The events on this day in history for our heritage companies are noted below.
Only one event, in 2004
One milestone event (5 to 65+ years ago)
Human Spaceflight:
NONE
Military and Classified Programs:
NONE
Exploration and Interplanetary Programs:
2004 – LM Stardust Comet Wild-2 encounter successful – MILESTONE: 20 years ago
Earth-Monitoring and Civil Weather Satellite programs:
NONE
Commercial Programs:
NONE
Test, ICBM, FBM programs:
NONE
Other:
NONE
Today’s photo is of the flyby of Comet Wild-2, encountered by the Stardust spacecraft on this day in 2004, twenty years ago.
An interesting story from the comet sample analysis:
In 2009 it was announced by NASA that scientists had identified one of the fundamental chemical building blocks of life in a comet for the first time: glycine, an amino acid, was detected in the material ejected from Comet Wild 2 in 2004 and captured by the Stardust probe. Glycine has been detected in meteorites before and there are also observations in interstellar gas clouds, but the Stardust find is described as a first in cometary material.
