2025 – Launch of the Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station. SpaceX Crew-10 is the tenth operational NASA Commercial Crew Program flight and the 16th crewed orbital flight of a Crew Dragon spacecraft.
2002 – Space Adventures, Ltd., announced the debut of the Cosmopolis XXI Aerospace System (C-21), a next-generation spacecraft designed specifically for sub-orbital space tourist flights. The project was abandoned in 2010 due to the expense.
2002 – NASA announces “Sentry” a new Web-based asteroid monitoring system.
Super Star Geologist Gene Shoemaker
2000 – The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft is renamed to honor the late Dr. Eugene M. Shoemaker, legendary and inspirational planetary geologist. Shoemaker was part of the leading comet discovery team of the past century, perhaps most famous for finding the comet (Shoemaker-Levy 9) that broke up and collided with Jupiter in 1994. NEAR went into orbit around the asteroid Eros on February 14, 2000. The last data from the overachieving Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR Shoemaker) mission to asteroid Eros was received via NASA’s Deep Space Network telecommunications system on February 28, 2001.
1963 – Pedro Francisco Duque. ESA astronaut. First Spanish astronaut. 2 spaceflights, 18.8 days in space. Flew to orbit on STS-95 (1998), Soyuz TMA-3 (2003-2004).
Pedro Francisco Duque Insignia
1939 – William Benjamin Lenoir, NASA Group 6 (1967)STS-5 (d. 26 August 2010)
1934 – Eugene Andrew ‘Gene’ Cernan. Selection NASA Group 3, 1963. Time in space 23d 14h 15m. Total EVAs, 4times, 24h 11m. Gemini 9A, Apollo 10, Apollo 17 (d. 16 January 2017)
1879 – Albert Einstein. Developer of a theory of gravity in terms of spacetime curvature dependent on the energy density. 1921 Physics Nobel Prize winner for work done 15 years earlier on the photoelectric effect, the basis of modern light detectors. Einstein did not complete his secondary education nor did he pass his first attempt at entry to the Swiss Polytechnic Institute. He became a citizen without a state and studied mathematics, played the violin and learned to sail. Einstein mistrusted authority and came to know the importance of self-learning. His theories were revolutionary and not excepted by conservative thinkers until proved experimentally. Until this time, theories of electromagnetism and mechanics were separate studies of physics. Einstein’s theories required a “struggle” beyond classical physics to illuminate how these physics were related by the speed of light. Einstein published the paper outlining his General Theory of Relativity in 1916. In 1919, Arthur Eddington confirmed that light from a distant star was indeed “bent” by the gravity of our sun, By 1920 he was famous and considered one of the greatest physicists ever. He died on April 18, 1955 at Princeton, New Jersey . In 1999 Time Magazine named him the Person of the Century.
“What is inconceivable about the universe is that it should be at all conceivable”. A.E.
1835 – Giovanni Schiaparelli born in Savigliano, Kingdom of Sardinia, was an observer of solar system objects and a scholar of the history of classical astronomy. “During the planet’s “Great Opposition” of 1877, he observed a dense network of linear structures on the surface of Mars which he called “canali” in Italian, meaning “channels” but the term was mistranslated into English as “canals.”
![Giovanni Schiaparelli](https://www.thisdayinastrohistory.com/thisday/images/1835_mar14_Giovanni_Schiaparelli_1890s.jpg")