2013 – The docking of Soyuz TMA-08M to the space station was accomplished after four orbits and under six hours post launch. The event set a new record for the fastest manned docking for the International Space Station program. Previous Soyuz launches had taken two days.
2012 – Origins: “Organics Probably Formed Easily in Early Solar System.” Ciesla, F. J., & Sandford, S. A. Ames Research Center Nuevo, M., Cooper, G., & Sandford, S. A. (2018). Deoxyribose and deoxysugar derivatives from photoprocessed astrophysical ice analogues and comparison to meteorites. Nature Communications, 9(1), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07693-x
1999 – Mars Global Surveyor deployment of high gain antenna. This was the first mission in a long-term program of Mars exploration known as the Mars Surveyor Program that is managed by JPL for NASA’s Office of Space Science.
1998 – Galileo, Europa 14 Flyby
1974 – Mariner 10, the first Mercury Probe, 1st flyby.
1807 – Vesta, the brightest asteroid, and the only one sometimes seen by naked eye, is discovered by Olbers.
Birthdays
1931 – Aleksey Aleksandrovich Gubarev, a Russian pilot cosmonaut 1963-1981. 37.5 days in space aboard Soyuz 17 (1975), Soyuz 28 (1978). (d. 21 February 2015)
1947 – Aleksandr Stepanovich Viktorenko – Kazakhstan pilot cosmonaut 1978-1997. 489 cumulative days in space aboard Soyuz TM-3 (1987), Soyuz TM-8 (1989), Soyuz TM-14 (1992), Soyuz TM-20 (1994).(d. 10 August 2023).
1965 – William Anthony ‘Bill’ Oefelein American test pilot astronaut 1998-2007. 1 spaceflight, 12.9 days in space. Flew to orbit on STS-116 (2006).