The Skylab space station re-enters Earth’s atmosphere after six years in orbit. It is perhaps the most highly anticipated return of any spacecraft ever, save Apollo 13.
All posts tagged ‘Apollo program’
2005: Samuel Alderson, inventor of the automotive crash-test dummy, dies. His creation saved countless lives … and amused millions along the way. Alderson graduated from high school at age 15, but the realities of the Great Depression repeatedly interrupted his college education: He needed to help his father run the family’s sheet-metal business in Southern [...]
1958: The United States enters the space age with the successful launch of the Explorer I satellite. Data from the satellite confirms the existence of a radiation belt girdling the Earth. Explorer I, known officially as Satellite 1958 Alpha, blasted into orbit from Cape Canaveral atop a Jupiter-C rocket, a modified version of Wernher von [...]
1967: Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee are killed on the launch pad when a flash fire engulfs their command module during testing for the first Apollo-Saturn mission. They are the first U.S. astronauts to die in a spacecraft. The command module, built by North American Aviation, was the prototype for those that would [...]
1972: President Richard M. Nixon announces that NASA will develop a space shuttle system, touting its reliability, reusability and low cost. See Also: Photo GalleryNASA: 50 Years of Towering Achievement The Mercury and Gemini programs had put Americans into Earth orbit. Apollo had been to the moon seven times — landing four times — and [...]