The events on this day in history for our heritage companies are noted below.
The earliest event was in 1956, the latest event was in 2018
Two milestone events (5 to 65+ years ago)
Human Spaceflight:
1958 – NASA officially names the first manned program “Project Mercury”
1975 – MM X-24B flight 64, Dryden Lake – Pilot: Thomas McMurtry – Last X-24B flight
Military and Classified Programs:
NONE
Exploration and Interplanetary Programs:
1959 – LAUNCH FAILURE: Pioneer 3 GD Atlas/Able, LC14, CCAFS – Payload fairing – MILESTONE: 65 years ago
2011 – LAUNCH: MSL, ULA Atlas V 541, LC41, CCAFS – Mars Science Lab renamed Curiosity
2018 – LANDING: LM InSight Lander on Mars (Elysium Planitia area)
Earth-Monitoring and Civil Weather Satellite programs:
NONE
Commercial Programs:
NONE
Test, ICBM, FBM programs:
1956 – DoD assigns all long-range missiles to be under USAF jurisdiction
1968 – LAUNCH: Lockheed Poseidon C3, LC25C, CCAFS
1969 – LAUNCH: Lockheed Poseidon C3, LC26C, CCAFS – MILESTONE: 55 years ago
1987 – LAUNCH: MM Pershing 1A, Fort Bliss, Texas
Other:
NONE
The photos today are from two missions. First, there is the launch of Curiosity Rover (Mars Science Lab) in 2011 on ULA Atlas V 541.
Here is the caption for the photo of the launch of Curiosity in 2011; this photo was found on the Flickr photo site for ULA:
A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket with NASA’s Mars Science Lab rover Curiosity lifts off from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, on Nov. 26, 2011. Photo credit: United Launch Alliance. © Copyright all rights reserved. This photo is being used for noncommercial and historic purposes for retirees of LM and ULA.
Second, there is a photo of the InSight lander prior to launch, a first photo from the InSight lander after landing on this day in 2018 and an example of a Mars quake chart from InSight. InSight = Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport. InSight was decommissioned on 12/22/2022.
Here is the caption for the photo of the InSight lander; this photo was a featured photo on Wikipedia:
The solar arrays on NASA’s InSight lander are deployed in this test inside a clean room at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver. This configuration is how the spacecraft will look on the surface of Mars. The image was taken on April 30, 2015.
InSight, for Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is scheduled for launch in March 2016 and landing in September 2016. It will study the deep interior of Mars to advance understanding of the early history of all rocky planets, including Earth.The InSight Project is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. InSight is part of NASA’s Discovery Program, which is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Lockheed Martin.
In March 2021, NASA reported, based on measurements of over 500 Marsquakes from the InSight lander on the planet Mars, that the core of Mars is between 1,810 and 1,860 km (1,120 and 1,160 mi), about half the size of the core of Earth and significantly smaller than thought earlier, suggesting a core of lighter elements.
