exists." Pretty impressed you're finding so much to fill all of these!

 

15 hours ago, cubinator said:

Haven't there already been a few of those?

There's only been one that I remember

[The Raging Sandwich]

June 9

1980: Soyuz T-2 and its crew of 2 landed back at Earth.

 

June 10

1929: James McDivitt was born. He flew on Gemini 4 and Apollo 9.

1969: The Air Force's Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) program was cancelled.

1995: The Spektr module was docked to the Mir space station.

2003: The Mars Spirit rover was launched. It would land on Mars on January 3, 2004.

 

June 11

1928: A German rocket glider was flown by Freidrich Stamer. Booster rockets would launch it from its launch rail and another rocket would keep it in flight after takeoff.

1976: The design for the Soviet space shuttle Buran was selected.

1985: The Vega 1 balloon entered Venus' atmosphere.

1986: Chesley Bonestell died. He was the illustrator of many of Wernher von Braun's space ideas.

2013: Shenzhou 10 and its crew of 3 was launched into orbit on a 15-day flight. It docked to the Tiangong-1 station on June 13, did a redocking exercise on June 23, and landed on June 26.

 

June 12

1963: NASA Administrator James Webb ruled out Mercury MA-10, a second 1-day flight of the Mercury spacecraft.

1967: Venera 4 was launched. It was a Venus atmospheric probe. The descent craft entered the atmosphere on October 18 and sent signals to Earth.

1998: STS-91 and its crew of 7 landed back at Earth.

 

June 13

1944: The first attacks of the German V-1 were used against London. 4 of 11 launched hit the city.

1962: A recoverable meteoroid experiment utilizing the Mercury spacecraft was proposed by the Manned Spacecraft Center. A sheet of aluminum would be extended from the spacecraft for 2 weeks, gather orbital meteoroids, and recover them from inside the capsule.

1970: The Apollo 13 Review Board published the result of their investigation into the Apollo 13 accident. A heating element in the fuel cell liquid oxygen tank had burnt off its insulation resulting in an explosion.

1993: Donald Slayton died. He was chosen in the original Mercury 7 astronauts. He was grounded for medical reasons but was assigned astronaut commander, assigning crews to missions. He later flew on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP).

[The Raging Sandwich]

June 14

1963: Vostok 5 and its crew of Valeri Bykovsky was launched into orbit after numerous setbacks from the rocket and the spacecraft. It entered orbit lower than expected. It was a joint flight with Vostok 6 piloted by Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space. Vostok 5 returned early and landed June 19, the same day as Vostok 6.

1967: Mariner 5 was launched. It flew by Venus on October 19. 

1975: Venera 10 was launched. It entered Venus orbit and separated the lander on October 23, landing 2 days later.

1985: Vega 2's balloon entered Venus' atmosphere

1991: STS-40 and its crew of 7 landed back at Earth.

2008: STS-124 and its crew of 7 landed back at Earth.

2010: Ukrainian cosmonaut Leonid Kizim died. He flew on Salyut 6 Expedition 5, Salyut 7 Expedition 3, and Mir Expedition 1. He was part of the first crew to ever fly between two different space stations in one mission and spent over a year in space (374 days).

[Spaceception]

I realized this thread will be ending in a couple days.

Wow.

[_Augustus_]

43 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

I realized this thread will be ending in a couple days.

Why, and how do you know that?

[Bottle Rocketeer 500]

@The Raging Sandwich You forgot that today is the second anniversary of New Horizons's Pluto flyby.

[Spaceception]

18 minutes ago, _Augustus_ said:

Why, and how do you know that?

Sometime on this thread a while back, I believe @The Raging Sandwich said that on the 1 year anniversary, this thread wouldn't be updated anymore.And since that's a couple days away

Edited July 14, 2017 by Spaceception

[The Raging Sandwich]

On 7/14/2017 at 3:55 PM, Spaceception said:

Sometime on this thread a while back, I believe @The Raging Sandwich said that on the 1 year anniversary, this thread wouldn't be updated anymore.And since that's a couple days away

It probably will, just haven't figured out what I'll do with it. And I'm still working on going all the way through July 15th, and that won't even be done today.

[The Raging Sandwich]

Well this died

(I'll bring it back)

[Teilnehmer]

Today is the half-century anniversary of Apollo 8, the first manned flight to the Moon.

 

[PakledHostage]

13 hours ago, Teilnehmer said:

Today is the half-century anniversary of Apollo 8, the first manned flight to the Moon.

Mission timeline is here: 

https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_08i_Timeline.htm

TLI burn happened at 15:41 UTC (about 25 minutes from now, as of this writing)

[IonStorm]

19 hours ago, Teilnehmer said:

Today is the half-century anniversary of Apollo 8, the first manned flight to the Moon.

The event in the photo is visualized in a new 4k version of the video released 5 years ago.