May the 4th be with you.
2003 – Soyuz TMA-1 disembarks from the International Space Station and immediately began its return to Earth, marking the first entry and descent for this Soyuz class. During the re-entry, the guidance failed and the capsule reverted to a rolling ballistic re-entry. This subjected the crew to over 8 G’s, as opposed to under 3 G’s for a normal Soyuz re-entry. It also resulted in a landing 460 km short of the target.
1989 – Magellan mission to Venus. Launched from the payload bay of the Space Shuttle Atlantis STS-30. Mission objective: to obtain high resolution images of the entire planet’s surface. Cruise time to Venus 1 year, 3 months and 6 days. After a wildly successful mission and extended mission the spacecraft was commanded to plunge into the planet’s dense atmosphere Tuesday, October 11, 1994.
1967 – Lunar Orbiter 4 launched . It provided a comprehensive photographic survey of the lunar nearside and farside, including the polar regions.
Birthdays
1956 – Michael Landon Gernhardt. Selection: NASA Group 14 (1992). Time in space: 43d 7h 1m. STS-69, STS-83, STS-94, STS-104. Gernhardt presently serves as a member of the astronaut office EVA branch, as Principal Investigator of the Prebreathe Reduction Program, and as Manager of JSC’s Environmental Physiology Laboratory. (2025)
