Space History for March 4

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1675
John Flamsteed was appointed the first Astronomer Royal of England.

1774
The first sighting of the Orion nebula was made by William Herschel.

1861
E W Tempel discovered asteroid #64 Angelina.

1862
Born, Robert Emden Switzerland, astrophysicist (developed a theory of expansion and compression of gas spheres and applied it to stellar structure)

1892
M Wolf discovered asteroid #325 Heidelberga.

1902
M Wolf discovered asteroid #483 Seppina.

1904
George Gamow, nuclear physicist, cosmologist, writer

1906
M Wolf discovered asteroid #590 Tomyris.

1907
A Kopff discovered asteroid #627 Charis.

1923
Born, Patrick Moore, England, astronomer, writer (A-Z of Astronomy)

1932
H E Wood discovered asteroid #1241 Dysona.

1937
Born, Yuri Aleksandrovich Senkevich MD (at Baintumen [now Chojbalsan], Mongolia), cosmonaut candidate (Voskhod Physician Group - 1965) (deceased), trained for cancelled Voskhod missions

1937
L Boyer discovered asteroids #1415 Malautra and #1416 Renauxa.

1959
Pioneer 4 became the first US spacecraft to reach the Moon, flying within 60,000 km.

1967
NASA's Lunar Orbiter 3 stopped returning pictures of the Lunar surface.
The Lunar Orbiter 3 spacecraft was designed primarily to photograph areas of the Lunar surface for confirmation of safe landing sites for the Surveyor and Apollo missions. It was also equipped to collect selenodetic, radiation intensity, and micrometeoroid impact data. The spacecraft was placed in a cislunar trajectory and injected into an elliptical near-equatorial (210.2 km x 1801.9 km with an inclination of 20.9 degrees) Lunar orbit on 8 February at 21:54 UT. After four days (25 orbits) of tracking the orbit was changed to 55 km x 1847 km. The spacecraft acquired photographic data from 15 February to 23 February 1967, and readout occurred through 2 March 1967. The film advance mechanism started showing erratic behavior, resulting in a decision to begin readout of the frames earlier than planned. The frames were read out successfully until 4 March when the film advance motor burned out, leaving about 25% of the frames on the takeup reel, unable to be read.

149 medium resolution and 477 high resolution frames were returned from the Moon. The frames were of excellent quality, with resolution down to 1 meter. One of the frames included the Surveyor 1 landing site, with sufficient detail to permit identification of the spacecraft's location on the surface. Accurate data were acquired from all of the other experiments throughout the mission. The spacecraft was used for tracking purposes until it impacted the Lunar surface on command at 14.3 degrees N latitude, 97.7 degrees W longitude (selenographic coordinates) on 9 October 1967.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=1967-008A

1968
NASA's Orbiting Geophysical Observatory 5 was launched.

1974
Died, Mikhail Klavdiyevich Tikhonravov, Russian engineer, designer at Nll-4 and Korolev design bureau, lLeader in development of Sputnik and Vostok spacecraft, also performed early ICBM work and a pioneering rocketeer at GIRD and Nll-3

1977
The first CRAY 1 supercomputer was shipped, to Los Alamos Laboratories, New Mexico.

1979
A photo from NASA's Voyager I probe revealed Jupiter's rings.

1981
H Debehogne discovered asteroids #2765 and #3705.

1982
NASA launched Intelsat V.

1985
NASA's STS 51-E vehicle was rolled back to Vandenberg AFB; the mission was cancelled.

1986
Carolyn and Eugene Shoemaker discovered asteroid #3554 Amun.

1990 10:08:44 PST (GMT -6:00:00)
NASA's STS 36 (Atlantis 6, 34th Shuttle mission, 65th US manned space mission) ended at the close of a secret Department of Defense flight.
STS 36 was launched 28 February 1990 after being postponed due to illness of the crew commander, a malfunction of a range safety computer, and weather conditions. This was the sixth Shuttle mission dedicated to the Department of Defense.

STS 36 ended 4 March 1990 when Atlantis landed on Runway 23, Edwards Air Force Base, California. Rollout distance: 7,900 feet. Rollout time: 53 seconds. Mission duration: four days, ten hours, 18 minutes, 22 seconds. Landed revolution 72. Orbiter returned to KSC on 13 March 1990.

The flight crew for STS 36 was: John O. Creighton, Commander; John H. Casper, Pilot; Richard M. Mullane, Mission Specialist 1; David C. Hilmers, Mission Specialist 2; Pierre J. Thuot, Mission Specialist 3.

http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/chron/sts-36.htm

1994 08:53:00 EST (GMT -5:00:00)
NASA launched STS 62 (Columbia 16, 61st Shuttle mission) carrying the USMP-2 and OAST-2 experiments.
STS 62 was launched 4 March 1994 after being postponed from 3 March at the T-11 hour mark because of predicted unfavorable weather. Because of high seas, the solid rocket booster recovery ships left port on launch day, and recovered the boosters and their parachutes on 6 March.

The prrimary payloads for the mission were the US Microgravity Payload-2 (USMP-2) and Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology-2 (OAST-2) experiments. USMP-2 included five experiments investigating materials processing and crystal growth in microgravity, while OAST-2 featured six experiments focusing on space technology and spaceflight. Both payloads were located in the payload bay, activated by the crew and operated by teams on the ground. USMP-2 experiments received emphasis at the beginning of the flight; later in mission, Columbia's orbit was lowered about 20 nautical miles to facilitate the OAST-2 experiments.

The crew also worked with experiments located both in the middeck and the payload bay. These included the Dexterous End Effector (DEE), a new magnetic end effector and grapple fixture design being tested for use on the remote manipulator system arm; Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet/A (SSBUV/A) and Limited Duration Space Environment Candidate Material Exposure (LDCE), all in the payload bay. Middeck experiments were Advanced Protein Crystal Growth; Physiological Systems Experiment (PSE); Commercial Protein Crystal Growth (CPCG); Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus (CGBA); Middeck 0-Gravity Dynamics Experiment (MODE); Bioreactor Demonstration Systems (BDS); Auroral Photography Experiment (APE-B). The Air Force Maui Optical Site Calibration Test (AMOS) required no onboard hardware.

The crew also conducted a number of biomedical activities aimed at a better understanding and countering of the effects of prolonged spaceflight.

STS 62 ended March 1994 when Columbia landed on Runway 33, Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Rollout distance: 10,151 feet (3,094 meters). Rollout time: 55 seconds. Mission duration: 13 days, 23 hours, 16 minutes, 41 seconds. Landed revolution 224.

The flight crew for STS 62 was: John H. Casper, Commander; Andrew M. Allen, Pilot; Pierre J. Thuot, Mission Specialist 1; Charles D. Gemar, Mission Specialist 2; Marsha S. Ivins, Mission Specialist 3.

http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/chron/sts-62.htm

1995
A blind teenage boy received a 'Bionic Eye' at a Washington Hospital.

1997
Comet Hale-Bopp was "directly above the Sun" (1.04 AU).

1997
Russia launched Zeya Start-1.

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