2016 – North Korea launches Kwangmyŏngsŏng-4 into outer space violating multiple UN treaties and prompting condemnation from around the world.
2013 – 
International Space Station – Chris Hadfield discusses life as an astronaut/human with Captain Kirk, Canadian-born actor William Shatner. And Q&A with The Canadian Space Agency.(26 minutes)
2007 – Ulysses, launched 6 October 1990, passes 204 million miles below Sol‘s southern pole. It was decommissioned on 30 June 2009.
2005 – Penn State’s Alex Wolszczan, the discoverer in 1992 of the first planets ever found outside our solar system, and Caltech’s Maciej Konacki discovered the smallest planet yet detected, in that same far-away planetary system.
2001 – STS-98 Launched. Atlantis shuttle launches with the “Destiny” module for the International Space Station. The sunset launched is described by many seasoned observers as one of the most beautiful launches ever seen.
1999 – STARDUST Delta 2 Launch (Comet Sample Return Mission). Stardust will visit Comet Wild-2 in 2004 and capture bits of comet using aerogel. The spacecraft will return to Earth in 2006. “Wild-2 is a relatively dim and new arrival to the inner solar system. Until recently it circled the sun in an orbit between Jupiter and Uranus, but everything changed in September 1974 whenWild-2 passed within 0.006 AU of Jupiter. That encounter with the giant planet, at only 10 times the distance which fragmented P/Shoemaker-Levy9 in 1994, altered Wild-2’s orbit so that its closest approach to the sun now lies just inside the orbit of Mars.” (Nasa Science News)
1991– Salyut-7 burns up in Earth’s atmosphere, overshooting it’s target and reentering over Argentina, scattering some of
its debris over the town of Capitan Bermudez.
1984 – STS-41-B Mission – Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered space walk using the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU).
1979 – Pluto moves inside Neptune‘s orbit for the first
time since either was discovered.
1889 – The Astronomical Society of the Pacific is founded in San Francisco. It is the first US national astronomy organization.
Birthdays
1963 – 
Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, American Naval officer and astronaut She has flown on two Space Shuttle missions, STS-115 and STS-126, during which she completed five spacewalks totaling 33 hours and 42 minutes.
1932 – Alfred Worden, American colonel, pilot, and astronaut was an American test pilot, engineer and NASA astronaut who was command module pilot for the Apollo 15 lunar mission in 1971. (d. 18 March 2020)
1926 – Konstantin Feoktistov, Russian engineer and astronaut who flew on Voskhod 1, the first spacecraft to carry three crew members. (d. 21 November 2009)
1893 – Joseph Algernon Pearce, Canadian astrophysicist and astronomer notable for studies on the structure of Milky Way and O-type stars. From 1940 to 1951, he was Director of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Saanich, British Columbia (d. 8 September 1988)