{"id":548,"date":"2011-01-31T11:51:35","date_gmt":"2011-01-31T16:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=548"},"modified":"2013-02-12T05:51:05","modified_gmt":"2013-02-12T10:51:05","slug":"space-history-once-more-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/space-history-once-more-moon\/","title":{"rendered":"Space History: Once More to the Moon!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Actually, twice more, a few years apart: once for the Soviets, once for us.<\/em><\/p>\n

Today was quite a busy day in space history: 50 years ago — on January 31, 1961 — the reconnaissance satellite Samos-2<\/a> launched from the Navy’s Pacific Missile Range (now part of Vandenberg AFB) , while a few hours earlier Mercury Redstone-2<\/a> had launched from Cape Canaveral, carrying Ham the chimpanzee. Ham performed well despite enduring higher g-forces than planned and an accidental cabin depressurization.<\/p>\n

But as for the lunar missions …<\/p>\n

Five years later, on this date in 1966, the Soviet Union launched Luna-9<\/a> from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Luna-9 was the first craft to successfully make a “soft landing” on the Moon, and sent back several panoramic images of the lunar surface.<\/p>\n

But the main event on this day in space history occurred 40 years ago today — January 31, 1971 — when Apollo-14<\/a> launched from the Kennedy Space Center carrying astronauts Alan B. Shepard Jr., Stuart A. Roosa, and Edgar D. Mitchell.<\/p>\n

\n\"\"
\n(Alan Shepard, during the Apollo-14 mission to the Moon. NASA image.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\nRoosa stayed aboard the Command and Service Module “Kitty Hawk”<\/a> while Shepard and Mitchell descended to the surface in the Lunar Module “Antares”<\/a>. They landed in the Fra Mauro highlands, where Apollo-13 was supposed to land, and spent over 30 hours there — including over 9 hours exploring the surface.<\/p>\n

I could go into various personal science fictional tie-ins to today’s space history, but I get tired of self-promotion. So I think today it’s best to let the day’s accomplishments stand on their own.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Actually, twice more, a few years apart: once for the Soviets, once for us. Today was quite a busy day in space history: 50 years ago — on January 31, 1961 — the reconnaissance satellite Samos-2 launched from the Navy’s Pacific Missile Range (now part of Vandenberg AFB) , while \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":[19,26,15,152,11],"class_list":["post-548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space","tag-apollo","tag-launch","tag-moon","tag-reconnaissance","tag-space-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548","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=548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":962,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions\/962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}