Time Line in Space exploration: On this Date: December 4 December 4, 1959 - On December 4, 1959, Sam, a rhesus monkey, flew on the Little Joe 2 in the Mercury program to 53 miles high.[4] Miss Sam, also a rhesus monkey, followed in 1960, on Little Joe 1B although her flight was only to 8 mi (13 km) in a test of emergency procedures. Ham and Enos also flew in the Mercury program but they were chimpanzees. The names Sam and Ham were acronyms. Sam was named in homage to the School of Aerospace Medicine at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. The name Ham was taken from Holloman Aerospace Medicine at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico. December 4, 1965 - Gemini 7 is launched carrying Frank Borman and James A. Lovell, Jr., making 206 orbits around Earth and proving a trip to the Moon possible. December 4, 1978 - Pioneer Venus 1 (Pioneer Venus Orbiter) - Venus orbit insertion: December 4, 1978; Launched: May 20, 1978 Pioneer Venus 1 carried 17 experiments, including a radar mapper. Scientists used the radar to map nearly the entire planet, resolving features as small as 80 kilometers. The spacecraft remained in orbit until August of 1992, when it used up all its fuel and burnt up in the atmosphere. December 4, 1996 - The Mars Pathfinder (MESUR Pathfinder) lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and began speeding toward Mars on a 310 million-mile odyssey. (It arrived on Mars in July 1997). It consisted of a lander, renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station, and a lightweight (10.6 kg/23 lb) wheeled robotic Mars rover named Sojourner. Launched on December 4, 1996 by NASA aboard a Delta II booster a month after the Mars Global Surveyor was launched, it landed on July 4, 1997 on Marss Ares Vallis, in a region called Chryse Planitia in the Oxia Palus quadrangle. The lander then opened, exposing the rover which conducted many experiments on the Martian surface. The mission carried a series of scientific instruments to analyze the Martian atmosphere, climate, geology and the composition of its rocks and soil. It was the second project from NASAs Discovery Program, which promotes the use of low-cost spacecraft and frequent launches under the motto cheaper, faster and better promoted by the then administrator, Daniel Goldin. The mission was directed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a division of the California Institute of Technology, responsible for NASAs Mars Exploration Program. The project manager was JPLs Tony Spear. This mission was the first of a series of missions to Mars that included rovers, and was the first successful lander since the two Vikings landed on the red planet in 1976. Although the Soviet Union successfully sent rovers to the Moon as part of the Lunokhod program in the 1970s, its attempts to use rovers in its Mars probe program failed. In addition to scientific objectives, the Mars Pathfinder mission was also a proof-of-concept for various technologies, such as airbag-mediated touchdown and automated obstacle avoidance, both later exploited by the Mars Exploration Rover mission. The Mars Pathfinder was also remarkable for its extremely low cost relative to other unmanned space missions to Mars. Originally, the mission was conceived as the first of the Mars Environmental Survey (MESUR) program. December 4, 1998 - Space Shuttle Endeavour lifts off on its thirteenth space flight, with the International Space Stations second module, Unity. This module provides the docking ports and connections for every other docked module.
Posted on: Wed, 04 Dec 2013 21:06:21 +0000
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