2013 – Hubble captures this image of Comet ISON.
2013 – NASA’s FY2014 budget proposal may include a plan to robotically capture a small near-Earth asteroid and redirect it safely to a stable orbit in the Earth-moon system where astronauts can visit and explore it.
2002 – At age 51, Yuji Hyakutake, an Japanese amateur astronomer who discovered “Comet Hyakutake“, with big binoculars, in 1996, dies of internal bleeding caused by an aneurysm. Hyakutake, a native of Nagasaki Prefecture, won international acclaim after he found the new comet, using a powerful pair of binoculars, 25×150 on Jan 30, 1996, in the town of Hayato in Kagoshima.
1981 – First attempt to launch STS-1. Launch failed at last moment when computers shut down due to timing skew in orbiter’s general purpose computer system. Backup flight software failed to synchronize with primary avionics software system. It couldn’t be done the same day, but the solution: control-alt-delete, successfully launched Crippen and Young, in STS-1, on April 12.