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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Today in History – December 31, 1968 – The Russian TU-144 is the first commercial supersonic airliner flown. Building on their supersonic military jets, the Russians developed the first supersonic commercial airliner called the Tupolev 144. Decades later the U.K. developed the Concorde supersonic passenger jet. Athough successful as a collaborative technical effort, it did [...]

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Today in History – December 30, 1924 – Edwin Powell Hubble announces his discovery of a galaxy outside the Milky Way. Edwin Hubble was one of the leading astronomers of the twentieth century. His discovery that not only one, but countless galaxies, exist beyond our own Milky Way galaxy forever changed our understanding of the [...]

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