{"id":383,"date":"2009-12-15T11:24:58","date_gmt":"2009-12-15T11:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=383"},"modified":"2009-12-15T11:24:58","modified_gmt":"2009-12-15T11:24:58","slug":"two-launches-one-local-one-venus-and-halleys-comet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/two-launches-one-local-one-venus-and-halleys-comet\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Launches: One Local, One to Venus and Halley's Comet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forty-five years ago today — December 15, 1964 — the San Marco-1 satellite launched from Wallops Island, VA, on a Scout rocket. This was the first in a series of Italian atmospheric science spacecraft, and the only one to be launched from the U.S. <\/p>\n

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\n(San Marco satellite in checkout at Wallops Island, VA. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Succeeding missions were launched starting in 1967 from the San Marco platform, a converted oil platform anchored off the coast of Kenya. I find that fascinating, as the San Marco platform was a precursor to the Sea Launch operations I observed over 30 years later.<\/p>\n

And 25 years ago today, in 1984, the Soviet Union launched its Vega-1 mission atop a Proton-K rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. (I wonder if it was processed in the same building in which I later saw the Nimiq-2 satellite get mated to a Proton launch vehicle.) Vega-1<\/a> — also known as Venera-Halley 1 — was a very successful mission that deposited a lander as well as a set of balloon-borne experiments on Venus, and then continued to a 1986 flyby of Halley’s comet.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forty-five years ago today — December 15, 1964 — the San Marco-1 satellite launched from Wallops Island, VA, on a Scout rocket. This was the first in a series of Italian atmospheric science spacecraft, and the only one to be launched from the U.S. (San Marco satellite in checkout at \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[26,11],"class_list":["post-383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space","tag-launch","tag-space-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}