Categories
Mariner Uncrewed Spaceflight

Mariner 10, Mercury 2

Mercury by Mariner 10NASA’s unmanned space probe Mariner 10 makes its second pass of the planet Mercury, six months after its first flyby. This time Mariner passes under the planet’s south pole, getting the first views of that part of Mercury, but barely flying within 30,000 miles of the surface. Once again, following its encounter with Mercury, Mariner 10 slipped into a solar orbit that would bring it back to Mercury several months later.

Categories
Television

Project UFO Sighting 4015: The Underwater Incident

Project UFOThe 14th episode of Harold Jack Bloom’s sci-fi series Project UFO airs on NBC, portraying fictionalized investigations into what the show claims are actual cases from the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book investigations. Edward Winter and Caskey Swaim star. Laurette Spang (Battlestar Galactica) guest stars in the second season premiere.

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

Categories
Computers

Atari Home Computers

Atari 400Atari introduces the Atari 400 and Atari 800 home computers, one of the company’s first major product lines to show the imprint of Warner Communications. With only 8K of RAM (expandable to 16K), the Atari 400 (shown here) is intended to be more of a game machine, while the 48K Atari 800, with an actual keyboard, is intended to make inroads into the increasingly crowded home computer market. The same basic architecture, with significant modifications, will form the core of Atari’s next-generation video game console, the Atari 5200, which will be released in 1982.

More about Atari Home Computers in Phosphor Dot Fossils

Categories
Video Games

Mr. Do!

Mr. Do!Universal (a video game manufacturer unrelated to the Hollywood studio of the same name) introduces a cute arcade action game, Mr. Do!, casting players as a clown with a deadly weapon to use against underground monsters. Mr. Do! leads a revolution in the video game industry not with its game play, but with its form factor: it is sold as a conversion kit which can be plugged into a generic arcade cabinet, a concept which could potentially save arcade operators thousands of dollars by sparing them the expense of having to purchase an entire new machine to swap out games.

More about Mr. Do! in Phosphor Dot Fossils

Categories
Television

Young Indiana Jones Chronicles: Austria, March 1917

Young Indiana Jones ChroniclesThe seventh episode of George Lucas’ historical adventure series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles airs on ABC, starring Sean Patrick Flanery. Christopher Lee (The Satanic Rites Of Dracula, The Wicker Man, Star Wars Episode II) and Patrick Ryecart (A Bridge Too Far, Doctor Who) guest stars in the second season premiere.

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

Categories
Television

Welcome To Paradox: The Extra

Welcome To ParadoxThe sixth episode of the Sci-Fi Channel original series Welcome To Paradox airs, a loosely-connected anthology of science fiction stories set in Betaville, a utopian future city whose incredible technology has frequently unintended side-effects. Rodney Rowland (Space: Above & Beyond) and Peter Williams (Stargate SG-1) star in a story co-written by SF author Greg Egan.

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

Categories
Video Games

Supercade

MIT Press publishes Van Burnham’s non-fictional history of the video game industry and its products, “Supercade“. Covering developments from Spacewar! and the Magnavox Odyssey through the Playstation era, “Supercade” is a coffee table book lavishly illustrated with emulator screen shots (and some surprisingly low-resolution digital photos and scans) and numerous essays by various authors on arcade and console games of note.

More about Computer / Video Game books in Book Reviews

Categories
Galileo Uncrewed Spaceflight

Galileo’s mission ends

GalileoThe mission of the unmanned space probe Galileo ends in the clouds of the giant planet Jupiter, which it has orbited for eight years. Even as Galileo plunges toward Jupiter, it detects and reports evidence of a thin ring sharing the orbit of the small moon Amalthea, and then disintegrates as it falls into Jupiter. NASA has opted to send Galileo to its destruction, rather than risking a collision with Europa, which may harbor some of the ingredients necessary for life and might be contaminated if Galileo impacted it; Galileo’s mission was extended three times, with the vehicle lasting six years longer than anticipated in the original mission plan’s estimates, which included for the harsh radiation environment of Jupiter as a factor in expecting only a two-year mission.

Categories
Radio & Audio

Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy: Episode 13

Hitchhiker's Guide To The GalaxyThe 13th episode of the radio science fiction comedy series The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is first broadcast on BBC Radio, beginning a radio adaptation of Douglas Adams’ novel Life, The Universe, And Everything and reuniting most of the original radio cast (though even the late Peter Jones is represented via brief clips from the 1970s radio series before being “rebooted” to the voice of actor William Franklyn). Adapted by Dirk Maggs, this is the first Hitchhiker’s Guide radio project undertaken after Adams’ death in 2001. Toby Longworth guest stars.

More about The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy in the LogBook

Categories
Crewed Spaceflight Endeavour Space Shuttle

Endeavour retired

Space ShuttleNASA donates the retired Space Shuttle Endeavour, stripped of working engines and other vital equipment, to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. The last shuttle to be built, construction on Endeavour began in 1988 from spare parts to replace the destroyed Challenger; Endeavour lifted off for the first time in 1992, ultimately flying 25 missions, including many of the International Space Station construction missions. This also marks the final flight of the modified Boeing 747 shuttle carrier aircraft, which flew for the first time in 1977.