The events on this day in history for our heritage companies are noted below.
The earliest event was in 1959, the latest event was in 2023
Three milestone events (5 to 65+ years ago)
Human Spaceflight:
1990 – LAUNCH: STS-41 (Discovery), LC39B, KSC – 5 person crew, deployed Ulysses spacecraft (solar polar mission). Crew: Richard Richards, Robert Cabana, Bruce Melnick, William Shepherd, Thomas Akers – MILESTONE: 35 years ago
1997 – LANDING: STS-86 (Atlantis), KSC
Military and Classified Programs:
NONE
Exploration and Interplanetary Programs:
NONE
Earth-Monitoring and Civil Weather Satellite programs:
NONE
Commercial Programs:
1994 – LAUNCH: Intelsat 803, GD Atlas IIAS, LC-36B, CCAFS
2000 – LAUNCH: LM Superbird 5, Ariane 42L, ELA2, Kourou, French Guiana – MILESTONE: 25 years ago
2023 – LAUNCH: KuiperSat 1 & 2, ULA Atlas V 501, LC-41, CCSFS – Last Atlas V 501 (Amazon’s Broadband Satellite installation)
Test, ICBM, FBM programs:
1959 – LAUNCH: GD Atlas D, LC11, CCAFS
1962 – LAUNCH: MM Titan I, 576-A1, VAFB
1970 – LAUNCH: Lockheed Poseidon C3, SSBN629, ETR – MILESTONE: 55 years ago
1973 – LAUNCH: MM Titan II, 395-C, VAFB
1987 – LAUNCH: Lockheed Trident D5, LC46, CCAFS
Other:
NONE
The photos today are from two missions. First, there are photos from the STS-41 mission, which deployed the Ulysses spacecraft to study the polar regions of the sun. They include the launch, the crew and the deployment of Ulysses. Photo Credits: NASA.
Here’s more information about Ulysses, extracted from Wikipedia:
Ulysses was a robotic space probe whose primary mission was to orbit the Sun and study it at all latitudes. It was launched in 1990 and made three “fast latitude scans” of the Sun in 1994/1995, 2000/2001, and 2007/2008. In addition, the probe studied several comets. Ulysseswas a joint venture of the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA, under leadership of ESA with participation from Canada’s National Research Council. The last day for mission operations on Ulysses was 30 June 2009.
The second mission photo is the launch of the Kuiper Prototype Satellites by Atlas V 501 in 2023. This photo was downloaded from the public ULA official Flickr photo repository and is labeled © Copyright United Launch Alliance all rights reserved. The photo is being used for historical/non-commercial purposes for retirees of ULA and LM.
