KSC: This Week in Space (April 1-15, 2014)

The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex just shared with us the newest edition of a regular feature called "This Week in Space." Let's take a look back, and see what happened:

• April 1, 1960:  The Television Infrared Observation Satellite Program (TIROS-1) launched. It was the first experiment to determine whether or not satellites would be useful in space, and it was successful. In 1962, it began continuous coverage of the Earth’s weather.

• April 2, 1845: French physicists, Louis Fizeau and Leon Foucault, took the first successful photograph of the sun. The image was 5 inches and captured incredible detail for its time, including several sunspots.
• April 3, 1966: The Lunar 10 spacecraft entered the moon’s orbit at 6:44 p.m. UT. This was the first spacecraft to orbit the moon, and also the first man-made object to orbit anything beyond our own Earth.
• April 4, 1930: It all began with 12 people signing a paper to become the official founding members of the American Rocket Society. It started with George and Lee Pendray meeting at “Nino and Nella’s”, a small Italian restaurant and speakeasy in New York City, with friends to talk about space flight. They were regular contributors to the magazine Science Wonder Stories and invited the magazine editor, David Lasser, to join them. One day, David Lasser suggested they organize a society and, thus, the American Rocket Society was born.
• April 5, 2010: STS-131 Discovery, one of the last four shuttle missions, launched at 6:21 a.m. The 15 day mission remains the longest made by Discovery.
• April 6, 1965: Intelsat 1, or Early Bird, launched becoming the world’s first commercial communications satellite. As a result, the phrase “live via satellite” is born.
• April 7, 1991: The Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (GRO), one of NASA’s four “Great Observatories”, was deployed. The GRO’s mission is to study sources that produce the highest energy electromagnetic radiation from the cosmos. (credit to nasa.gov)
• April 8, 1964: Gemini 1 launched 50 years ago today. This was the first unmanned launch of the Gemini Program, a program aimed at long duration flights, testing the ability to maneuver a spacecraft and to achieve rendezvous and docking of two vehicles in Earth orbit.
• April 9, 1959: At a press conference in Washington D.C., NASA introduced the official Mercury Seven astronauts to the general public. The Mercury Seven astronauts included Scott Carpenter, L. Gordon Cooper, Jr., John H. Glenn, Jr., Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Walter M. Schirra, Jr., Alan B. Shepard, Jr., and Donald K. “Deke” Slayton.
• April 11, 1986: Halley’s Comet made its closest approach to Earth. Several space crafts were able to capture images of this spectacular moment. Giotto, with European Space Agency, took up close photographs of Halley’s nucleus, showing it to be a mixture of frozen water, other volatile ices, and rocky particles.
• April 12, 1961: Yuri Gagarin, Russian cosmonaut, became the first man in space making a 108-minute orbital flight in his Vostok 1 spacecraft.
• April 14, 1972: NASA Administrator, Dr. James C. Fletcher, announced that Kennedy Space Center will be a Space Shuttle launch and landing site. Its official name became “Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility”.
• April 15, 2014: Early Tuesday morning a total lunar eclipse will be visible to North and South America beginning at 12:54 a.m. It will reach totality at 3:07 a.m. and completely end by 6:38 a.m. The constellations will be bright so bring your telescopes and pull an all-nighter!

For more information, visit www.KennedySpaceCenter.com.