2007 – Comet C/2006 P1 (McNaught) reaches perihelion becoming the brightest comet in the southern skies in more than 40 years. See stunning images here.(ESO)

2005  – Deep Impact launches from Cape Canaveral on a
Delta II rocket.

1986 – Congressman Bill Nelson lifts off from Kennedy Space Center aboard Columbia on mission STS-61-C as a
Mission Specialist.

1999 – Japan’s probe Nozomi to Mars delayed.
TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s first spacecraft to Mars will reach its destination in late 2003, four years later than initially planned because of a fuel shortage. The half-ton unmanned Nozomi, which means “hope,” took off July 4, 1998 from southern Japan and was scheduled to reach the orbit around Mars in October this year.  Its arrival will be delayed because the spacecraft spent more fuel than expected to correct its course on Dec.21.  The spacecraft will require less fuel to go into orbit around Mars if it waits until December 2003, when the planet begins a slower orbit around the sun that lasts through January 2004, Numata said. 

1958 – Eisenhower proposed to Russia that outer space should be used for peaceful purposes. – President Eisenhower, answering a December 10,1957, letter from Soviet Premier Nikolai A. Bulganin regarding a summit conference on disarmament, proposed that Russia and the United States “. . . agree that outer space should be used for peaceful purposes.”

1820 – British Royal Astronomical Society Founded