From the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida,
the U.S. unmanned spacecraft Explorer 6 atop a Thor-Able
rocket was launched into an orbit around the earth.

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. The photo, received in Hawaii,
took nearly 40 minutes to transmit.

The first satellite image of Earth captured by Explorer 6 on August 14, 1959.

On May 5, 1961, Navy Commander Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr.
was launched into space aboard the Freedom 7 space
capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to travel
into space. 

The suborbital flight, which lasted 15 minutes and reached
a height of 116 miles into the atmosphere, was a major triumph 
for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The view from Freedom 7.

 
The "Face on Mars" was first photographed on this day in history, July 25, 1976. (NASA)

A photo from Mars taken by NASA’s Viking 1 spacecraft left
people perplexed and wondering about the possibility of
extraterrestrial life. 

Dubbed the "Face on Mars," the image appeared to show a
carving of eyes, nose and a mouth in the Martian region of
Cydonia.

NASA’s website said "the Viking 1 spacecraft (below) was
circling the planet, snapping photos of possible landing
sites for its sister ship Viking 2, when it spotted the shadowy  
likeness of a human face."      

TIM MAGUIRE

Neil Alden Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012)

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.