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  Mercury-Redstone 2  Ham – t he first hominid in space A three-year-old chimpanzee, named Ham, in the biopack couch for the MR-2 suborbital test flight. Credit: NASA Mercury-Redstone 2 (MR-2) was launched on a suborbital flight at 16:55 UTC on January 31, 1961, from LC-5 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The mission was to test the Mercury capsule and the launch vehicle before launching the first American astronaut. The capsule carried a chimpanzee named Ham, the first hominid in space. The capsule and Ham landed safely in the Atlantic Ocean 16 minutes and 39 seconds after launch.    Officially, Ham was known as “Number 65” before his flight, and only renamed "Ham", after the Holoman Aerospace Medical Center, upon his successful return to Earth. He was taught to pull levers in response to the flashing light. Ham was born in July 1957 and was 3 years 8 months old at launch.  The objectives of MR-2 were to: (1) obtain physiological and performance data on a primate in ...
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   STS-51-L – Space Shuttle Challenger disaster STS-51-L crew. Crew members are (left to right, front row) astronauts Michael J. Smith, Francis R. (Dick) Scobee and Ronald E. McNair; Ellison S. Onizuka, Sharon Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis and Judith A. Resnik. Credit: NASA On January 28, 1986, 1986, a catastrophic structural failure 73 seconds after liftoff of the Space Shuttle, mission STS-51-L, destroyed the orbiter OV-099 Challenger killing all seven crew members – Francis R. "Dick" Scobee (1939–1986), Michael J. Smith (1945–1986), Ellison S. Onizuka (1946–1986), Judith A. Resnik (1949–1986), Ronald E. McNair (1950–1986), Gregory B. Jarvis (1944–1986) and S. Christa McAuliffe (1948–1986).    The disaster was caused by the failure of the two redundant O-ring seals in a joint in the Space Shuttle's right solid rocket booster (SRB). The record-low temperatures of the launch reduced the elasticity of the rubber O-rings, reducing their ability to seal th...
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   Apollo 1 (AS-204) Pad Fire Apollo 1 crew. Astronauts, left to right, Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, pose in front of Launch Complex 34 which is housing their Saturn 1 launch vehicle. Credit: NASA Crew:  Virgil "Gus" Ivan Grissom Edward Higgins White, II Roger Bruce Chaffee Apollo Pad Fire: Emergency Transmission: Jan. 27, 1967; 6:31:05 p.m. EST (23:31:05 UTC) Launch Complex 34 Saturn-IB AS-204 CSM-012 On January 27, 1967, a cabin fire inside the Apollo Command Module 012 during a practice session for the first manned Apollo flight (AS-204, later redesignated Apollo 1), at Cape Kennedy Launch Complex 34, killed all three crew members — Lt. Col. Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom (1926–1967), a veteran of Mercury and Gemini missions; Lt. Col. Edward H. White II (1930–1967), the astronaut who had performed the first United States extravehicular activity during the Gemini program; and Roger B. Chaffee (1935–1967), an astronaut preparing for his first space flight. ...
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 Mars Exploration Rover B (Opportunity) Artist's conception of Mars Exploration Rover on the surface of Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell University/Maas Digital LLC Official name: Mars Exploration Rover B (Opportunity) Spacecraft name: Mars Exploration Rover 1 (MER 1) COSPAR ID: 2003-032A Nation: USA Mission design and management: NASA / JPL Launch date and time: 8 July 2003, 03:18:15 UT Launch vehicle: Delta 7925H (no. D299) Launch site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, SLC-17B Objective: Mars surface lander and rover Mars Exploration Rover B (Opportunity) was launched on July 8, 2003. It landed in Meridiani Planum on the surface of Mars on January 25, 2004, embarking on a more than 14-year mission. The total distance driven by the rover was 45.16 km and the last communication with it was on June 10, 2018, wh...
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    Voyager 2 Uranus Encounter Artist’s impression of Voyager passing Uranus, created for NASA in 1981. Credit: NASA/JPL/Don Davis Voyager 2 flew by Uranus on January 24, 1986. At the closest approach, at 17:58:51 UT, the spacecraft came within 81,500 km of the planet's cloudtops. The probe discovered new rings, eleven previously unknown moons, and a magnetic field tilted at 55° off-axis and off-center. Voyager 2 remains the only spacecraft to explore Uranus. After the encounter the probe proceeded on its journey to Neptune.    The spacecraft's observations at the distance of Uranus and Neptune were hampered by the need to take images in low light conditions. The intensity of sunlight on Uranus is about 360 times lower, and on Neptune about 900 times lower, than on Earth. This forced the spacecraft to take images of passing bodies using long exposure times, which risked blurring the images due to the spacecraft's own motion and vibrations. At the same ...
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