Ten years ago today -- February 5, 2002 -- a Pegasus-XL rocket launched a solar flare observatory into orbit. The Pegasus's L-1011 carrier aircraft flew out of Cape Canaveral for this launch. (Artist's conception of HESSI. NASA image.) About two months after being launched, the High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager, or HESSI, was renamed the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager ...
Okay, technically I didn't "find" it -- Google Alerts did its job and told me about it -- but never mind that: one of my stories is now on audio! "Memorial at Copernicus" is an alternate-history story that occurs on the Moon, and was my first story to be considered a "professional" sale. It originally appeared in the third issue of Redstone Science Fiction, in August 2010. And now it's also the first of my stories to ever be recorded. ...
Forty years ago today -- January 31, 1972 -- the HEOS (Highly Elliptical Orbit Satellite) A-2 launched from the Western Space and Missile Center at Vandenberg AFB. HEOS A-2 was built by the European Space Research Organization, the precursor to today's European Space Agency, to study "interplanetary space and the high-latitude magnetosphere." HEOS 2 provided new data on the sources and acceleration mechanisms of particles found in the trapped radiation belts ...
Some space history moments we might rather forget ... but in some ways they're more important to remember. Like this one. Forty-five years ago today -- January 27, 1967 -- the Apollo-1 capsule caught fire during an on-pad test, killing astronauts Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White II, and Roger B. Chaffee. (The Apollo-1 crew. L-R: White, Grissom, Chaffee. NASA image.) ...
Fifty years ago today -- January 26, 1962 -- Ranger-3 launched from Cape Canaveral on an Atlas-Agena rocket. (Ranger-3. NASA image.) Ranger-3 had several mission goals, only the last of which would be fulfilled: "Transmit pictures of the lunar surface to Earth stations during a period of 10 minutes of flight prior to impacting on the Moon" "Rough-land a seismometer ...
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