The events on this day in history for our heritage companies are noted below.
The earliest event was in 1961, the latest event was in 2015
No milestone events (5 to 65+ years ago)
Human Spaceflight:
NONE
Military and Classified Programs:
1972 – LAUNCH: RADCAT, GD Atlas Burner 2, 576-A1, VAFB
Exploration and Interplanetary Programs:
NONE
Earth-Monitoring and Civil Weather Satellite programs:
1966 – LAUNCH: RCA ESSA-3 Thor Delta, SLC2E, VAFB
Commercial Programs:
2015 – Morelos-3 launched, ULA Atlas V 421, LC41, CCAFS
Test, ICBM, FBM programs:
1961 – LAUNCH: GD Atlas E, LC-11, CCAFS
1961 – LAUNCH FAILURE: Atlas D, 576-B2, VAFB – Excessive Stage II chamber pressure
1996- LAUNCH: LM Trident C4, SSBN728, ETR
Other:
NONE
The photo today is the ESSA-3 satellite, as found on Wikipedia and released to the public domain through the NOAA archives.
Here is more about ESSA-3 from the archives about the Environmental Sciences Service Administration from NASA:
ESSA-3 satellite replaced ESSA-1. It provided cloud-cover photography to the US’s National Meteorological Center for the purpose of preparing weather analyses and forecasts. The spacecraft was designed and configured exactly the same as NIMBUS-1. The total weight of the spacecraft was 912 pounds.
The spacecraft was an 18-sided polygon, 42 inches in diameter, 22 inches high and weighed 320 pounds; it was made of aluminum alloy and stainless steel, then covered with 9100 solar cells. The solar cells served to charge the 63 nickel-cadmium batteries.
The two cameras were mounted 180-degrees opposite each other along the side of the cylindrical craft. The “cartwheel” configuration of the TIROS-9 was selected as the orbital configuration for the ESSA satellites. Therefore, a camera could be pointed at some point on Earth every time the satellite rotated along its axis. The spacecraft operating system was the same as on the TIROS-9. The craft was placed in its planned Sun-synchronous 101 degree inclination retrograde orbit. The ESSA-3 system transmitted images covering 2000-square mile areas with 2-mile resolution from every location once per day.
