{"id":409,"date":"2010-02-15T02:02:28","date_gmt":"2010-02-15T02:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=409"},"modified":"2010-02-15T02:02:28","modified_gmt":"2010-02-15T02:02:28","slug":"valentines-day-space-history-solar-max-and-near-earth-asteroid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/valentines-day-space-history-solar-max-and-near-earth-asteroid\/","title":{"rendered":"Valentine's Day Space History: Solar Max, and a Near-Earth Asteroid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thirty years ago today — February 14, 1980 — a Delta rocket out of Cape Canaveral launched the Solar Maximum Mission<\/a> to study the Sun during the peak of the 11-year solar cycle.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(The SMM spacecraft in orbit. NASA image.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\nThe SMM satellite malfunctioned in January 1981, but in April 1984 it was recovered by the space shuttle Challenger<\/em> and serviced in orbit. After it was released, it continued functioning until it reentered the Earth’s atmosphere in December 1989.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(The SMM satellite being repaired in the shuttle cargo bay. NASA image.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\nAnd 10 years ago, on Valentine’s Day 2000, the NEAR spacecraft — Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous<\/a>, also known as “NEAR Shoemaker” in honor of astronomer Eugene Shoemaker — entered orbit around the asteroid Eros. NEAR studied Eros for a year before landing on the asteroid in February 2001.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thirty years ago today — February 14, 1980 — a Delta rocket out of Cape Canaveral launched the Solar Maximum Mission to study the Sun during the peak of the 11-year solar cycle. (The SMM spacecraft in orbit. NASA image.) The SMM satellite malfunctioned in January 1981, but in April \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":[26,37,11,12],"class_list":["post-409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space","tag-launch","tag-nasa","tag-space-history","tag-space-shuttle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409","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=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}