2002 – Asteroid 2002 EM7, 300 to 400 meters (1,000 to 1,300 feet) in width, came within 450,000 kilometers (288,000 miles) of Earth. Observers on Earth didn’t find it until four days later, March 12th –one of the nearest misses known. This asteroid could flatten a city the size of Atlanta.
2001 – International Space Station Expedition Two Commander Yury Usachev, Flight Engineer James Voss and Flight Engineer Susan Helms will fly a four-month mission and work with 18 different experiments.
1999 – Mars Global Surveyor – the first phase of the primary mapping mission begins.
1978 – The first radio episode of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, is transmitted on BBC Radio 4
1965 – Alexei Leonov made the first spacewalk when he left the Voskhod 2.
1618 – Johannes Kepler discovers the third law of planetary motion.
Birthdays
1914 – Yakov Borisovich Zel’dovich who played a key role in developing the theory of black hole evaporation due to Hawking radiation. (d. 2 December 1987)
1804 – Alvan Clark, American astronomer and telescope maker. (d. 19 August 1887)