The events on this day in history for our heritage companies are noted below.
The earliest event was in 1960, the latest event was in 2017
Human Spaceflight:
NONE
Military and Classified Programs:
1965 – LAUNCH FAILURE (partial): OV2, LCS1, LCS2, MM Titan IIIC/Transtage, LC40, CCAFS – Transtage exploded at the start of deployment of magnetosphere spacecraft and radar calibration targets
2017- LAUNCH: USA 279, ULA Atlas V 421, LC41, CCAFS
Exploration and Interplanetary Programs:
1973 – NASA buys three additional MM Titan IIIE/GD Centaur vehicles
1997 – LAUNCH: Cassini/Huygens, LM Titan IVB (401)/Centaur, LC40, CCAFS – Mission to Saturn and its moons; Titan lander (Huygens)
Earth-Monitoring and Civil Weather Satellite programs:
1972 – LAUNCH: RCA NOAA-2 (also Oscar 6), Delta 0300, SLC2W, VAFB
Commercial Programs:
NONE
Test, ICBM, FBM programs:
1960 – LAUNCH (2): Lockheed Polaris A1, SSBN599, ETR
1963 – The Ballistic Missile Division re-evaluated upgrading Titan II ICBMs with changes from the Gemini program, allowing those changes to be incorporated (lifting a halt to program deployment)
1969 – LAUNCH (2): Lockheed Polaris A3m SSBN624, ETR
1974 – LAUNCH (5): Lockheed Polaris A3, SSBN601, WTR
Other:
NONE
The photos today are of the Titan IVB-33 launch of the Cassini/Huygens mission and the spacecraft being assembled at JPL. Also included is a diagram of Cassini and a chart of the milestones of the mission. This was a major event for the Titan program 26 years ago. Cassini/Huygens reached Saturn on July 1, 2004, Huygens was deployed and landed on the moon of Titan in January, 2005 and the mission ended with a controlled descent into the atmosphere of Saturn on September 15, 2017. LM built the propulsion system for Cassini as well. The mission is summarized in an article in a fall Mars STAR issue in 2022 (based on a roundtable discussion held in May, 2022).
