Today in History – January 31, 1958 – Explorer 1 became the United States of America’s first satellite to orbit the Earth after it was launched on January 31, 1958. After the Soviet Union’s successful launch of Sputnik I on October 4, 1957, the United States of America embarked upon a program to launch it [...]

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Today in History – January 28, 1986 – Space Shuttle Challenger explodes after launch, killing the entire crew. American’s stared in shock at their televisions watching the Challenger accident in full motion video. The 35th Challenger’s flight had been previously scheduled for January 22, but delayed because of bad weather, high winds and icicles on [...]

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Today in History – January 14, 2005 – Huygens Probe Lands on Titan. After spending seven years in space, the Huygens probe separated from the main Cassini spacecraft on December 24, 2004, and spent the next three weeks traveling to the moon Titan. After beginning its descent, it transmitted scientific data for nearly five hours [...]

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Today in History – January 4, 2004 – Spirit Rover Lands on Mars. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s  twin Mars rovers -  called Spirit and Opportunity – landed on January 4, 2004 and January 25, 2004, respectively. They were originally scheduled to operate for three months, but were actively collecting and transmitting data for over 6 [...]

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Today in History – January 2, 1959 – the first lunar space ship shot to escape the Earth’s gravitational pull. The unmanned Luna I was launched by the Soviet Union less than two years after their launch of Sputnik, the Earth’s first artificial satellite. Luna 1 passed to within 4,600 miles of the moon before [...]

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