1992 – Landing of STS-45 Atlantis.The mission was extended by a day in order to continue science experiments. The landing occurred on Runway 33 of the Shuttle Landing Facility, located at the Kennedy Space Center.
1984 – The first Indian Cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma, a 35 year old Indian Air Force pilot, launched along with two other Soviet cosmonauts aboard Soyuz T-11. He spent eight days in space aboard Salyut 7.
1969 – Mars M-69 orbiter intended to photograph and map the surface of Mars was launched from Baikonur but one of the proton rockets failed causing the vehicle to fly horizontally and explode near the launch pad.
1968 – “2001: A Space Odyssey” World Premiere: Stanley Kubrick’s groundbreaking film had its world premiere at the Uptown Theater in Washington, DC
1964 – Zond 1 (USSR) launched. Venus probe mission, it never arrived and is now in solar orbit.
1959 – Selection Of The Mercury 7 Astronauts, Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom,
Walter Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton.
1958 – President Eisenhower proposed NASA to Congress. It formally came into existence on July 29
1889 – Harvard Observatory’s 13″ refractor arrives on Mt. Wilson, a month later it begins an astronomical legacy at this site which housed the largest telescopes in the world from 1908-48: the 60″ for the first decade followed by the 100″. This latter mirror is still the largest solid ever cast in plate glass; weighing 4 1/2 tons, it’s just 13 inches thick.
1845 – On 2 April 1845, French physicist Armand Hippolyte Louis Fizeau and Léon Foucault took the first ever photograph of the Sun.