Space History for January 23

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1779
Charles Messier cataloged M56 (NGC 6779, globular cluster in Lyra).
ref: messier.seds.org

1805
Died, Claude Chappe, French engineer (optical telegraph)
ref: en.wikipedia.org

1866
George R. Percy received a patent for an "Improved vacuum-pan for condensing milk and other substances." The process is one of the predecessors of the freeze-dried foods used in current human space missions (2022).
ref: patents.google.com

1903
Born, Walther Johannes Riedel, German guided missile propulsion expert in World War II, member of the German Rocket Team in the US after the war, hired by North American to expand on German technology for the Rocketdyne division, UFO study group member
ref: www.astronautix.com

1906
A. Kopff discovered asteroid #582 Olympia.

1907
Born, Hideki Yukawa, Japanese physicist (Nobel 1949 "for his prediction of the existence of mesons on the basis of theoretical work on nuclear forces")

Hideki Yukawa (23 January 1907 - 8 September 1981) was a Japanese theoretical physicist and the first Japanese person to win a Nobel prize. In 1935 he published his theory of mesons, which explained the interaction between protons and neutrons, and was a major influence on research into elementary particles. In 1940 he became a professor in Kyoto University. In 1940 he won the Imperial Prize of the Japan Academy, and in 1943 the Decoration of Cultural Merit from the Japanese government. In 1949 he became a professor at Columbia University, and also won the Nobel prize for physics.
ref: www.nobelprize.org

1908
A. Kopff discovered asteroids #657 Gunlod and #658 Asteria.

1927
O. Oikawa discovered asteroid #1266 Tone.

1930
Born, William R. Pogue (at Okemah, Oklahoma, USA), Colonel USAF, NASA astronaut (Skylab 4; 84d 1.25h in spaceflight) (deceased)

Astronaut William R. Pogue, NASA photo
Source: Wikipedia
ref: en.wikipedia.org

1930
Clyde Tombaugh took the first photographs in a six night observation that led to the discovery of Pluto.
ref: lowell.edu

1941
Ground was broken for the NACA Lewis Research Center, now known as The NASA Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field (GRC).
ref: history.nasa.gov

1949
Born, Robert D. Cabana (at Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA), Colonel USMC, NASA astronaut (STS 41, STS 53, STS 65, STS 88; nearly 37d 22.75h total time in spaceflight)

Astronaut Robert D. Cabana, STS-88 mission commander, NASA photo (1998)
ref: en.wikipedia.org

1950
K. Reinmuth discovered asteroid #1612 Hirose and #1636 Porter.

1970 11:31:00 GMT
NASA launched the second generation weather satellite ITOS 1.
ref: nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov

1970 11:52:00 GMT
Australia's first amateur radio satellite (Oscar 5) was launched from Vandenberg AFB, California.
ref: nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov

1979
W. Liller discovered asteroid #3040 Kozai.

1980
L. G. Karachkina discovered asteroids #3215 Lapko and #3286 Anatoliya.

1983
Most of Cosmos 1402, a Soviet spy satellite, fell into the Indian Ocean amid fears its radioactive reactor could spread contamination over a large area. The reactor fell from orbit on 7 February.
ref: www.businessinsider.com

2003
NASA's Pioneer 10's signal was last detected, from a distance of 82 AU, after an uplink was transmitted to turn off the last operational experiment, the Geiger Tube Telescope (GTT), but lock-on to the sub-carrier signal for data downlink was not achieved.

Pioneer 10 was launched 3 March 1972. This mission was the first to be sent to the outer solar system and the first to investigate the planet Jupiter, after which it followed an escape trajectory from the solar system. The spacecraft achieved its closest approach to Jupiter on 3 December 1973, when it flew over the cloud tops at a distance of approximately 2.8 Jovian radii (about 200,000 km - 130,000 miles). After more than a decade in space, Pioneer 10 crossed the orbit of Neptune on 13 June 1983 and became the first human-built space vehicle to leave the Solar system. As of 1 January 1997 Pioneer 10 was at about 67 AU from the Sun near the ecliptic plane and heading outward from the Sun at 2.6 AU/year and downstream through the heliomagnetosphere towards the tail region and interstellar space. This solar system escape direction is unique because the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft (and the Pioneer 11 spacecraft) are heading in the opposite direction towards the nose of the heliosphere in the upstream direction relative to the inflowing interstellar gas. Pioneer 10 is heading generally towards the red star Aldebaran, which forms the eye of Taurus (The Bull). The journey over a distance of 68 light years to Aldebaran will require about two million years to complete. Routine tracking and project data processing operatations were terminated on 31 March 1997 for budget reasons. Occasional tracking continued later under support of the Lunar Prospector project at NASA Ames Research Center with retrieval of energetic particle and radio science data. The last successful data acquisitions through NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) occurred on 3 March 2002, the thirtieth anniversary of Pioneer 10's launch date, and on 27 April 2002. The spacecraft signal was last detected, from a distance of 82 AU from the Sun, on 23 January 2003 after an uplink was transmitted to turn off the last operational experiment, the Geiger Tube Telescope (GTT), but lock-on to the sub-carrier signal for data downlink was not achieved. No signal at all was detected during a final attempt on 6-7 February 2003. Pioneer Project staff at NASA Ames then concluded that the spacecraft power level had fallen below that needed to power the onboard transmitter, so no further attempts would be made.

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