Beyond Earth History Blog

  Clyde William Tombaugh Clyde W. Tombaugh in Flagstaff, Arizona, 1931 American astronomer Clyde William Tombaugh was born in Streator, Illinois, on February 4, 1906. He was raised on farms in Kansas and became interested in astronomy as a boy. In 1926, at the age of 20, Tombaugh built his first telescope. Using his homemade telescopes, he made drawings of the planets Mars and Jupiter and sent them to Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. The astronomers at Lowell were so impressed with the young amateur’s powers of observation, they invited him to work at the observatory. Tombaugh worked there from 1929 to 1945.    Vesto Melvin Slipher (1875–1969), director of the observatory, commissioned Tombaugh to resume the search for Planet X, which had previously been led by Percival Lowell (1855–1916), founder of the Lowell Observatory. Tombaugh's task was to systematically image the night sky in pairs of photographs, then examine ...

   Explorer 1 – the first U.S satellite Artist's impression of Explorer 1. Credit: NASA/JPL On February 1, 1958, Explorer 1 was launched on an adapted Jupiter C (also called Juno I) rocket from LC-26A at the Cape Canaveral Missile Test Center, becoming the first U.S. satellite. It carried instrumentation for the study of cosmic rays, micrometeorites, and for monitoring of the satellite's temperature. Explorer 1 was the first spacecraft to detect the Van Allen radiation belt. Explorer I satellite installed atop the Jupiter-C launch vehicle. Credit: NASA    Launched late on January 31, 1958 (10:48 p.m. EST, or 03:48 UTC on February 1),  Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States. Following the launch of the Soviet Union’s  Sputnik 1  on October 4, 1957, the U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency was directed to launch a satellite using its Jupiter C rocket developed under the direction of Dr. Wernher von Braun  (1912–1977) . The Je...

 Apollo 14 – the landing at Fra Mauro The prime crew of the Apollo 14 lunar landing mission. From left to right they are: Command Module pilot, Stuart A. Roosa, Commander, Alan B. Shepard Jr., and Lunar Module pilot Edgar D. Mitchell. The Apollo 14 mission emblem is in the background. Credit: NASA Mission name: Apollo 14 Crew:     Alan B. Shepard Jr. – Commander    Stuart A. Roosa – Command Module Pilot         Edgar D. Mitchell – Lunar Module Pilot Spacecraft: Apollo CSM-110, Apollo LM-8 Launch vehicle: Saturn V SA-509 Launch site: Kennedy Space Center, LC-39A Launch date: 31 January 1971, 21:03:02 UTC Lunar landing date: 5 February 1971, 09:18:11 UTC, Fra Mauro Return launch: 6 February 1971, 18:48:42 UTC Landing date: 9 February 1971, 21:05:00 UTC Landing site: South Pacific Ocean Flight duration: 9 d, 00 h, 01 min, 58 s Apollo 14 space vehicle is launched from Pad ...

  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 ...