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Science & Technology Uncrewed Spaceflight Weather & Climate

Nimbus 4

NimbusNASA launches the Nimbus 4 satellite, designed to observe weather patterns from orbit and test new weather and climate detection technologies. Nimbus 4 is among the first satellites to test what will become known as global positioning system technology, capable of pinpointing ground-based targets with special equipment. The satellite begins to experience intermittent attitude control problems in 1971, but remains in at least partial service through 1980.

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Apollo Crewed Spaceflight

Apollo 13

Apollo 13The third planned lunar landing mission, Apollo 13, lifts off. Astronauts Jim Lovell and Fred Haise are scheduled to walk in the Fra Mauro region of the moon. Command module pilot Ken Mattingly falls victim to a medical condition, leaving NASA to make a rare substitution, rotating the backup crew’s command module pilot, Jack Swigert, to the prime crew prior to launch.

This mission is dramatized in both the We Interrupt This Mission episode of HBO’s 1998 series From The Earth To The Moon, as well as the 1995 movie Apollo 13.
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Apollo Crewed Spaceflight

Apollo 13: “Houston, we’ve had a problem”

Apollo 13Halfway between Earth and the moon, a fuel cell rupture in the Apollo 13 service module causes a massive explosion. The crew has to activate the landing module, Aquarius, to use it as a “lifeboat”; the oxygen and power reserves of the command module, Odyssey, have been compromised by the explosion and must be preserved for re-entry. The crew endures extreme cold and must ration consumables to survive. Fortunately, there’s enough fuel in Aquarius’ descent stage to put the combined vehicle on a free-return trajectory, looping it around the far side of the moon for an immediate return to Earth.

This mission is dramatized in both the We Interrupt This Mission episode of HBO’s 1998 series From The Earth To The Moon, as well as the 1995 movie Apollo 13.

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Apollo Crewed Spaceflight

Apollo 13 returns home

Apollo 13Having become the stuff of round-the-clock news coverage (though few media outlets bothered to cover any aspects of the mission before the emergency took place), the reactivated Apollo 13 command module Odyssey successfully reenters Earth’s atmosphere and returns its crew safely. (The lunar module, Aquarius, has been discarded in Earth orbit, where it eventually disintegrates, upon reentry; rather than landing on the moon, its fuel and air reserves have served the much more important function of keeping the crew alive.)

This mission is dramatized in both the We Interrupt This Mission episode of HBO’s 1998 series From The Earth To The Moon, as well as the 1995 movie Apollo 13.

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Crewed Spaceflight Soyuz

Soyuz 9: two and a half weeks in space

The Soviet Union launches Soyuz 9, a long-endurance mission which becomes the longest space flight in human history to date, lasting 18 days. Biomedical measurements are taken of cosmonauts Andrian Nikolayev and Vitaly Sevastyanov throughout their two-and-a-half-week stay in orbit, and Soyuz 9 is seen as a trailblazer for the Soviet space program’s new focus of long-term crewed space stations. Both cosmonauts suffer from muscle loss during their flight, as the Soyuz capsule isn’t big enough to allow for exercise.