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Science & Technology Uncrewed Spaceflight Weather & Climate

Landsat 5

LandsatNASA launches Earth resource observation satellite Landsat 5, virtually identical to the Landsat 4 satellite launched in 1982. Like Landsat 4, Landsat 5 is capable of sending real-time data to Earth through the Tracking & Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) system. Landsat 5 becomes the longest-operating Earth observation satellite, outliving its anticipated three-year design life by a factor of ten and not becoming inoperable until 2013; by the time it was shut down, Landsats 7 and 8 had been launched. Among the events Landsat 5 witnessed from orbit were a tsunami that killed nearly a quarter million people along Indonesia’s coastlines in 2004, and the 1986 meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in the Soviet Union.

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Doctor Who Television

Doctor Who: Planet Of Fire, Part 4

Doctor WhoThe 620th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Anthony Ainley appears as the Master, and Peter Wyngarde guest stars. Mark Strickson makes his final appearance as TARDIS traveler Turlough, and this episode also sees the end of Kamelion, a robot intended to be played by a real robot later beset by mechanical issues in the wake of its designer’s death.

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Odyssey2 Video Games

Odyssey2 production ends

Odyssey2Like many other companies tied into the video game business – whose profits seem to be in an endless downward spiral – North American Phillips (formerly Magnavox) closes down production of Odyssey2 hardware and software, and reassigns staff programmers to other products, including Phillips’ stand-alone word processor, VideoWriter, though few of the company’s former game designers remain with that project for long.

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Crewed Spaceflight Salyut Soyuz

Soyuz T-11

Soyuz T-11The Soviet Union launches Soyuz T-11 en route to space station Salyut 7. Spending nearly eight days in orbit, cosmonauts Yuri Malyshev, Gennady Strekalov and the first space traveler from India, Rakesh Sharma, perform experiments aboard the station as well as bringing supplies. They return to Earth on April 11th aboard the station crew’s Soyuz T-10 capsule, leaving the newer Soyuz T-11 docked at Salyut 7 for the station crew’s use.

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Video Games

Tube Panic

Tube PanicMixing video highway hypnosis and a strangely hummable theme song, Japanese video game Tube Panic, from the makers of Crazy Climber and Moon Cresta, first appears in American arcades. Players have to fight motion sickness to keep blasting away at bad guys. The game achieves minor cult status but fails to become a smash hit at a time when arcade manufacturers desperately need one.

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Challenger Crewed Spaceflight Space Shuttle

STS-41C

ChallengerSpace Shuttle Challenger lifts off on the first mission to retrieve a satellite in orbit, repair it, and release it back into that orbit. Launched in 1980, prior to the first shuttle mission, the Solar Maximum (Solar Max) Satellite is outfitted with a mechanism to allow the shuttle’s remote manipulator arm to grasp it; however, two astronauts using Manned Maneuvering Units still have to nudge it into Challenger’s cargo bay. With repairs completed, Solar Max is returned to its orbit, where it lasts until 1989. Challenger’s crew on this flight consists of Commander Bob Crippen, Pilot Francis Scobee, and mission specialists Geroge Nelson, James Van Hoften and Terry Hart.

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Pioneer Uncrewed Spaceflight

New assignment for Pioneer Venus

Pioneer VenusHaving received new orders from NASA, the still-functional Pioneer Venus Orbiter – launched in 1978 and in a high, looping orbit over Venus since it ceased active observations of the planet in 1981 – turns its instruments in the direction of Comet Encke, which is currently passing through the inner solar system. Rather than its cameras, the orbiter’s ultraviolet spectrometer is trained on the comet as Earth-based researchers try to determine the composition and rotational speed of Encke’s nucleus. The Pioneer Venus Orbiter will continue to observe other comets through the late 1980s.

Categories
Computers

Apple IIc

Apple IIcNot quite ready to bring the Apple II line to an end, Apple Computer launches the Apple IIc, a smaller form-factor enhanced Apple IIe specifically designed for portability (an optional LCD monitor – with no backlighting – is also made available on this date). Introduced alongside the IIc is a new Apple operating system, ProDOS, meant to mimic some of the object-oriented features of the Macintosh user interface, as well as an Apple II mouse. Perhaps not surprisingly, Apple also chooses to quietly discontinue support for the Apple III on this date as well.

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Television

Robin Of Sherwood: Robin Hood And The Sorcerer

Robin Of SherwoodThe feature-length combination of the first two episodes of Richard Carpenter’s fanciful retelling of the Robin Hood legend, Robin Of Sherwood, airs on ITV, starring Michael Praed and Nickolas Grace, and featuring a very modern musical treatment by Irish band Clannad. Infusing the familiar tale with elements of Pagan mythology, this proves to be one of the most enduring and influential takes on Robin Hood, and finds international popularity. (Repeats both in the UK and internationally will air the two parts of the story separately.)

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Television

V: The Final Battle Part Two

VNBC premieres the second part of its continuation of Kenneth Johnson’s alien invasion epic, V: The Final Battle. The birth of Robin’s alien-hybrid children is one of the genre cliffhangers of the decade. This marks the science fiction soundtrack debut of Dennis McCarthy, who later goes on to score most of the Star Trek spinoffs of the next three decades; he is tapped at a very late stage (mere days prior to broadcast) to rescore the entire miniseries – so late, in fact, that it’s ultimately impossible for him to redo the music for the first night in the time allotted.

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