The fifth episode of The Amazing Spider-Man airs on CBS, starring Nicholas Hammond and Robert F. Simon. Madeleine Stowe guest stars in her second television role. This ends the series’ short first season, but CBS is only willing to renew it for another very short season in the fall of 1978.
The 57th episode of The Bionic Woman, starring Lindsay Wagner and Richard Anderson, airs on NBC. Keenan Wynn and Diane Civita (V) guest star.
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The tenth 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. William Jordan and Caskey Swaim star. Anthony Geary (General Hospital) and Dr. Joyce Brothers guest star.
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The week-long syndication window opens for the 19th episode of The Next Step Beyond, hosted and directed by John Newland.
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Still stinging from the business decision to not bid on the Star Wars toy rights in 1977, toy maker Mego International grabs the license for Universal Studios and NBC’s upcoming science fiction series Buck Rogers In The 25th Century while the show is still in the earliest stages of pre-production. This lead time, unusual in the late ’70s toy business, will become more common in later years; Mego has action figures and vehicles ready to ship when the series premieres in late 1979.
The tenth episode of the live-action series based on Marvel’s comic The Incredible Hulk premieres on CBS, starring Bill Bixby, Jack Colvin, and Lou Ferrigno. Andrew Robinson (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Diane Civita (V) and Carl Franklin (The Fantastic Journey) guest star.
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The 58th episode of The Bionic Woman, starring Lindsay Wagner and Richard Anderson, airs on NBC. This is the final episode of the series, and in a rarity for 1970s TV, is written to wrap up Jaime’s story. Lindsay Wagner will reprise the role in a series of reunion movies with Lee Majors (The Six Million Dollar Man) in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
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The week-long syndication window opens for the 20th episode of The Next Step Beyond, hosted and directed by John Newland. Frank Ashmore (V) guest stars.
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The 11th episode of the live-action series based on Marvel’s comic The Incredible Hulk premieres on CBS, starring Bill Bixby, Jack Colvin, and Lou Ferrigno. Sherry Jackson (77 Sunset Strip, Batman, Star Trek) and Peter Brandon (Altered States) guest star.
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NASA launches the 1,100 pound Pioneer Venus Orbiter, designed to orbit Venus for a year to study the planet’s atmosphere and its interaction with other space phenomena. Though launched separately, the two Pioneer Venus spacecraft will arrive at Venus within days of one another in December 1978. The Orbiter takes radar observations of the cloud-shrouded planet, from which the first surface map of Venus is derived. As with many other unmanned NASA spacecraft designed for relatively short-duration missions, the Pioneer Venus Orbiter outlives its design lifespan, staying fully functional into the 1990s and eventually becoming the only American spacecraft to view Halley’s Comet in 1986.
The 11th 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. William Jordan and Caskey Swaim star. David Hedison (Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, The Fly) guest stars.
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The week-long syndication window opens for the 21st episode of The Next Step Beyond, hosted and directed by John Newland. Mark Goddard (Lost In Space) guest stars in a remake of the 1961 One Step Beyond episode The Room Upstairs.
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The 12th 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. William Jordan and Caskey Swaim star.
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The week-long syndication window opens for the 22nd episode of The Next Step Beyond, hosted and directed by John Newland. Anne Helm guest stars in a remake of the 1959 One Step Beyond episode Forked Lightning.
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The 13th 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. William Jordan and Caskey Swaim star. Pamela Franklin guest stars in the first season finale.
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The week-long syndication window opens for the 23rd episode of The Next Step Beyond, hosted and directed by John Newland.
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The Alan Parsons Project releases its third album, Pyramid, including the singles “Can’t Take It With You” and “Pyramania”.
Mars invades Earth again thanks to producer Jeff Wayne, who gathers an unlikely assemblage of prodigious talent around him to create a new musical version of H.G. Wells’ The War Of The Worlds. Featuring Richard Burton, Justin Hayward (of Moody Blues fame), Chris Thompson (Manfred Mann) and others, the double-album becomes an instant classic – a science fiction rock opera.
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The week-long syndication window opens for the 24th episode of The Next Step Beyond, hosted and directed by John Newland.
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The Soviet Union launches Soyuz 29 on a mission to berth at space station Salyut 6 for a period of around four months. Cosmonauts Vladimir Kovalyonok and Aleksandr Ivanchenkov are aboard, and they eventually set a new space endurance record, remaining in orbit for 139 days. Numerous material science experiments are carried out, as well as a spacewalk to retrieve samples of various materials left exposed to space outside the station. The crew is also assigned to take on a more rigorous exercise program. They will return to Earth in November after swapping vehicles with the crew of Soyuz 31.
NOAA’s GOES-3 Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite is launched from Cape Canaveral into a geosynchronous orbit over the Indian Ocean, replacing the first operational GOES satellite, GOES-1. GOES-3 will serve as a working weather satellite for over a decade, ultimately decommissioned from that role in 1989 and then serving as a communications satellite for the Pacific Ocean region and Antarctica, a role it continues to fill over 35 years later.
The week-long syndication window opens for the 25th and final episode of The Next Step Beyond, hosted and directed by John Newland.
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Astronomer James Christy, conducting observations of Pluto at the United States Naval Observatory, discovers a bulging shape present in some photos he’s taken of Pluto, but absent in others. Though the find meets with some skepticism, he has discovered the largest moon of Pluto, Charon, which has a mass of over 50% that of its parent body. Orbiting at only 11,000 miles from Pluto’s surface, Charon has a radius of 750 miles. Within 20 years, closer telescopic examination (including observations using the Hubble Space Telescope) confirm that Charon is separate from Pluto. Since the two bodies are relatively similar in mass, one doesn’t actually orbit the other; rather, they both orbit a center of mass – a barycenter – that lies close to, but not within, Pluto. Further observations in the 21st century lead to the unexpected discovery of four further satellites of Pluto.
20th Century Fox files a lawsuit against Hollywood rival Universal Pictures over Universal’s upcoming made-for-TV science fiction saga Battlestar Galactica, which 20th Century Fox contends is a copy of its theatrical smash hit Star Wars. Specificially, the studio behind Star Wars claims that the television series infringes on the script for Star Wars, and requests an injunction to bring production to a halt and keep ABC from airing it. The first decision in the case won’t happen until 1980, by which time Battlestar Galactica will already have ended its TV run.
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Following a communications blackout scare in April 1978, JPL uploads an autonomous command sequence to the Voyager 2 unmanned space probe, which would allow the spacecraft to carry out a self-guided mission to Jupiter and Saturn, the results of which would automatically be transmitted to Earth even if Voyager 2 can receive no further instructions from Earth. Due to the command storage limitations of Voyager 2’s onboard computer, this automatic backup mission plan makes no allowances for pictures of Jupiter, saving that capability for Saturn instead. In the event that Voyager 2 can no longer hear commands from Earth, the extended mission to Uranus and Neptune would be forfeited in favor of “minimum science return” from Jupiter and Saturn.
Atari releases the Basketball cartridge for the Atari VCS, one of the earliest home video games to show a vaguely 3-D perspective, and probably the best-known early sports game in the console’s library.
Soyuz 30 lifts off en route to a brief visit with the crew of space station Salyut 6. This is the second manned Interkosmos mission, with cosmonaut Pyotr Klimuk and the first Polish cosmonaut, Mirosław Hermaszewski, aboard. They dock at Salyut 6 after two days in orbit, and spend a total of eight days in space. Though some joint experiments are conducted among the four occupants of the station, the Soyuz 30 crew frequently has to perform experiments in its own Soyuz vehicle to avoid getting in the station crew’s way, and the mission is kept short to free up the second docking port for a Progress unmanned supply vehicle launched four days after Soyuz 30 returns to Earth.
After its introduction in June in Japan, Space Invaders is introduced to the United States by Midway Manufacturing. Its space-war-themed action arrives just in time to cash in on the public’s fascination with space and science fiction, making it a major hit (the game is already well on its way to causign coin shortages in its native Japan). In America, it pushes the arcade video game industry into high gear, priming both the industry and the public for the boom years ahead. Space Invaders‘ success also convinces Taito to start an American operation rather than continuing to license its arcade games to Midway.
The second episode of the science fiction sitcom Come Back, Mrs. Noah, created by the writing duo behind the perennial favorite Are You Being Served? and starring Mollie Sugden, is aired by the BBC.
Atari releases the baseball cartridge