Today in History – December 19, 1972 – Apollo 17, last of Apollo Moon landing series, returns to Earth. It was the sixth and last Apollo mission in which humans walked on the lunar surface. Also on this date in 1958, the first radio message was broadcast from space from the U.S. launched Explorer-1. Later [...]

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Today in History – December 18, 1958 – SCORE (Signal Communication by Orbital Relay Equipment) was the world’s first communications satellite to be put into orbit. As the first American satellite to relay communications from one ground station to another, SCORE used a tape recorder to store and forward voice messages. It was used to [...]

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Today in History – December 8, 1993 – First functional GPS (Global Positioning System) was developed. The technology initially developed for military use eventually made its way into our daily lives- most notably in cars and cell phones. Using information from a number of satellites orbiting the Earth (originally with 24, now a total of [...]

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Today in History – November 28, 1964 – Mariner 4, was launched and became the first successful mission to Mars. Reaching Mars on a flyby on July 14 and 15, 1965, it was the first spacecraft to return close-up images of the surface (center image above) and lasted three years in solar orbit. In Mariner [...]

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Today in History – November 19, 1969 – The Apollo 12 becomes the second successful manned lunar landing with astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean. The Apollo 12 mission almost failed at launch due to a leaking hydrogen tank; fortunately launch crew managed to change it before takeoff. The failure of the television camera was [...]

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