CAMILLE
BOHANNON
On this day in 1977, Voyager 2 was launched by NASA from a
spaceport in Cape Canaveral, Florida with a Titan IIIE / Centaur
rocket . The spacecraft was carrying a copper phonograph
record containing greetings in dozens of languages and
samples of music (below).
Singer Robert Anthony Plant is 71 today.
Led Zepplin reunited for a show at London’s O2 arena, 2007.
Explorer 6
From the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida, the U.S.
unmanned spacecraft Explorer 6 is launched into an orbit around the
earth (above). The spacecraft, commonly known as the “Paddlewheel”
satellite, featured a photocell scanner that transmitted a crude picture
of the earth’s surface and cloud cover from a distance of 17,000 miles
and was received in Hawaii after nearly 40 minutes.
The first image taken by Explorer 6 shows a sunlit area of the
Central Pacific Ocean and its cloud cover.
ED DANAHUE
The American space probe Ranger 7 transmitted pictures of the
moon’s surface on this day in 1964. It was the first space probe
of the United States to successfully transmit close images of
the lunar surface back to Earth. It was also the first completely
successful flight of the Ranger program.
President Eisenhower (center) commissioned Dr. T. Keith Glennan, (right), as the first administrator for NASA and Dr. Hugh L. Dryden
(left) as deputy administrator.
On this day in 1958, the U.S. Congress passes legislation establishing the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a civilian agency responsible for coordinating America’s activities in space. NASA has
since sponsored space expeditions, both human and mechanical, that
have yielded vital information about the solar system and universe. It has
also launched numerous earth-orbiting communications satellites. The
agency was created in response to the Soviet Union’s October 4, 1957
launch of its first satellite, Sputnik I.
On this day in 1969, Apollo 11, the U.S. spacecraft that had taken the
first astronauts to the surface of the moon, safely returned to Earth and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.
United States President Richard Nixon was in the central Pacific recovery area
to welcome the Apollo 11 astronauts aboard the USS Hornet, prime recovery
ship for the historic Apollo 11 lunar landing mission, on July 24, 1969. The
Apollo 11 astronauts are, from left, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz
Aldrin. They were quarantined after splashdown to ensure they did not bring
back any contamination from the moon.
