Day: May 24, 1957

H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man: The Gun Runners

H.G. Wells' The Invisible ManThe 20th episode of H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, based on Wells’ story, airs on ITV; this episode will air in November 1959 in the U.S. on CBS.

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Mercury 7

Mercury 7The second American orbital flight is launched, with Scott Carpenter lifting off aboard Mercury 7 (nicknamed Aurora 7). Carpenter’s five-hour, three-orbit mission is almost a carbon copy of John Glenn’s orbital flight, the primary goal being to duplicate the flight and compare the two astronauts’ reports and reactions.

Doctor Who: The War Games, Part 6

Doctor WhoThe 249th episode of Doctor Who airs on the BBC. Jane Sherwin, David Savile and Philip Madoc guest star. This is Patrick Troughton’s final story as the incumbent Doctor, the final Doctor Who story of the 1960s, and the final story made in black & white.

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Apollo-Soyuz agreement signed

Apollo-SoyuzAfter two years of hammering out details and wording, President Nixon and Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin sign an international agreement to share science and technology between the United States and Soviet Union, including an agreement to mount a joint space mission culminating in the docking of an Apollo spacecraft and a Soyuz spacecraft in Earth orbit in 1975. Both nations’ space agencies begin crew selection and technical preparations for a joint venture that seemed impossible during the Cold War-fueled race to the moon.

Escape Into Night: Episode 6

Escape Into NightITV broadcasts the sixth and final episode of Escape Into Night, adapted by Ruth Boswell from the Catherine Storr novel Marianne Dreams. Originally shown in color, the color master tapes are lost over time, and the series survives only in black & white recordings. It is those recordings that will allow the series to resurface on DVD in the 21st century.

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Chasing the storm

Weather BulletinThe National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma dispatches “storm chasers” to track, follow, and observe the behavior of storms in a predicted tornado outbreak. The chasers manage to document the complete development of a tornado in Union City, Oklahoma on film and on an experimental Doppler radar system; for the first time, large-scale cloud rotation at high altitude is observed on radar prior to the appearance of a funnel cloud, a key discovery in tornado prediction. This phenomenon, called the Tornadic Vortex Signature, is a precursor to virtually every radar-detected tornado.

Soyuz 18

SalyutSoyuz 18 is launched toward space station Salyut 4 by the Soviet Union. Cosmonauts Pyotr Klimuk and Vitali Sevastyanov set a new Soviet record for long-duration stays in space, remaining about Salyut 4 for two months. They are also aboard Salyut 4 during the entirety of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, and are able to contact that international mission’s Soviet crew in another Soyuz vehicle. (Two mission control centers are used to prevent any confusion between the two Soyuz crews.) At the time the Soyuz 18 crew abandons Salyut 4 in July, the station’s environmental systems are failing, allowing the atmosphere inside the station to become humid enough for mold to begin growing on surfaces in the crew compartment; no further human crews will visit the station.

The disappearing moon of Neptune

LarissaA team of American astronomers discovers what they believe is a third moon of Neptune from ground-based telescope observations, but S/1981N1 isn’t seen again for several years, so the discovery is left in the “unconfirmed” category…until it is next seen by Voyager 2 in 1989, confirming the original sighting many years later. In 1991, the International Astronomical Union will name this moon Larissa. (Voyager 2 photo of Larissa shown)

Robert Holmes, Doctor Who writer, dies

Robert HolmesRobert Holmes, considered by many fans to be the definitive script editor and most influential writer of classic Doctor Who, dies at the age of 60. He was responsible for the Sontarans, the Autons, The Master, The Ark In Space, Pyramids Of Mars, and Caves Of Androzani; his scripts for the popular BBC space opera Blake’s 7 were also considered among that show’s best installments. He also bestowed the name Gallifrey upon the planet of the Time Lords and virtually created the entire Time Lord mythology in the acclaimed and controversial 1976 installment The Deadly Assassin. His untimely death cuts short his work on the final installments of The Trial Of A Time Lord and throws the scripting and production of those final two episodes into chaos. Hear about it on the Sci-Fi 5 podcast

Magellan tests aerobraking at Venus

MagellanTo increase the accuracy of its gravity map of the planet Venus, NASA’s unmanned space probe Magellan conducts the first experimental aerobraking maneuvers to alter the shape its orbit to a near-circular shape. By dipping Magellan into the upper layers of the Venusian atmosphere, the spacecraft is slowed and its orbit is changed, but it is kept far enough from the denser lower layers of the atmosphere to avoid re-entry. Aerobraking will become more commonly used by future space probes at the planet Mars.

Sliders: Obsession

SlidersFox airs the 18th episode of Tracy Torme’s alternate-universe science fiction series Sliders, starring Jerry O’Connell, John Rhys Davies, Sabrina Lloyd, and Cleavant Derricks. Isaac Hayes (South Park) and Paul McGillion (Stargate Atlantis) guest star.

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Sliders now streaming on Amazon Prime
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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Dogs Of War

Star Trek: Deep Space NineThe week-long national syndication window opens for the 172nd episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. This episode concludes a tightly-serialized eight-episode run-up to the series finale. Wallace Shawn, Cecily Adams and Vaughn Armstrong guest star. Read more

GOES-13 goes up

GOES-13NOAA’s GOES-13 Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite is launched from Cape Canaveral into geosynchronous orbit to monitor weather patterns over the United States. It will be held in reserve until 2010, when it will be moved to the GOES-EAST position to replace GOES-12, which is suffering chronic attitude control thruster glitches. GOES-13 is yet another evolutionary step up in the GOES satellite hardware, but it will suffer its own share of hardware issues, including a series of inexplicable faults which will cause brief losses of weather coverage, and a later fault which disables infrared imaging capability. Some of these hardware failures will be attributed to micrometeoroid collisions.

Joseph Pevney, Star Trek director, dies

Star Trek: City On The Edge Of ForeverDirector and former actor Joseph Pevney, the man behind the camera for many of the original Star Trek‘s best-remembered segments, dies at the age of 96. A veteran of classic ’60s, ’70s and ’80s television, he also directed numerous episodes of Wagon Train, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Mission: Impossible, The Munsters, Bonanza, and The Incredible Hulk. Before embarking on his directing career in 1950, he also worked as an actor, with his first exposure to showbiz in a 1924 Vaudeville show.