2001 – The End of a Space Odyssey. Russian Space Station MIR returns to Earth. After 15 years and over 150 visitors, the well used and well loved station is deorbited and sent crashing into a watery grave in the South Pacific, 40 degrees south latitude, 160 degrees west longitude. Eye witnesses to the fiery downfall attributed sonic booms to the estimated 20 to 25 tons of remnants moving quickly toward the Earth’s surface.
1983 – Soviet/French Astron orbital station designed to observe the universe in ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths is launched from Baikonur. The station ceased function in June 1989, well past its expected one year mission lifetime.
1965 – The US launched Gemini 3 into Earth orbit carrying astronauts Virgil (Gus) Grissom and John W. Young. Grissom and Young orbited the Earth three times. The Gemini spacecraft were larger than the Mercury capsules, weighing about 8,400 pounds, and they carried two astronauts rather than one. Gemini 3 was the first manned mission of the Gemini program, after two unoccupied test flights. (NASA)
1961 – Death of Valentin Vasilyevich Bondarenko, Ukrainian. He was killed on the 10th day of a 15 day endurance experiment in a pressure chamber filled with a pure oxygen atmosphere. His death was concealed until 1980. A crater on the Moon’s far side is named after him.
Birthdays
1912 – Wernher Von Braun was an important rocket developer and champion of space exploration from the 1930s to the 1970s.
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1749 – Pierre-Simon Laplace was a polymath and chancellor of the Senate under the First French Empire. Among many mathHe restated and developed the nebular hypothesis of the origin of the Solar System and was one of the first scientists to suggest an idea similar to that of a black hole, with Stephen Hawking stating that “Laplace essentially predicted the existence of black holes”.