This Day in Spaceflight History

[munlander1]

13 minutes ago, The Raging Sandwich said:

Yep, I enjoy learning everyday myself through this.

How you research this stuff?

[The Raging Sandwich]

8 hours ago, munlander1 said:

How you research this stuff?

Through various websites.

[The Raging Sandwich]

January 17

1969: Soyuz 4 and its crew of 3 landed back at Earth after a mission into orbit. 

1997: Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto, died. He was cremated and now his ashes are on board the New Horizons spacecraft which flew by Pluto and now is heading to Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69.

2002: The Galileo spacecraft did a flyby of Jupiter's moon Io.

Edited January 17, 2017 by The Raging Sandwich
Thanks TheEpicSquared

[TheEpicSquared]

@The Raging Sandwich Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto, died on 17 January 1997.

[The Raging Sandwich]

9 hours ago, TheEpicSquared said:

@The Raging Sandwich Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto, died on 17 January 1997.

Thanks.

[NSEP]

22 hours ago, The Raging Sandwich said:

1997: Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto, died. He was cremated and now his ashes are on board the New Horizons spacecraft which flew by Pluto and now is heading to Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69.

 

This bassicly means that a human has been to Pluto right? Just his remains.

[munlander1]

36 minutes ago, NSEP said:

This bassicly means that a human has been to Pluto right? Just his remains.

Well Shoemaker's remains were sent to the moon so you would have to argue that  he had been the the moon.

[The Raging Sandwich]

1 hour ago, munlander1 said:

Well Shoemaker's remains were sent to the moon so you would have to argue that  he had been the the moon.

But other people went to the Moon, too.

[The Raging Sandwich]

January 18

1917: Vasili Mishin, the Soviet Chief Designer after the death of Sergei Korolev, was born. He was replaced by Glushko after various failures in all the programs he managed.

1966: Sergei Korolev's urn was placed in the Kremlin Wall after his death.

1969: Soyuz 5 and its one crewmember landed back at Earth. (I stand corrected now that only one crewmember of Soyuz 5 transferred to Soyuz 4. I'll change that.) It was the most unbearable reentry anyone had ever faced. The SM of the Soyuz did not jettison and remained on the spacecraft throughout the reentry. To keep the spacecraft stable, it was positioned nose-first instead of the normal heatshield-first. The connector of the Landing Module and the SM burned off, detaching the SM and the capsule righted itself. The soft-landing rockets failed to fire causing the landing to be quite hard, causing the crewmember to break his teeth.

1986: STS-61-C and its crew of 7 landed back at Earth after a mission into orbit.

[munlander1]

3 hours ago, The Raging Sandwich said:

But other people went to the Moon, too.

Yes, but Shoemaker was buried on the moon.

[DerekL1963]

10 hours ago, The Raging Sandwich said:

January 18

1969: Soyuz 5 and its one crewmember landed back at Earth. (I stand corrected now that only one crewmember of Soyuz 5 transferred to Soyuz 4. I'll change that.) It was the most unbearable reentry anyone had ever faced. The SM of the Soyuz did not jettison and remained on the spacecraft throughout the reentry. To keep the spacecraft stable, it was positioned nose-first instead of the normal heatshield-first. The connector of the Landing Module and the SM burned off, detaching the SM and the capsule righted itself. The soft-landing rockets failed to fire causing the landing to be quite hard, causing the crewmember to break his teeth.

 

IIRC, it wasn't deliberately flown nose first, rather nose first was the natural stable orientation.  Either way, Soyuz has quite the track record when it comes to 'sporty' reentries.

[The Raging Sandwich]

January 19

1965: Gemini 2, the second and final unmanned test of the Gemini spacecraft, was launched on a suborbital trajectory.

1980: Saturn's moon Janus was discovered by Voyager 1 during its second interplanetary flyby.

1993: STS-54 and its crew of 5 landed back at Earth after a mission into orbit.

2006: The New Horizon's spacecraft was launched. It became one of the fastest spacecraft ever launched to be able to make it to its destination of Pluto in time. It flew by Jupiter in February of 2007 for a gravity assist towards Pluto.

 

January 20

1930: Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin was born. He went to fly on Gemini 12 and the historic Apollo 11 mission where he became the second man on the Moon. 

1953: Dwight D. Eisenhower, the US President who approved NASA as a government organization, was inaugurated.

1978: The first ever Progress cargo delivery vehicle was launched into orbit to the Salyut 6 space station. It delivered fuel, food, and other materials. It docked to the station on January 22. It stayed docked to the station for 14 days until undocking and burning up in the atmosphere.

Note: Picture not of Progress 1

1986: Astronomer Rich Terrile discovered Uranus' moons Cordelia and Ophelia.

1990: STS-32 and its crew of 5 landed back at Earth after a mission into orbit.

1996: STS-72 and its crew of 7 landed back at Earth after a mission into orbit.

[The Raging Sandwich]

January 21

1959: The first test of the Thor-Agena launch combination was conducted.

1960: Mercury LJ-1B was launched. It was a retry of Mercury Little-Joe 1 where the LES fired 30 minutes before the actual test. This time a rhesus monkey, Miss Sam, was aboard. The test was successful and Miss Sam was in good condition.

 

January 22

1968: Apollo 5, an unmanned LM test on a Saturn 1B, was launched. It was to test structure, propulsion, and staging of the LM along with the performance of the S-1VB stage.

1992: STS-42 and its crew of 7 launched into orbit on an 8 day mission.

1997: STS-81 and its crew of 7 landed back at Earth after a mission to the Mir space station.

2003: The last transmission was received from Pioneer 10, 82 AU or 12.3 billion kilometers away from Earth at that point. The signal took over 11 hours to reach Earth. At the rate it was going, it would reach the star Aldebaran in 2 million years.

 

January 23

1941: The Glenn Research Center was founded.

1986: Astronomer Brad Smith discovered Uranus' moon Bianca.

More coming later today!

[The Raging Sandwich]

January 23, cont.

1998: STS-89 and its crew of 7 launched into orbit on an 8 day mission to the Mir space station. It docked to the station on January 24. It delivered experiments and a Spacehab module to the station.

[The Raging Sandwich]

January 24

1985: STS-51-C and its crew of 5 was launched into orbit on a 3 day mission. It deployed USA 8, a US surveillance satellite. The Magnum propulsion stage on the satellite boosted it to geostationary orbit.

1986: Voyager 2 began its flyby of Uranus.

1993: Soyuz TM-16 and its crew of 2 was launched into orbit on a mission to the Mir space station. 

2000: The Dhofar 019 Mars meteorite was discovered in Libya.

 

 

January 25

1964: The first joint US/USSR mission Echo 2 was launched by balloon. It was a test of weather and communications systems.

1994: The Clementine 1 satellite was launched. It conducted two Earth flybys and inserted itself into lunar orbit. After three months of mapping the surface, it burned out of the Moon. Upon doing so, the spacecraft suffered a systems failure causing it to burn up all its fuel and go into an uncontrollable spin, causing its planned flyby of near-Earth asteroid Geographos to be impossible.

1995: The Chinese Apstar 2 and Optus satellites were launched. The rocket couldn't handle the horizontal winds from the surrounding mountains, causing the nose fairing to collapse, sending the whole rocket into a fireball of falling debris that killed up to 120 people.

 <Best image I could get, sorry.

2004: The Mars rover Opportunity successfully landed on Mars.

[The Raging Sandwich]

January 26

1902: The first American to fly a jet plane, Laurence Gragie, was born. He flew the XP-59 in WWII. After, he was the director of Air Force R&D programs. He was then the Air Force deputy chief of staff until retirement.

1962: Ranger 3 was launched. It was an unmanned lunar lander. It missed the Moon by almost 40,000 km. The booster guidance system malfunctioned, making the rocket burn longer than it was supposed to, therefore missing the Moon and going into solar orbit. A loss of telemetry meant a mid-course correction was not possible.

1980: Voyager 1 discovered Saturn's moon Epimetheus.

[The Raging Sandwich]

January 27

1908: British astronomer Philibert Melotte discovered Jupiter's moon Pasiphae.

 

1962: Mercury-Atlas 6, or Mercury MA-6, was postponed due to weather conditions just 30 minutes before scheduled takeoff. It was to launch astronaut John Glenn into three Earth orbits. It was ultimately postponed until February 20.

1967: The Space Law Treaty was passed. It was a treaty signed by 62 nations and ratified by the US, the Soviet Union, the UK, and two others that limited military use of space and celestial bodies outside of Earth.

1967: A routine launchpad test with Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee was to take place. Designated Apollo 204 and Apollo 1 later, the capsule caught fire probably due to a spark made by a frayed wire. Crews both outside and inside the capsule tried desperately to open the advanced hatch, but the 3 astronauts could not be saved, all dying in the fire.

1985: STS-51-C and its crew of 5 landed back at Earth.

[The Raging Sandwich]

January 28

1986: STS-51-L Challenger and its crew of 7 was launched from Cape Canaveral. It carried with it the Spartan-Halley and TDRS B. In its crew was the first teacher astronaut Sharon McAuliffe. 73 seconds after launch, the shuttle exploded in a massive fireball, seen from miles away. Some of the astronauts died in the explosion, others died when they hit the water. A leak in the solid rocket booster lead to it spewing hot gasses on the main propellant tank, causing the explosion. All 7 crewmembers died.

 

January 29

1998: Soyuz TM-27 and its crew of 3 was launched on a mission to the Mir space station. It docked to the station on January 31.

[The Raging Sandwich]

January 30

1934: A crew testing survivability in high-altitude environments was launched in a cabin by a giant balloon. They were launched up to 13 miles in the air when heavy ice began to cover the cabin, tearing it loose from the balloon and they crashed back at the ground.

1962: Mercury MA-6, John Glenn's orbital flight, was postponed again due to the spacecraft's technical difficulties.

1964: Ranger 6 was launched. It was to impact the Moon. It impacted on February 2 but no TV footage was obtained.

1992: STS-42 and its crew of 7 landed back at Earth.

2013: STSat-2C, South Korea's first satellite they built and launched by themselves, was put into orbit.

[Nothalogh]

On 1/18/2017 at 6:27 PM, DerekL1963 said:

Soyuz has quite the track record when it comes to 'sporty' reentries

You could just shorten that to

Quote

Soyuz has quite the track record

We may like to make fun of the Russians for their design mentality, but the R-7 system is a testament to engineering mastery.

Korolev was a damned wizard, and we are all in debt to such a man

[munlander1]

13 hours ago, The Raging Sandwich said:

A crew testing survivability in high-altitude environments was launched in a cabin by a giant balloon. They were launched up to 13 miles in the air when heavy ice began to cover the cabin, tearing it loose from the balloon and they crashed back at the ground.

Was it fatal?

[DerekL1963]

34 minutes ago, Nothalogh said:

We may like to make fun of the Russians for their design mentality, but the R-7 system is a testament to engineering mastery.

Not really, no.  It's track record isn't noticeably different from any other mature booster.  In fact, counting both Challenger and Columbia as launch accidents - the STS has a slightly better record (.98) than Soyuz (.97)!

Besides which, I was talking about the Soyuz capsule, not the booster.

[The Raging Sandwich]

49 minutes ago, munlander1 said:

Was it fatal?

Sadly.

[munlander1]

Just now, The Raging Sandwich said:

Sadly.

How many?

[The Raging Sandwich]

1 minute ago, munlander1 said:

How many?

Three I think.