Space History for March 2

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1791
Long-distance communication was sped up with the unveiling of a semaphore machine in Paris, France.

1840
Died, Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers, German astronomer (discovered comets, asteroids Pallas and Vesta, Olbers' paradox: "In a static infinite universe the night sky should be bright")

1930
The first US indoor glider flight took place in the St. Louis (Missouri) Terminal Building.

1931
Born, Duane F Graveline, Newport Vermont, astronaut

1943
M Laugier discovered asteroids #1884 Skip and #2384 Schulhof.

1949
Captain James Gallagher landed his B-50 Superfortress Lucky Lady II in Fort Worth, Texas after completing the first non-stop around-the-world airplane flight in 94 hours and one minute.

1968 18:29:23 GMT
USSR launched the Zond 4 flight test to a distance of 300,000 km from Earth.
Zond 4 was launched 2 March 1968 to a distance of 300,000 km from Earth to explore circumterrestrial space and to flight test the new systems and equipment. The launch was made away from the Moon to avoid complications from Lunar gravity. Zond 4 was a cylindrical capsule approximately 4.5 meters in length and 2.2 to 2.72 meters in diameter, with two solar panels attached on opposite sides of the body spanning a total of about 9 meters. The spacecraft carried proton detectors and radio test relays among its instrumentation. This spacecraft was an unmanned test of the capsule, and a precursor to a manned spacecraft: The Zond series was specified by the Soviets as fully capable of carrying a human crew around the Moon.

Zond 4's return to Earth was supposed to be made by a skip re-entry, but apparently an attitude control error led to the angle of attack being too steep. The spacecraft entered the atmosphere at an excessively high speed over West Africa, and ground controllers set off the self-destruct mechanism over the Gulf of Guinea at an altitude of 10 km.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=1968-013A

1969
In Toulouse, France, the first test flight of the Concorde was conducted.

1976
C-I Lagerkvist discovered asteroid #2274 Ehrsson.

1978 15:28:00 GMT
USSR launched Soyuz 28 with Czech Vladimír Remek aboard, the first non-Russian and non-American traveler to go into space.
Soyuz 28, launched 2 March 1978, carried cosmonauts A.A. Gubarev (USSR) and V. Remek (Czechoslovak Socialist Republic) to the Soviet space station Salyut 6. It was the first international "Intercosmos" team to carry out scientific research and experiments jointly developed by Soviet and Czech specialists. Soyuz 28 returned to Earth 10 March 1978.

1981
H Debehogne discovered asteroid #3121; and S J Bus discovered asteroids #2884 Reddish, #2919 Dali, #2980, #2981 Chagall, #2990, #3000 Leonardo, #3122, #3207, #3252, #3304, #3524, #3528, #3529, #3530, #3536, #3593, #3619, #3741 and #3742.

1982
Died, Philip K. Dick, science fiction writer

1983
Compact Disc recordings developed by Phillips and Sony were introduced to the public.

1984
H Debehogne discovered asteroid #3390.

1995 01:38:13 EST (GMT -5:00:00)
NASA launched STS 67 (Endeavour 8, 68th Shuttle mission) with the ASTRO-2 ultraviolet telescope package aboard.
After a smooth countdown, STS 67's liftoff on 2 March 1995 was delayed for about a minute due to concerns about a heater system on the flash evaporator system. A backup heater was used, and the countdown proceeded.

Endeavour's long flight allowed sustained examination of the "hidden universe" of ultraviolet light. Astro-2 was the second flight of the three ultraviolet telescopes flown on Astro-1, mounted on an Instrument Pointing System on the Spacelab pallet in the cargo bay. The Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope (HUT), developed at The Johns Hopkins University, performed spectroscopy in the far ultraviolet region of the spectrum to identify physical processes and chemical composition of a celestial object. Improvements made to the HUT after Astro-1 made it three times more sensitive. The Wisconsin Ultraviolet Photo-Polarimeter Experiment (WUPPE), built at the University of Wisconsin, measured photometry and polarization of ultraviolet radiation from astronomical objects. The Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT), sponsored by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, took wide-field photographs of objects in ultraviolet light.

The STS 67 crew began activating Astro-2 only hours after liftoff for around-the-clock observations. Observational sequences were planned on a daily basis in two orbit (three hour) blocks, with one telescope assigned priority in each block. Astro-2 demonstrated the benefits of human interaction in on-orbit astronomy: Besides being able to position the orbiter most advantageously for observations, the crew members could also manually acquire the observation target if desired.

The Astro-2 experiment set aimed at exploring 23 different science programs, and all were achieved. HUT, considered a complement to the Hubble Space Telescope, completed more than 200 separate observations of more than 100 celestial objects. Investigators believed the telescope collected enough data to meet its primary mission objective: detecting the presence of intergalactic helium, a telltale remnant of the theoretical Big Bang explosion that is believed to have begun the universe. HUT, in conjunction with the Hubble telescope, took ultraviolet measurements of Jupiter's aurora; it also studied Jupiter's moon Io, and the Venusian and Martian atmospheres.

UIT cameras imaged about two dozen large spiral galaxies for inclusion in an atlas of such galaxies, and made the first ultraviolet images of the entire Moon. It also studied rare, hot stars that are 100 times as hot as the sun; elliptical galaxies and some of the faintest galaxies in the universe. Investigators were disappointed upon developing UIT film to learn that one of its two cameras had malfunctioned, undetected, on orbit, but an initial assessment showed that 80 percent of the science objectives would still be met.

WUPPE yielded a "treasure chest of data," according to its principal investigator, greatly expanding the database on ultraviolet spectropolarimetry. Targets for study of the interstellar medium included dust clouds in the Milky Way and a nearby galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. WUPPE also studied several types of stars, including Wolf-Rayet and Be stars. It also was able to capitalize on an opportunity to study three recently exploding novae.

STS-67 became the first advertised Shuttle mission connected to the Internet. Users of more than 200,000 computers from 59 countries logged on to the Astro-2 home page at Marshall Space Flight Center; more than 2.4 million requests were recorded during the mission, many answered by the crew on-orbit.

Other payloads carried by STS 67 were: Two Get Away Special canisters located in the payload bay held the Australian-built Endeavour telescope; also built to study the ultraviolet realm, it achieved one hundred percent of its pre-mission objectives. In-cabin payloads were Commercial Materials Dispersion Apparatus Instrumentation Technology Associates Experiments-03 (CMIX-03), which featured an array of biomedical, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, cell biology, crystal growth and fluids science investigations, including one with potential for anti-colon cancer treatment. Protein Crystal Growth experiments included two setups in middeck lockers. Also flown was the Middeck Active Control Experiment (MACE) to study how disturbances caused by a payload impacts another payload attached to same support structure.

STS 67 ended on 18 March 1995 when Endeavor landed on Runway 22, Edwards Air Force Base, California, after logging 6.9 million miles (11 million kilometers) in completing the longest Shuttle flight to date. Rollout distance: 9,975 feet (3,040 meters). Rollout time: 59 seconds. Mission duration: 16 days, 15 hours, eight minutes, 48 seconds. Landed revolution 262. The orbiter was diverted to Edwards after landing opportunities in Florida were waved off on 17 March and earlier in the day on 18 March. The orbiter was returned to Florida on 27 March and taken to the Orbiter Processing Facility on 28 March 1995.

The flight crew for STS 67 was: Stephen S. Oswald, Commander; William G. Gregory, Pilot; Tamara E. Jernigan, Payload Commander; John M. Grunsfeld, Mission Specialist; Wendy B. Lawrence, Mission Specialist; Ronald A. Parise, Payload Specialist; Samuel T. Durrance, Payload Specialist.

http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/chron/sts-67.htm

1997
Soyuz TM-24 returns to Earth (Russia).

1998
Data sent from NASA's Galileo spaceprobe indicated that Jupiter's moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.

2004 07:17:00 GMT
ESA launched the Rosetta mission to Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=2004-006A

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