On This Day in Space Exploration

  January 30 30 January 1964 Model of Ranger Block III spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech On January 30, 1964, Ranger VI lunar probe, the first in the series of four Ranger Block III spacecraft, was launched. It carried a suite of six TV cameras capable of taking 300 pictures a minute, and was expected to transmit high-resolution photographs of the lunar surface in the last minutes of the flight until the impact. The spacecraft impacted the Moon as planned on February 2, 1964, but a TV power system failure prevented it from transmitting any images of the Moon's surface. Ranger VI under construction, September 24, 1963. Credit NASA JPL-Caltech Full Description from NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive: Ranger 6 was designed to achieve a lunar impact trajectory and to transmit high-resolution photographs of the lunar surface during the final minutes of flight up to impact. The spacecraft carried six television vidicon cameras, 2 full-scan cameras (channel F, o...

  January 29  29 January 1989 Scheme of the unrealized active experiments from the board of Fobos 2, as well as the release of a long-lived autonomous station (DAS) and the hopper lander (PrOP-FP) onto the surface of Phobos. Credit: NPO Lavochkin On January 27, 1989, Soviet Fobos 2 spacecraft entered orbit around Mars. The probe was to approach to within 50 meters of Phobos' surface and release two landers – one a mobile 'hopper', the other a stationary platform. However, the mission ended prematurely after a malfunction of the on-board computer on March 27, 1989. Panorama of the surface of Mars from Fobos 2 on March 26, 1989. The elongated horizontal smudge is the shadow of Phobos, traveling in nearly the same orbit as the spacecraft.   Credit: Don P. Mitchell: http://mentallandscape.com    Fobos 2 was launched on July 12, 1988. It ...

  January 28  28 January 1986 STS-51-L crew. Crew members are (left to right, front row) astronauts Michael J. Smith, Francis R. (Dick) Scobee and Ronald E. McNair; Ellison S. Onizuka, Sharon Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis and Judith A. Resnik. Credit: NASA On January 28, 1986, 1986, a catastrophic structural failure 73 seconds after liftoff of the Space Shuttle, mission STS-51-L, destroyed the orbiter OV-099 Challenger killing all seven crew members – Francis R. "Dick" Scobee (1939–1986), Michael J. Smith (1945–1986), Ellison S. Onizuka (1946–1986), Judith A. Resnik (1949–1986), Ronald E. McNair (1950–1986), Gregory B. Jarvis (1944–1986) and S. Christa McAuliffe (1948–1986).    The disaster was caused by the failure of the two redundant O-ring seals in a joint in the Space Shuttle's right solid rocket booster (SRB). The record-low temperatures of the launch reduced the elastici...

  January 27  27 January 1967 Apollo 1 crew. Astronauts, left to right, Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, pose in front of Launch Complex 34 which is housing their Saturn 1 launch vehicle. Credit: NASA On January 27, 1967, at  6:31:05 p.m. EST (23:31:05 UTC)  a cabin fire inside the Apollo Command Module 012 during a practice session for the first manned Apollo flight (AS-204, later redesignated Apollo 1), at Cape Kennedy Launch Complex 34, killed all three crew members — Lt. Col. Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom (1926–1967), a veteran of Mercury and Gemini missions; Lt. Col. Edward H. White II (1930–1967), the astronaut who had performed the first United States extravehicular activity during the Gemini program; and Roger B. Chaffee (1935–1967), an astronaut preparing for his first space flight.    A seven-member board, under the direction of the NASA Langley Research Center Director, Dr. Floyd L. Thom...

  January 26  26 January 1949 Hale Telescope dome. Credit: Palomar/​Caltech On January 26, 1949, the 200-inch (5.08 m) Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory, California, saw its first light. It was the largest telescope in the world from 1949 until the Soviet BTA-6 was built in 1976, and remained the largest effective until 1993.     The effort to build the 200-inch telescope, then the world’s largest, began twenty one years earlier in 1928 when George Ellery Hale (1868–1938) received a six million dollar from the Rockefeller Foundation for "the construction of an observatory, including a 200-inch reflecting telescope" to be administered by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), of which Hale was a founding member. Prior to Palomar Hale was the driving force behind the 40-inch refractor at the Yerkes Observatory and the 60-inch and 100-inch reflectors on Mt. Wilson, each of which was a leap forward for astronomy. The telescope’s design, cons...