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- January 1, 1801: The first detected asteroid - and still the largest known - Ceres was
discovered by Piazzi. Orbiting in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter,
it was originally mistaken as another planet itself.
- January 2, 1920: Author Issac Asimov was born.
- January 2, 1948: Deborah Watling, who played
Doctor Who companion Victoria
Waterfield in 1967 and
1968, was born.
- January 2, 1971: Roger Delgado stepped onto the screen and
changed the face of Doctor Who forever
in Terror of the Autons.
Despite Delgado's death in 1974, the character lived on right through the
final episode, Survival
in 1989, as well as being featured in the 1996 Fox TV movie.
- January 2, 1978: Blake's 7
debuts on BBC-TV.
- January 3, 1970: Jon Pertwee made his first appearance as the
Doctor in the first Doctor Who episode
shot in color - the four-part Spearhead
from Space.
- January 4, 1982: Peter Davison makes his own debut in the
role of the Doctor in Castrovalva.
- January 5, 1917: American rocket pioneer Robert Goddard receives a $5,000 grant
from the Smithsonian Institution to develop rockets to study the upper
atmosphere.
- January 6, 1969: Star Trek: Deep Space
Nine's Aron Eisenberg (Nog) was born.
- January 7, 1610: Galileo Galilei discovered the four largest moons of Jupiter,
which are now being studied at very close range by a space probe named in his
honor. Io, Europa, Ganymede (the largest moon in our solar system) and
Callisto are regarded as the Galilean satellites to this day.
- January 8, 1908: William Hartnell, who initiated the role of
Doctor Who in 1963 and departed in 1966 due
to failing health, was born.
- January 8, 1959: Paul Hester, drummer for
Crowded House and the final lineup of
Split Enz, was born.
- January 9: David Allen Brooks, Max Eilerson on the Babylon 5 spinoff Crusade, was born.
- January 9, 1990: Space shuttle Columbia is launched on a mission to
retrieve the LDEF (Long Duration Exposure Facility) unmanned satellite.
- January 9, 1993: Star Trek: Deep
Space Nine premieres with the
Emissary two-hour pilot
during this week.
- January 11, 1996: Space shuttle Endeavour is launched; this was the
105th manned U.S. space flight.
- January 12, 1986: In the last successful U.S. manned spaceflight for
over two years, space shuttle Columbia, with a crew including Congressman Bill
Nelson, is launched.
- January 12, 1992: The HAL-9000 computer was activated at the HAL labs in
Urbana, Illinois, according to Arthur C. Clarke's book
2001: A Space Odyssey...
- January 12, 1997: Space shuttle Atlantis is launched on the fifth
U.S. shuttle mission to Russian space station Mir.
- January 13, 1993: Space shuttle Endeavour is launched on its third
flight.
- January 14, 1969: The Soviet Union launches the fourth and fifth Soyuz
missions.
- January 15, 1952: ELO cellist
Melvyn Gale, who played with the band from 1975 through 1978, was born.
- January 16, 1994: Star Trek:
Voyager premiered on UPN with the two-hour movie
Caretaker.
- January 19, 1809: Author Edgar Allan Poe was born.
- January 20, 1920: DeForest Kelley, the original
Star Trek's Dr. McCoy, was born.
- January 20, 1930: Buzz Aldrin, lunar module pilot of Apollo 11 and second man
on the moon, was born.
- January 20, 1934: Tom
Baker, the fourth Doctor Who and
the longest-serving actor in the role from
1974 to
1981, was born.
- January 22, 1992: Space shuttle Discovery is launched on an extended
scientific mission, carrying the first International Microgravity Laboratory
Spacelab experiment.
- January 22, 1998: Space shuttle Endeavour lifts off, en route to the
eighth of nine U.S. shuttle docking missions to Mir.
- January 24, 1958: British actor Peter Woodward, Crusade's Galen and son of Edward "The
Equalizer" Woodward, was born.
- January 24, 1984: Apple computer unveils the Macintosh after
numerous delays; the machine had been in development since 1979.
- January 24, 1985: Space shuttle Discovery is launched on the 15th
mission of the shuttle program, carrying a crew including Apollo-era veteran
Ken Mattingly and the first flight of Ellison Onizuka.
- January 24, 1986: Voyager 2 made its closest approach to the previously
unexplored planet Uranus, discovering new rings, ten new moons, and a more
bizarre magnetic field than science had ever dared to imagine.
- January 24, 1994: Babylon 5 made
its premiere as a weekly series with
Midnight on the Firing Line,
an episode that seems almost tame compared to the series' later tone!
- January 27, 1967: Due to an accidental fire in the crew cabin's 100% oxygen
atmosphere, the crew of the projected Apollo 1 flight - Gus Grissom, Ed White,
and Roger Chaffee - died during a ground test. The investigation into the
fire kept American astronauts on the ground until the middle of the following
year, but resulted in a safer, more functional Apollo spacecraft.
- January 28, 1986: The space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after
liftoff, killing its crew of seven instantly, when a leak in a safety seal on
a solid booster rocket allowed its flame exhaust to eat into the skin of the
external tank containing flammable hydrogen. There was not another American
shuttle launch until the summer of 1987.
- January 30: Daphne Ashbrook, who played the eighth Doctor's
companion Grace in the 1996 Doctor Who
movie as well as Melora in the Deep Space
Nine episode of the same name, was born.
- January 31, 1958: Explorer 1 became the first American satellite successfully
launched into Earth orbit. It detected the radiation belts surrounding Earth
which are now known as the Van Allen belts.
- January 31, 1966: The Soviet Luna 9 probe became the first man-made object to
soft-land on the moon (previous satellites had gathered information en route
to crashing into the moon's surface).
- January 31, 1971: Apollo 14 was launched to the Fra Mauro region of the moon,
the intended landing site of the almost-disastrous Apollo 13 mission. The
crew consisted of Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa and Edgar Mitchell.
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Information
originally compiled for use in LogBook: The
'Zine
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