2001 – Planet Hunting Team wins National Academy of Sciences prestigious Draper Award  Led by R. Paul Butler  and Geoffrey Marcy a multi-year exploration of 1,100  star systems within 300 light years of Earth finds only planet thus far found to transit a host star, two sub-Saturn mass planets, and a multiple-planet system.   What is the difference in the astrogeology among star types?

1996 – Space Shuttle program: STS-72 launches from the Kennedy Space Center marking the start of the 74th Space Shuttle mission and the 10th flight of Endeavour.

1962 – In his State of the Union Message to the Congress, President John F . Kennedy said: “With the approval of this Congress, we have undertaken in the past year a great new effort in outer space. Our aim is not simply to be first on the moon, any more than Charles Lindbergh’s real aim was to be first to Paris. His aim was to develop the techniques and the authority of this country and other countries in the field of the air and the atmosphere, and our objective in making this effort, which we hope will place one of our citizens on the moon, is to develop in a new frontier of science, commerce and cooperation, the position of the United States and the free world. This nation belongs among the first to explore it. And among the first – if not the first – we shall be.“