Voyager 2 launched by a Titan-Centaur rocket.
At 9:32 a.m. EDT, Apollo 11, the first U.S. lunar landing mission,
was launched on a historic journey to the surface of the moon.
After traveling 240,000 miles in 76 hours, Apollo 11 entered into
a lunar orbit on July 19.
The Apollo 11, from left, Neil Armstrong, commander;
Michael Collins, module pilot; Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin,
lunar module pilot.
Pioneer 10, the world’s first outer-planetary probe,was
launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission to
Jupiter, the solar system’s largest planet, on this day
in 1972.
In December 1973, after successfully negotiating the
asteroid belt and a distance of 620 million miles,
Pioneer 10 reached Jupiter and sent back to Earth
the first close-up images of the spectacular gas giant.
In June 1983, the NASA spacecraft left the solar system
and the next day radioed back the first scientific data on
interstellar space. NASA officially ended the Pioneer 10
project on March 31, 1997, with the spacecraft having
traveled a distance of some six billion miles.
Robert Plant is best known as the lead singer and lyricist of the
English rock band Led Zeppelin for all of its existence from 1968
until 1980, when the band broke up following the death of John
Bonham, the band’s drummer. He was inducted with the band
into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.
In 2008, Rolling Stone editors ranked him number 15 on their
list of the 100 best singers of all time. In 2011, Rolling Stone
readers ranked Plant the greatest of all lead singers. In 2006,
Hit Parader magazine named Plant the "Greatest Metal Vocalist
of All Time".
In 2009, Plant was voted "the greatest voice in rock" in a poll
conducted by Planet Rock. Plant is 74 years old today.