FEBRUARY

Europa
Europa as seen from
Galileo spacecraft

February 1

1999 - Galileo Spacecraft flyby Europa number 19.

February 2

1977 - After 768.82 days Salyut 4 is deorbited.

February 3

1994 - STS-60 Launch (Discovery), 1st Russian Cosmonaut on Space Shuttle, Wake Shield Facility. "The STS-60 mission saw the first flight of the Wake Shield Facility (WSF), a 12-foot diameter, stainless steel disk which was deployed and retrieved using the Shuttle mechanical arm. While it flies free of the Space Shuttle, WSF will generate an "ultra-vacuum" environment in space within which to grow thin semiconductor films for next-generation advanced electronics. The commercial applications for these new semiconductors include digital cellular telephones, high-speed transistors and processors, fiber optics, opto-electronics and high-definition television.

1994 - Maiden Flight of NASDA H-2 Launch Vehicle (Japan)

1984 - STS-41BLaunch (Challenger), 1st Untethered Spacewalk (Manned Maneuvering Unit)

1966 - First soft landing on the Moon, by Soviet Luna 9.

STS 60 Mission Patch
NASA Photo ID: S84-27562 Bruce McCandless
Walking in Space
STS-41B

Surveyor completes aerobraking

February 4

1999 - NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft successfully completed the aerobraking phase of the mission.... "During the aerobraking technique, the spacecraft uses frictional drag as it skims through Mars' thin upper atmosphere to alter the shape of its orbit around the planet. First tested in the final days of the Magellan mission to Venus in 1994,the technique is an innovative way of changing the spacecraft's orbit while carrying less onboard fuel." (see here for press release)

1906 - Clyde Tombaugh's Birthday, He discovered the planet Pluto in 1930.

1600 - Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler meet at the castle Benatek, north-east of Prague.

Clyde Tombaugh
(1930-1997)

February 5

2002 - HESSI finally reaches space aboard a Pegaus rocket. "The approach of the HESSI mission (Small Explorer) is to combine, for the first time, high-resolution imaging in hard X-rays and gamma rays with high-resolution spectroscopy, so that a detailed energy spectrum can be obtained at each point of the image. This new approach will enable researchers to find out where these particles are accelerated and to what energies. Such information will advance understanding of the fundamental high-energy processes at the core of the solar flare problem." The Principal Investigator is Dr. Robert P. Lin, University of California, Berkeley.

1974 - Mariner 10 Venus Flyby. Mariner10 shows that Venus' clouds whip around the planet in just four Earth days, though Venus itself takes 243 Earth days to make just one rotation on its axis.

1963 - First quasar redshift measured by Maarten Schmidt.

HESSI taken to space aboard Pegasus rocket.

Golf balls and javelins on the Moon

February 6

1971 - First golf shots taken on the Moon by Alan Shepherd (Apollo 14) He brought it home and it is currently on display at the US Golf Association Hall of Fame in New Jersey.

February 7

2001- STS98 Launched. Atlantis shuttle launches with the "Destiny" module for the International Space Station. The sunset launched is described by many seasoned observers as on of the most beautiful launches ever seen.

1999 - STARDUST Delta 2 Launch (Comet Sample Return Mission). Stardust will visit CometWild-2 in 2004 and capture bits of comet using aerogel. The spacecraft will return to Earth in 2006. "Wild-2 is a relatively dim and new arrival to the inner solar system. Until recently it circled the sun in an orbit between Jupiter and Uranus, but everything changed in September 1974 whenWild-2 passed within 0.006 AU of Jupiter. That encounter with the giant planet, at only 10 times the distance which fragmented P/Shoemaker-Levy9 in 1994, altered Wild-2's orbit so that its closest approach to the sun now lies just inside the orbit of Mars." (Nasa Science News)

1991 - Salyut 7 crashes through the atmosphere over Argentina

1889 - The Astronomical Society of the Pacific founded,1st national astronomy organization.

STS 98 Mission Patch

Stardust launch

Orbit of Comet Wild 2

Orbit of Wild 2
You can get this image
updated every 5 minutes here

Mary Evans Picture Library/Photo Researchers Inc.
Medieval image of Haley's Comet

February 8

1994 - Maiden Flight of CZ-3A Launcher (China)

1986 - Haley's Comet Returns

February 10

1974 - Mars 4 Mars Flyby (Soviet Union)

February 11

2000 - Endeavour STS - 99 launched for Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, the first human space flight of the 21st century.

1999 - Pluto Crosses Neptune 's Orbit And Becomes the Farthest Planet From the Sun. Pluto will remain the most distant planet until it crosses Neptune's orbit again in April, 2231.

1997 - DiscoverySTS-82 launched for second Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission.

1970 - Lambda 4S-5, first Japanese satellite launched.

STS 99 Mission Patch

Last image from Near Shoemaker

February 12

2001 - NEAR SHOEMAKER spacecraft lands on asteroid Eros.

1974 - Mars 5 Mars Flyby (Soviet Union)

1961 - Venera 1 (USSR) launched. Venus flyby mission. It never arrived and is now in solar orbit.

February 13

1852 - J.L.E. Dreyer's birthday, Danish-born Irish astronomer who compiled the New General Catalogue (NGC) published in 1878.

J.L.E. Dreyer

First image of Asteroid Eros
from NEAR/Shoemaker
first orbit

February 14

2002 - Mars Odyssey turns on its science instruments; a camera system, a gamma ray spectrometer and a radiation environment monitor. During subsequent testing the radiation monitor was found to have a computer failure but the Earth bound team solved the problem.

2000 - NEAR achieves orbit around asteroid 433 Eros and becomes the first spacecraft to successfully lock into orbit around an asteroid.

1990 - The cameras of Voyager 1 pointed back toward the sun and took a series of pictures of the sun and the planets, making the first ever " portrait" of our solar system as seen from the outside.

1898 - Fritz Zwicky's birthday, who 1st identified supernovae as a separate class of objects and suggested the possibility of neutron stars; Zwicky also catalogued galaxies in clusters and designed jet engines.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
Galileo Galilei
(1564 - 1642)

February 15

1999 - IKONOS 2 Athena 2 Launch

1828 - Jules Verne's Birthday. Jules Verne in his lifetime wrote some 54 major novels related to the subject of science fiction.

1564 - Galileo Galilei's Birthday. Born at Pisa.

Jules Verne
(1828-1905)

February 16

1948 - Uranus's moon Miranda is discovered by Gerard Kuiper (see also Dec 7 & May 1).

1786 - Francois Arago's birthday, pioneer scientist in the wave nature of light and the inventor of the polarimeter and other optical devices. His theory of light predicted that the velocity of light should decrease as it passes into a denser medium.

NEAR Mission Patch

Giordano Bruno
(1548 - 1600)

February 17

1996 - Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) launched from Cape Canaveral. It would conduct the first long-term, close-up study of an asteroid. The mission aims to answer fundamental questions about the nature and origin of the many asteroids and comets close to Earth's orbit.

1600 - Giordano Bruno (b. 1548), Dominican and Philosopher, who challenged church doctrine on the origin and structure of the universe, is burned at the stake in Campo dei Fiori. His major metaphysical works, On the Infinite Universe and Worlds and The Infinite (both 1584), drew heavily from Hermetic gnosticism and other works on magic and the occult. Bruno held that there are many possible modes of viewing the world. He was first to propose modern Cosmic Theory.

February 18

2001 - Astronomers read the spectral light of the most ancient structures in the universe: quasar "RD J030117+002025" in the constellation Cetus.

In images, quasars can look very much like stars, but a spectral analysis of a quasar's light reveals its true character. This quasar told us that it was 'An Ancient' -- one of the Universe's first structures. -- Dr. Daniel Stern, JPL

Light from this quasar has journeyed about 13 billion years. That means the quasar existed at a time when the Universe was less than 8 percent of its current age. The paper, in Astrophysical Journal Letters, was written by Daniel Stern and Peter Eisenhardt of JPL; Hyron Spinrad, Steve Dawson, and Adam Stanford of the University of California; Andrew Bunker of Cambridge University; and Richard Elston of the University of Florida

1930 -Pluto found by Clyde Tombaugh during a search with plates taken on the Lowell Observatory. (Flagstaff) 13" telescope. When Pluto was discovered it was designated the solar system's ninth and most distant planet. Since then, we have discovered how "unlike a planet" it really is. Far smaller than originally thought, smaller than our own moon and even smaller than seven of the solar system's moons (the Moon, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan and Triton). It has an odd elliptical orbit which is tilted 17 degrees with respect to the solar plane. It is more like the largest of a group of thousands of icy objects that orbit at the edge of the solar system. These Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) are classified by number. As the number is close approaching10,000 some astronomers proposed reclassifying Pluto as the largest of these TNOs. The International Astronomical Union, which has authority over astronomical names, has rejected the proposed status change.

An image and data from the most distant, most ancient quasar ever found (center red) describes an early universe.

"RD J030117+002025" The quasar is at the red object in the center of this image.

Pluto from
earth based
occultation
measurements

Nicolas Copernicus
(1473-1543)

February 19

2002 - First image from Mars Odyssey visible light camera THEMIS is a Martian region known as Acheron Fossae.

1924 - Edwin Hubble writes to Harlow Shapely "You will be interested to hear that I have found a Cephid variable in the Andromeda Nebula."

1473 - Nicolas Copernicus Birthday. Said to be the founder of modern astronomy. In1530, he completed and gave to the world his great work De Revolutionibus, which asserted that the earth rotated on its axis once daily and traveled around the sun once yearly.

February 20

1986 - The base unit of the Soviet Mir Space Station was launched.

1962 - Lt. Colonel John Glenn, became the first American to orbit the Earth aboard Mercury capsule Friendship 7.

John Glenn
first American to orbit Earth

The Firework Nebula
Credit: WIYN Telescope

February 21

1901 The first bright nova of the 20th century and the first to be subjected to detailed spectroscopy and photometry, Nova Persei the nova flared Mag.0,2 on Feb. 23. Scottish amateur astronomer T. D. Anderson was the first observer. During decline of brightness, about 100 days, brightness fluctuated with period of 4 days and amplitude of mag. 1.5.

February 22

1995 - 5:00am (MST) Near-Earth Asteroid 1995CR approaches within 4.5 million miles of Earth.

February 23

1999 - Jupiter Venus conjunction. Conjunctions are not rare events. But planetary conjunctions are rarely this close and Venus and Jupiter are the two brightest objects in the sky, after the sun and moon, a very pretty sky view indeed.

1950 - Asteroid (29075) 1950 DA was discovered. It was observed for 17 days and then faded from view for half a century. Then, an object discovered on 31 December 2000 (New Year's Eve) was recognized as being the long-lost 1950 DA. Further observations of this rock by Goldstone and Arecibo telescopes describes the 1.1 km diameter rock as asymmetrical with a 2.1 hour spin, the spinniest rock yet found in our solar system.

Analysis performed by Giorgini et al and reported in the April 5, 2002 edition of the journal Science ("Asteroid 1950 DA's Encounter With Earth in 2880: Physical Limits of Collision Probability Prediction") determined the impact probability as being at most 1 in 300 and probably even more remote, based on what is known about the asteroid so far. At its greatest, this could represent a risk 50% greater than that of the average background hazard due to all other asteroids from the present era through 2880, as defined by the Palermo Technical Scale (PTS value = +0.17). 1950 DA is the only known asteroid whose hazard could be above the background level.

1987 - Supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud visible to naked eye, as a result of explosion of blue supergiant Sanduleak 69 deg. 202. Known as SN1987A This was the first "nearby" supernova in the last 3 centuries. NASA scientists using the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) was launched into Earth orbit in January1978 by a Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the British Science and Engineering Research Council. Managed by Goddard Space Flight Center with the ESA in Villafranca, Spain.

Venus and Jupiter lineup
for a pretty sky view. Supernova 1987A SN1987A
Hubble Space Telescope
Image taken in 1984

IUE spectrum of supernova1987a

Polar Spacecraft

Listen to the sound of pulsar.au
PSR 0329+54, it is among the strongest known pulsars, and was one of the first discovered.
It has a pulse period of about 0.715 seconds.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell
(1943 - )

February 24

1996 - The Polar spacecraft was launched to study the region over the poles of Earth, an active region of geospace.

1979 - Solwind P78-1 Launch

1969 - Mariner 6 (USA) was launched. On July 31, 1969 Mariner 6 flew to 3330 km of Mars and returned 74 images.

1968 - The first pulsar was discovered, by Jocelyn Bell Burnell, in a radio search survey. Hewish and Ryle, co-directors of the project, got the `74 Physics Nobel for matching the observations to a model of a rotating neutron star. This had first been explored theoretically thirty years earlier by J. Robert Oppenheimer, who in the interim became famous as the leader of the Los Alamos lab which developed the A-bomb and, later, as the victim of McCarthy era politics.

1949 - White Sands, New Mexico, a captured and modified German V-2 rocket was launched up to a record height of 250 miles. The "step-rocket" envisioned years earlier by Dr. Robert Goddard had become a reality.

Mariner 6

February 25

1969 - Mariner 6 Launch (Mars Flyby Mission)

1949 - WAC Corporal Launch

February 26

1842 - Camille Flammarion, prolific and widely read popularizer of astronomy and the notion of there being extraterrestrial life. Flammarion is also associated with M104. It is numerically the first object of the Messier catalog which was not included in Messier's originally published catalog. However, Messier added it by hand in his personal copy on 11th May 1781 as a "very faint nebula." It was Flammarion who found that its position coincided with Herschel's H I.43, which is the Sombrero galaxy, and added it to the official Messier list.

Camille Flammarion (1842-1925) Camille Flammarion
(1842-1925)

February 27

1897 - Bernard Lyot's birthday, inventor of the chronograph in 1930. He was the recipient of the Draper Award in 1951.

February 28

History for this day not yet available. go back to calendar

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This page was created by me. Last updated 16 Nov 2003 .