This Day in Astro History

1983 – Twenty years after Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman ever to go into space Sally Ride became the first American woman in orbit, aboard Space Shuttle Challenger STS-7.
She was one of 35 women selected from the 1,251 women who applied to the astronaut corps. Sally Ride was born on May 26, 1951 in Los Angeles. California.
Dr. Ride had a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics. She also had a Masters degree in Physics and a Ph.D. in Physics.
She was accepted into the astronaut corps in 1978 and completed her training as a mission specialist in 1979. Her second flight was also aboard Challenger in 1984.
Dr. Ride was a member of the team chosen to investigate the explosion of Challenger in 1986. Sally Ride left the astronaut corps in 1987 to join the faculty of Stanford University, her alma mater. Sally Ride died at 61, on July 23, 2007.

1983 – Canadian Communications Satellite Anik C2 (Telesat 7) (Television, owned by CHUM, is deployed from the shuttle bay of STS-7. It’s operations were completed on 1998-01-07.

1959 – NASA funded study of a lunar exploration program based on Saturn I rocket. It authorized $150,000 for Army Ordnance Missile Command studies
of a lunar exploration program based on Saturn-boosted systems. To be included were circumlunar vehicles, unmanned and manned; close lunar orbiters; hard lunar impacts; and soft lunar landings with stationary or roving payloads. Astronautix.com

1178 – The day four monks from Canterbury reported seeing “two horns of light” on the shaded part of the Moon. “Was the Formation of a 20-km Diameter Impact Crater on the Moon, now named Giordani Bruno.
It appears to be a young crater however such an impact would have sent a long duration meteor shower to Earth and this observation has never been recorded.

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