2003 – NASA released the best “baby picture” of the Universe ever taken, which contains such stunning detail that it may be one of the most important scientific results of recent years. The cosmic portrait — capturing the afterglow of the Big Bang, called the cosmic microwave background — was captured by scientists using NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) during a sweeping 12-month observation of the entire sky.
2001– NEAR SHOEMAKER spacecraft lands on asteroid Eros.
1974 – Mars 5 Mars Flyby (Soviet Union) equipped with three cameras and a radio telescope, an IR radiometer, multiple photometers, polarimeters, a magnetometer, plasma traps, an electrostatic analyser, a gamma-ray spectrometer, and a radio probe used to measure tempurature, atmosphere and rock types. Last contact was 28 February 1974
1961 – Venera 1 (USSR) launched. Venus flyby mission. It never arrived and is now in solar orbit.
1947 – At around 10:30am eyewitnesses of the Sikhote-Alin Mountains Meteorite fall, Primorye, Soviet Union, observed a large bolide brighter than the Sun that came out of the north. The bright flash and the deafening sound of the fall were observed for 300 kilometres (190 mi) around the point of impact not far from Luchegorsk and approximately 440 km (270 mi) northeast of Vladivostok. A smoke trail, estimated at 32 km (20 mi) long, remained in the sky for several hours. The post-atmospheric mass of the meteoroid at some 23,000 kg (51,000 lb).
Birthdays
1897 – Lincoln LaPaz, American astronomer and academic who is associated with UFO investigations on behalf of the military during the late 1940s and early 1950. He believed in the grand coverup. (d. 19 October 1985)