The events on this day in history for our heritage companies are noted below.
The earliest event was in 1949, the latest event was in 2008
No milestone events (5 to 65+ years ago)
Human Spaceflight:
NONE
Military and Classified Programs:
1963 – LAUNCH: Classified mission, GD Atlas/Lockheed Agena D, SLC4W, VAFB
1989 – LAUNCH: USA 45, MM Titan II/SLV, SLC4W, VAFB
Exploration and Interplanetary Programs:
NONE
Earth-Monitoring and Civil Weather Satellite programs:
2003 – Handling incident with NOAA-N spacecraft at Sunnyvale
Commercial Programs:
1996 – LAUNCH: LM Inmarsat 3 F2, Proton-K/DM-2, LC81/23, Baikonur, Kazakhstan
2008 – LAUNCH: GeoEye-2, ULA Delta 7420-10C, SLC2W, VAFB
Test, ICBM, FBM programs:
1949 – LAUNCH FAILURE: Viking 2 Aeronomy/Photography mission, Martin Viking 2, LC33, White Sands, New Mexico
1958 – LAUNCH: Lockheed X-17, Platform AVM1 (USS Norton Sound), Atlantic – Argus III
1962 – LAUNCH: Lockheed Polaris A3, LC29A, CCAFS
1977 – LAUNCH: Lockheed Poseidon C3, SSBN625, ETR
Other:
1963 – NASA and DoD announce a new agreement on procurement and usage of Lockheed Agena upper stages (Agena usage at CCAFS assigned to NASA, Agena usage at VAFB assigned to DoD)
The photo today is a Lockheed X-17 being readied for launch from the USS Norton Sound in the south Atlantic as part of the three-launch Argus nuclear test program in 1958, with the last launch taking place on this date in 1958. Photo Credit: AEC/USDE found on Wikipedia and described as being in the public domain.
Here’s more about Project Argus from Wikipedia:
Operation Argus was a series of United States low-yield, high-altitude nuclear weapons tests and missile tests secretly conducted from 27 August to 9 September 1958 over the South Atlantic Ocean. The tests were performed by the Defense Nuclear Agency.
The tests were to study the Christofilos Effect, which suggested it was possible to defend against Soviet nuclear missiles by exploding a small number of nuclear bombs high over the South Pacific. This would create a disk of electrons over the United States that would overload the electronics on the Soviet warheads as they descended. It was also possible to use the effect to blind Soviet radars, meaning that any Soviet-based ABM system would be unable to attack the US counterstrike.
The tests demonstrated that the effect did occur, but that it dissipated too rapidly to be very effective. Papers concerning the topic were published the next year, emphasizing the events as purely scientific endeavors.
