2010 – Hayabusa, Japanese Space Agency, returns to Earth at 13:51 GMT. Launched in 2003 to collect asteroid dust from Asteroid Itokawa in late 2005. The landing sight was in Australia. This was the first mission to have successfully returned samples from an asteroid.
1983 – Pioneer 10 becomes the first manmade object to leave the solar system.
A gold plaque aboard Pioneer 10 gives a graphic representation of our home and species.
1970 – Apollo 13 Review Board publishes result of investigation. The board’s recommendations included redesigning and recertifying the oxygen tank system and a review of all Apollo systems using cryogenic oxygen.
Birthdays
1944 – Jet Propulsion Lab’s Birthday
1945 – Ronald John Grabe born in New York City, NY, USA. Selection: NASA Group 9 (1980). Time in Space: 26d 3h 38m. Missions: STS-51-J, STS-30, STS-42, STS-57
1831 – James Clerk Maxwell born in Edinburgh, Scotland. At the age of 24 he wrote “On Faraday’s Lines of Force” showing that a few simple equations could describe the behavior of electric and magnetic fields. “Maxwell’s Equations” first appeared in fully developed form in Electricity and Magnetism (1873). He died, at the age of 48, on 5 November 1879, of stomach cancer.