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Luna Uncrewed Spaceflight

Luna 9: first soft landing on another world

Luna 9The Soviet Union lands a palpable hit in the space race, claiming the first intact soft-landing of a man-made probe on another body in the solar system. Luna 9, a 200-pound sphere whose weighted base rolls to the correct orientation before opening petals exposing its camera and other instruments, proves that the lunar surface is dense enough to hold up heavy objects (previous scientific speculation has presented the possibility of a heavy lander sinking into a quicksand-like lunar surface).

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Television

Thunderbirds: Danger At Ocean Deep

ThunderbirdsUK broadcaster ATV Midlands airs the 19th 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.

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

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Science & Technology Uncrewed Spaceflight Weather & Climate

ESSA-1: Operational TIROS

ESSAThe recently-rechristened Environmental Sciences Service Administration (previously the U.S. Weather Bureau) launches, with the help of NASA, the first “Operational TIROS” weather satellite, ESSA-1. Based on the architecture of the later TIROS satellites, this is intended to be the first fully-operational, long-life weather satellite, in the tradition of many of the long-lived TIROS weather satellites. But eight months into its operational lifetime, ESSA-1’s on board camera system fails, rendering it blind – it becomes useless as a weather satellite and is kept online for engineering experiments until spring 1967.

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Television

Thunderbirds: Move – And You’re Dead

ThunderbirdsUK broadcaster ATV Midlands airs the 20th 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.

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

Categories
Television

Thunderbirds: The Duchess Assignment

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.

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

Categories
Star Trek Television

NBC picks up Star Trek

Star TrekNBC announces that it has added a new full-color hour-long science fiction series, Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, to its fall 1966 schedule. Unusually, the show has produced two wildly different pilot episodes, with NBC having asked for specific changes to the series format as early as 1965, when it passed on the original pilot, The Cage. One change specifically requested between pilots by NBC, the omission of a “Satanic” alien character named Mr. Spock, doesn’t prevent the network from ordering 16 episodes from Desilu Studios.

Categories
Television

Thunderbirds: Brink Of Disaster

ThunderbirdsUK broadcaster ATV Midlands airs the 22nd 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.

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

Categories
Science & Technology Uncrewed Spaceflight Weather & Climate

ESSA-2 launched

ESSAThe recently-rechristened Environmental Sciences Service Administration (previously the U.S. Weather Bureau) launches, with the help of NASA, weather satellite ESSA-2, intended to be the second in a constellation of spaceborne observers of Earth’s weather. Virtually identical to ESSA-1, ESSA-2 monitors Earth’s cloud cover for over four years; it is decommissioned in 1970, not because it stops working, but because a newer satellite utilizes the same telemetry frequency.