Beyond Earth History Blog

 Gaspra, the first asteroid encounter Visualization of the Galileo spacecraft as it flies past Gaspra. Credit: NASA/Andrzej Mirecki Galileo spacecraft, en route to Jupiter, flew by the asteroid (951) Gaspra at 22:36:46 UTC on October 29, 1991. The closest approach was 1,601 km,  and the relative speed was about 8 kilometers per second.  It was the first ever asteroid encounter by a spacecraft. In all, 57 images of Gaspra were taken by Galileo's SSI camera, covering about 80% of the asteroid, the closest taken from a distance of 5,300 km. The best images have a resolution of 54 meters per pixel.    The objectives of the encounter included determining the size, shape, cratering characteristics, and composition of the asteroid, as well as surveying the surrounding environment. Due to the failure of the spacecraft's main antenna, the results of the observations were recorded on the magnetic tape of the on-board recorder and most of images taken were not transmitted ...

 (69230) Hermes   The recovery image of asteroid Hermes by Brian Skiff using the LONEOS 59-cm Schmidt telescope on October 15, 2003.  Credit: Brian A. Skiff, Lowell Observatory Asteroid (69230) Hermes was discovered by German astronomer Karl Reinmuth (1892–1979) at Heidelberg Observatory on October 28, 1937. Only four days of observations could be made before the asteroid became too faint to be seen in the telescopes. This was not enough to calculate an orbit, and Hermes became a lost asteroid. It thus did not receive a number — only the provisional designation 1937 UB — but Reinmuth nevertheless named it after the Greek god Hermes. On October 15, 2003, Brian A. Skiff of the LONEOS project in Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, made an asteroid observation that, when the orbit was calculated backwards in time (by Timothy B. Spahr, Steven Chesley and Paul Chodas), turned out to be a rediscovery of Hermes. The asteroid has been assigned sequential number 69230.  ...

STEREO  Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory Mission     Artist's concept of one of the STEREO spacecraft in orbit around the Sun. Credit: NASA STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) is the third mission in NASA's Solar Terrestrial Probes program (STP). It employs two nearly identical space-based observatories – one lagging, the other leading the Earth in heliocentric orbit around the Sun – to provide the first-ever stereoscopic measurements to study the Sun and the nature of its coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. These events are responsible for large solar energetic particle events in interplanetary space and are the primary cause of major geomagnetic storms at Earth.     The two spacecraft were launched to drift slowly away from the Earth in opposite directions at about 10 degrees per year for the lagging spacecraft and 20 degrees per year for the leading one. Optimal longitudinal separation of about sixty degrees was achieved after two years....

Sputnik 2 The first animal in or bit Laika, confined in her mock capsule Following the enormous propaganda success of the launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971) approached Sergei Korolev (1907–1966), chief designer of the Soviet space program at Design Bureau No. 1 (OKB-1), with a request to conduct another space flight to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, which was celebrated on November 7. At the time, OKB-1 was working on a large research satellite codenamed Object D, but it could not be ready in time. Object D was later launched as Sputnik 3 in May 1958.    In response to Khrushchev's request, Korolev proposed sending a dog into orbit. Dogs had been launched by the Soviets on suborbital flights in high-altitude research rockets since 1951, to study the effects of rocket flight and weightlessness, and preliminary studies for an orbital flight of a dog had already been discussed. The Presidium of the Cen...

 Iapetus (Saturn VIII)        Natural-color image of Iapetus. The view was obtained by the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 27, 2015 at a distance of approximately 1 million kilometers from Iapetus. Image scale on Iapetus is about 6 kilometers. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural-color view. The moon's brightness has been enhanced in order to make the dark terrain visible. The image also was enlarged by a factor of two compared to the original data. The large basin at lower right, within the dark terrain, is named Turgis. The slightly smaller crater at the nine o'clock position is Falsaron. The two prominent craters just above image center are Roland and Turpin. At the limb around the three o'clock position is the darkened rim of the crater Naimon.  Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute Iapetus (Saturn VIII), a moon of Saturn, was discovered by Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625...

 First picture from space    First photograph of the Earth taken from an altitude of 65 miles (105 kilometers). Credit: White Sands Missile Range/Applied Physics Laboratory   The first pictures of Earth as seen from space were taken from a camera on V-2 No. 13 rocket on October 24, 1946. The grainy, black-and-white photos were taken from an altitude of 65 miles (104.6 kilometers) by a 35-millimeter DeVry motion picture camera riding on a captured V-2 missile (Upper Air Rocket Number 13) launched from the White Sands Missile Range (WSMR).    Rocket V-2 No.13 was assembled and launched by General Electric company with both captured German components and re-manufactured ones. Pictures were taken every second and a half. The rocket fell back to Earth and ploughed into the ground, smashing the camera, but the film was safe inside its steel cassette. Before 1946, the highest pictures ever taken of the Earth’s surface were from the Explorer II balloon, which ...

ʻOumuamua The first messenger from distant stars   1I/ʻOumuamua, imaged with the 4.2 meter William Herschel Telescope in the Canary Islands on 28 October 2017, is seen as a point of light in the centre of the image. Background stars appear linear because the telescope is tracking the moving object. Credit: Alan Fitzsimmons (Astrophysics Research Centre, Queen's University Belfast), Isaac Newton Group 1I/ʻOumuamua (formally designated 1I/2017 U1), the first known interstellar object detected passing through the Solar System, was discovered by Canadian astronomer Robert Weryk (b. 1981) on October 19, 2017 at Haleakalā Observatory, Hawaii, where the Pan-STARRS1 telescope system detected an object moving rapidly west at 6.2 degrees per day. A search of images from the previous nights found the object had also been imaged on October 18. Additional images acquired with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) on October 22 confirmed that this object is unique, with the highest known hyp...

Mariner V Mission to Venus    Mariner V spacecraft. Credit: NASA   Following Mariner II’s successful flyby of Venus in December 1962, and Mariner IV’s successful flyby of Mars in July 1965, in December 1965, NASA approved the Mariner-Venus 1967 project to modify the Mariner IV backup spacecraft for a mission to flyby Venus in 1967. The primary scientific objective of the Mariner V mission was to investigate the atmosphere, the ionosphere, and the magnetosphere of Venus. Secondary objectives were to acquire engineering experience by converting and operating a spacecraft designed for a flight to Mars into one to be flown to Venus and to obtain information on the interplanetary environment during a period of increasing solar activity. Major modifications to the spacecraft to operate closer to the Sun included the addition of a Sun shield and reversing the orientation and reducing the size of the solar arrays. Engineers removed the imaging system, since scientists expected th...