Day: February 17, 1958

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Ranger Uncrewed Spaceflight

Ranger 8

  • February 17, 1965

RangerNASA launches the Ranger 8 lunar probe, built by Jet Propulsion Laboratory and intended to go directly to the moon, transmitting pictures of the surface back to Earth until it impacts the lunar surface. Ranger 8 functions flawlessly, sending pictures back to Earth until it slams into the Sea of Tranquility at high speed. Over 7,000 photos are returned, with the last complete picture transmitted prior to impact showing lunar surface features as small as five feet across.

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Television

Thunderbirds: The Duchess Assignment

  • February 17, 1966

ThunderbirdsUK broadcaster ATV Midlands airs the 21st episode of Gerry Anderson’s Supermarionation science fiction series Thunderbirds, featuring the voices of Shane Rimmer, David Graham, Sylvia Anderson, Ray Barrett, and Peter Dyneley.

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Star Trek Television

The Enterprise runs aground

  • February 17, 1969

Star TrekNBC announces that it is dropping Star Trek from the fall 1969 network schedule. Having taken the show’s Friday night “death slot” as a sign of things to come, Gene Roddenberry has already begun seeking greener pastures, leaving the day-to-day showrunner duties to Fred Freiberger. Roddenberry also has no plans to manipulate fan protests against the cancellation this time (as he had done in 1967 and 1968); some NBC publicity and promotions executives are surprised when the seemingly inevitable backlash fails to materialize.

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Buran Crewed Spaceflight Mir

USSR plans next-generation space station

  • February 17, 1976

Buran at MirWith work having started mere days earlier on Buran, a Soviet version of the American space shuttle design, the Soviet Union’s space agency is given new marching orders to create a new generation of space station hardware, based on the experience gained thus far with the four Salyut space stations and their associated Almaz military space hardware. A modular design is chosen, with multiple docking ports and multiple station components launched over a period of time, concepts which will be tested with yet-to-be-launched Salyut stations. Frequently fighting with the Buran shuttle development program for money and resources (despite the fact that the two spacecraft are expected to be compatible), this new station will not be launched until 1986, almost exactly ten years later, at which time it will be known as Mir.

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Television

Superboy: Abandon Earth

  • February 17, 1990

SuperboyThe 44th episode of the syndicated series Superboy, starring Gerard Christopher and Stacy Haiduk, airs. Stuart Whitman, Salome Jens, Britt Ekland, and George Lazenby guest star.

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Categories
Books

Doctor Who: No Future

  • February 17, 1994

Doctor WhoVirgin Publishing releases the 23rd book in the Doctor Who New Adventures series, “No Future” by Paul Cornell. This book concludes a five-book cycle involving someone trying to ensnare the Doctor by making paradoxical major changes to the Time Lord’s established history. “No Future” also explains the somewhat cryptic “breakdown” suffered by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart during the 1970s, leading to his retirement from UNIT.

More on Doctor Who books in Book Reviews

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Franchises Television X-Files

The X-Files: End Game

  • February 17, 1995

The X-FilesThe 41st episode of Chris Carter’s modern-day science fiction series The X-Files airs on Fox, starring Gillian Anderson, David Duchovny, and Mitch Pileggi. Peter Donat (Time Trax) guest stars as Mulder’s father.

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Categories
NEAR-Shoemaker Uncrewed Spaceflight

NEAR launched

  • February 17, 1996

NEARThe NEAR (Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous) unmanned spacecraft, built and flown for NASA by John Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Lab, lifts off from Cape Canaveral on a mission to orbit and study asteroid 433 Eros, a target it won’t reach until 1998 at the earliest; it will fly by another asteroid in 1997. Other trajectories under consideration during mission planning included a combination of several asteroids and comets, before the limitations of NEAR’s chemical propulsion system forced those plans to be scaled back. (A more ambitious multi-asteroid mission, Dawn, will be launched in the 21st century.) NEAR will become the first human-made spacecraft to land on an asteroid.