Daily Archives: January 29, 1960

Salvage 1: Dark Island

Salvage 1The second episode of the series Salvage 1 airs on ABC, starring Andy Griffith, Joel Higgins (Silver Spoons), and Trish Stewart. Richard Jaeckel (Spenser For Hire) and Richard Eastham (Wonder Woman) guest star.

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Television

The Martian Chronicles: The Martians

The Martian ChroniclesNBC airs the third installment of the lavish three-part miniseries based on Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. Adapted for TV by respected SF author Richard Matheson, the miniseries has already taken an embarrassing public beating by none other than Bradbury itself, inspiring NBC to yank the heavily-publicized off of the fall 1979 schedule and burn off the miniseries in January 1980 prior to the 1980 Winter Oympics. Rock Hudson, Barry Morse (Space: 1999) and Bernadette Peters star. The miniseries is a co-production between NBC and the BBC (who won’t air it until later in 1980).

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Television

Phobos 2 arrives at Mars

PhobosThe Soviet Union’s unmanned Mars probe Phobos 2 successfully arrives in orbit around the red planet after over half a year of interplanetary travel (and after the loss of its identical twin, Phobos 1). Phobos 2 begins taking pictures of both Mars and Phobos and begins a series of orbital maneuvers that will eventually lead it to a very close approach to Phobos, where it is expected to release a pair of surface landers, the first of their kind to study a Martian moon.

Phobos, Uncrewed Spaceflight

Soyuz TM-27

Soyuz TM-27Russia launches the Soyuz TM-27 spacecraft on a mission to the Mir space station. Aboard are cosmonauts Talgat Musabayev and Nikolai Budarin; French spationaut Léopold Eyharts joins them for a 20-day before he returns to Earth with Mir’s previous crew. Musabayev and Budarin remain in orbit on Mir for 207 days, returning to Earth in August 1998 with cosmonaut Yuri Baturin. During their stay, further repairs were conducted to Mir’s solar power panels, which were damaged in a 1997 collision with a Progress unmanned cargo vehicle.

Crewed Spaceflight, Mir, Soyuz

Dollhouse: Epitaph Two: Return

DollhouseThe 25th and final episode of Joss Whedon’s futuristic “spy-fi” series Dollhouse airs on Fox, starring Eliza Dushku. Felicia Day (Mystery Science Theater 3000), Summer Glau (Firefly, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), and Alan Tudyk (Firefly, Rogue One) guest star in the series finale.

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Television

Saturn V F-1 engine revived for tests

Saturn V engineNASA recalls an actual 1960s F-1 engine – of which clusters of five once launched the mighty Saturn V rockets during the Apollo lunar program – from the Smithsonian for refurbishment and, for the first time in over four decades, re-firing on a test stand at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. NASA engineers examine the properties of the F-1 engine – whose performance still outrates the engines used during the Space Shuttle program – to learn how to improve the J-2X engines planned for use in the first stage of the SLS (Space Launch System) booster that will launch Orion vehicles.

Apollo, Crewed Spaceflight, Orion

A 90% chance of iron rain

Luhman 16bA team of scientists publishes a report in the journal Nature revealing that, using Doppler observations, they have achieved a very basic map of the “weather” patterns on the dim brown dwarf star Luhman 16B, discovered in 2013 at a distance of only 6.5 light years from Earth’s solar system. The observations reveal that the high temperature is likely to be 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, with a very good chance of violent storms raining molten iron onto Luhman 16B’s surface in the forecast.

Science & Technology

Arrow: Tremors

ArrowThe 35th episode of Arrow, a modern-day reboot of DC Comics’ Green Arrow superhero starring Stephen Amell, airs on the CW. Caity Lotz (Mad Men, Legends Of Tomorrow) and Nicholas Lea (The X-Files) guest star.

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Arrowverse (DC), Television