1998 – The first successful surgeries in space using six 3-week-old rats as subjects aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, STS-90.
1990 – After launching the Hubble Space Telescope, Space Shuttle Discovery, STS-31, lands at Kennedy Space Center.
1985 – Launch of Space Shuttle Challenger STS-51B, for a week-long mission for Spacelab 3. Crew: Commander, Robert F. Overmyer; Pilot, Frederick D. Gregory; Mission Specialists, Don L. Lind, Norman E. Thagard, William E. Thornton; Payload Specialists: Lodewijk van den Berg, Taylor G. Wang.
Birthdays
1953 – Nikolai Budarin, a veteran of three extended space missions aboard the Mir Space Station and the International Space Station. Selection: NPOE-9 Cosmonaut Group (1989). EVAs 8, 44 hours and 25 minutes. Missions: STS-71/Soyuz TM-21 (Mir EO-19)Soyuz TM-27 (Mir EO-25)STS-113/Soyuz TMA-1 (Expedition 6)
1872 – Forest Ray Moulton was an American astronomer. He was a proponent, along with Thomas Chamberlin, of the Chamberlin–Moulton planetesimal hypothesis, which posits that the planets coalesced from smaller bodies they termed planetesimals. Their hypothesis called for the close passage of another star to trigger this condensation, a concept that has since fallen out of favor. Moulton was a critic of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. (d. 7 December 1952)
