Day: February 5, 1960

Categories
Lunar Orbiter Uncrewed Spaceflight

Lunar Orbiter 3 launched

  • February 5, 1967

Lunar OrbiterThe third of five Lunar Orbiter satellites is launched to the moon by NASA, and once in orbit, Lunar Orbiter 3 achieves an unmanned spaceflight first: it’s the first unmanned space probe to image another unmanned space probe (in this case, Surveyor 1, which has been on the moon since 1966). A mechanical fault prevents Lunar Orbiter 3 from returning roughly a quarter of its images to Earth.

Categories
Apollo Crewed Spaceflight

Apollo 14: back in business

  • February 5, 1971

Apollo 14After nearly a year of examining the problems that nearly doomed the crew of Apollo 13, the third lunar landing is achieved by the crew of Apollo 14, commanded by Alan Shepard, the only one of the seven original Mercury astronauts to walk on the moon; lunar module pilot Edgar Mitchell joins him on the surface while Stu Roosa orbits in the command module Kitty Hawk. The Apollo 14 lunar module, Antares, makes the most accurate landing of the Apollo program in the Fra Mauro highlands (the landing site originally assigned to Apollo 13), where soil samples are collected, instruments are deployed, and Shepard becomes the first human being to hit a golf ball on the moon.

Categories
Mariner Uncrewed Spaceflight

Mariner 10 visits Venus

  • February 5, 1974

Venus by Mariner 10The unmanned Mariner 10 space probe swings past the planet Venus at a distance of less than 4,000 miles, its cameras capturing a completely opaque sphere whose clouds reveal no surface. But when viewed through ultraviolet filters, Venus suddenly reveals an immense amount of atmospheric detail. Mariner 10’s UV views of Venus are the best images available until the dual Pioneer Venus mission of the late 1970s; meanwhile, Mariner 10 speeds past the planet en route to Mercury.

Categories
Television

Salvage 1: Shangri-La Lil

  • February 5, 1979

Salvage 1The third 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 Mako (Conan The Barbarian) guest star.

This series is not yet chronicled in the LogBook. You could help change that.

Categories
Television

Sapphire & Steel: Assignment Four, Part 4

  • February 5, 1981

Sapphire & SteelITV airs the 24th episode of P.J. Hammond’s science fiction series Sapphire & Steel, starring David McCallum and Joanna Lumley. Again owing to scheduling conflicts with the two increasingly in-demand stars, the series will not resume until later in the year.

This series is not yet chronicled in the LogBook. You could help change that.

Categories
Crewed Spaceflight Mir Soyuz

Soyuz TM-2 / Mir Expedition 2

  • February 5, 1987

Soyuz TM-2The Soviet Union launches Soyuz TM-2, the first manned launch of a newly uprated version of the Soyuz capsule. Cosmonauts Yuri Romanenko and Aleksandr Laveykin travel to the Mir space station, where Laveykin remains for 174 days before departing in July, but Romanenko sets a new space endurance record, remaining in orbit for 326 days. Romanenko’s return to Earth just before the end of 1987 marks the end of Expedition 2’s occupancy of Mir.

Categories
Computers Video Games

Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator

  • February 5, 1997

Stick of joyProgrammer Nicola Salmoria releases the earliest version of the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, or MAME, a freeware PC program which allows users to obtain dumps of the original 1970s and 1980s arcade game ROM chips which MAME interprets, emulating the original hardware architecture to allow play of those games with remarkable fidelity to the original graphics and sounds. This kick-starts a golden age of computer emulation of classic video games and game systems, with the average desktop computer now sporting enough memory to allow for accurate emulation. The release of MAME also ignites an ongoing controversy about the legality of downloading games whose original manufacturers are no longer exploting their intellectual property (or, in some cases, no longer exist as corporate entities).

More about arcade games in Phosphor Dot Fossils