The events on this day in history for our heritage companies are noted below.
No events found on this day in history! Read below if you are interested in how these events are created and updated.
Human Spaceflight:
NONE
Military and Classified Programs:
NONE
Exploration and Interplanetary Programs:
NONE
Earth-Monitoring and Civil Weather Satellite programs:
NONE
Commercial Programs:
NONE
Test, ICBM, FBM programs:
NONE
Other:
NONE
No events were found on this day in history.
A daily historical event list was first created in 2021 for Mars Associates retirees group and has been updated each year since and is posted (starting in 2026) on the Mars Associates FB Page ONLY (the website postings are no longer going to be updated as the group transitions to a new web hosting service).
This research by MARS historian Barb Sande has highlights and major events on this day in history for our heritage companies. The list is certainly not intended to be complete; it does draw on several historical and fairly reliable PUBLIC website sources (e.g., Astronautics, Wikipedia, NASA, etc) for the information and also includes relevant Lockheed Martin press releases. The information is mostly at the macro level (launch vehicle, spacecraft, major subsystem, major instrument). Some classified programs have been declassified in recent years, but will remain labeled classified or with a generic identifier in the events (exception: Discoverer/Corona missions are identified). No missile defense agency missions are referenced due to inadequate source information and the ever-changing owners of program elements; a few very early test programs are also not referenced. Believe it or not, for those who would doubt it, Wikipedia has a superb and well-researched (and footnoted) space history archive.
Photo selection is done in a very cautious way. I look at metadata for photos and I find photos on government websites (public domain) or on databases that are open to the public. I add the proper attributions and photo captions as appropriate to the subject matter. Photos produced strictly for government agencies (NASA, DoD, USAF/USSF) are, by definition, considered public domain but a credit is usually required. Wikipedia does exhaustive work through Creative Commons Universal Licensing on photo identification and labeling and is a major source for my event photos (We give them a personal donation every year for the work that I do accessing many space missions through them). Photos from the ULA Flickr site or other similar sources are properly labeled with copyright information and are defined as being used strictly for non-commercial and historic purposes for this database.
Our major heritage companies are named as appropriate in each of the events for the applicable assets:
Martin (Martin Company)
GD (I elected to use this for most of their activities, even though the Atlas came out of the Convair division of GD)
MM (Martin Marietta)
Lockheed
RCA
GE
LM (Lockheed Martin)
ULA
For reference:
General Dynamics acquired Convair in 1953
Martin Company merged with Marietta in 1961
GE re-acquired RCA Space Systems in 1985
Martin Marietta acquired GE Aerospace, with embedded RCA remnant programs, in 1993
Martin Marietta acquired GD Space Systems Division in 1993
Martin Marietta and Lockheed merged in 1995
ULA (Joint LM/Boeing venture) was spun off in 2006.
No pre-ULA Delta Launch vehicle history is included, UNLESS it involved a heritage company asset (e.g., upper stage like Agena, payload or spacecraft).
The missions are categorized as follows:
Human Spaceflight (examples: Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Space Shuttle, ISS)
Military and Classified Programs (examples: Discoverer/Corona launches, most Titan launches, DoD and NROL launches, Milstar, DMSP, SIBRS, etc.)
Exploration and Interplanetary Programs (examples: Cassini, Viking)
Earth-Monitoring and Civil Weather Satellite Programs (examples: NOAA, GOES, Landsat)
Commercial Programs
Test, ICBM, FBM Programs (examples: Trident, ICBM tests and emplacements)
Other (a catch-all for a space or company-related item that does not fit in the other categories)
The day of the event is determined wherever possible by event time in GMT rather than local time.
In 2024, 5-year milestones were added and noted where appropriate for the events listed (5 years ago to 65+ years ago, so these would be events that are marked as milestones). Starting in January 2026, the milestones are again in 5-year increments going back to the most recent events in 2021 (5 years ago) and including milestone events in “1” and “6” years (pre-1951, 1951, 1956, 1961, 1966, 1971, 1976, 1981, 1986, 1991, 1996, 2001, 2006, 2011, 2016, and 2021). If you have read this far, bless you and note that these milestones are there to make all of us feel old (just kidding).
Thank you for reading on the website. If you wish to continue following the daily events, please join the closed group on Facebook. Contact Barb Sande at barbsande@me.com for more information.