The events on this day in history for our heritage companies are noted below.
The earliest event was in 1957, the latest event was in 2017
Two milestone events (5 to 65+ years ago)
Human Spaceflight:
NONE
Military and Classified Programs:
1960 – LAUNCH: Lockheed Discoverer 14, Thor/Lockheed Agena A, SLC1W, VAFB – MILESTONE: 65 years ago
1970 – LAUNCH: Classified mission, MM Titan 23B, SLC4W, VAFB – MILESTONE: 55 years ago
Exploration and Interplanetary Programs:
1999 – Cassini Earth fly-by
Earth-Monitoring and Civil Weather Satellite programs:
2017 – LAUNCH: TDRS 13, ULA Atlas V 401, LC41, CCAFS
Commercial Programs:
NONE
Test, ICBM, FBM programs:
1957 – LAUNCH FAILURE: Lockheed X-17, LC3, CCAFS
1972 – LAUNCH (4): Lockheed Poseidon C3, SSBN631, ETR
1977 – LAUNCH: Lockheed Trident C4, LC25C, CCAFS
Other:
NONE
There are images from two events today. First, there is a photo of the launch of Discoverer 14 on Thor/Agena A in 1960. This was the first completely successful mission in the Corona program, from launch through film canister recovery. This photo was found on Wikipedia and is labeled “public domain” as it is a product of a federal government program.
Second, there is a an artist’s conception showing the earth fly-by of Cassini in 1999. The flyby, after two Venus gravity assists, gave Cassini a 5.5-kilometer-per- second (about 12,000-mile-per-hour) boost in speed, sending the spacecraft on toward the ringed planet more than 1 billion kilometers (almost one billion miles) away. One more gravity assist would occur at Jupiter before Cassini’s arrival at Saturn in 2004. Image Credit: NASA.
