2001 – 9/11 – International terrorists use passenger jets as weapons of mass destruction and hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center, Manhattan and the Pentagon. Only one American, NASA astronaut Frank Culbertson, was not on Earth at the time and bore witness to the tragedy. Crew aboard the International Space Station gave us the view from space.
1985 –ICE, the International Cometary Explorer, makes the first ever comet tail transverse, a flyby of comet 21/PGiacobini-Zinner. The science mission goal was to study the interaction between the solar wind and a cometary atmosphere.
Birthdays
1937 – Robert Laurel ‘Bob’ Crippen was born in Beaumont, Texas. He was an American pilot astronaut from 1966 to 1991. Member of the first crew to fly a winged spacecraft to orbit and back. 4 spaceflights, 23.6 days in space. Flew to orbit on STS-1 (1981), STS-7, STS-41C, STS-41G
1935 – Gherman Stepanovich Titov Russian pilot cosmonaut 1960-1970. Second person in orbit. Youngest person in space. Left cosmonaut team for brilliant career in the space forces after deciding his future spaceflight prospects were nil. 1 spaceflight, 1.1 days in space. Flew to orbit on Vostok 2 in 1961. (d. 20 September 2000)
1877 – Sir James Jeans was born in Ormskirk, Lancashire. He was an English astronomical theoretician. In the first decade of this century Jeans worked out the fundamentals of gravitational collapse processes, which are of relevance to the formation of solar systems, stars, and galaxies. (d. 16 September 1946)