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JPL's Explorer 1 was launched by a U.S. Army Redstone booster (AKA Juno I) from Cape Canaveral's Pad 26, and was America's entry into the space race. It first detected the Van Allen radiation belts that surround the Earth. The spacecraft orbited our planet until it burned up in the atmosphere in 1970. The Soviets may have been first, but with Explorer's success, the Space Race was on! What will the next 50 years bring?
Mission STS-51L was the 25th Shuttle flight, and it carried the first "Teacher In Space", Christa McAuliffe. The Challenger, (OV-99), was the second orbiter built, and had completed 9 successful missions (starting with STS-6 in 1983) before the awful incident, which was caused by O-rings in the right solid rocket booster becoming brittle in the winter cold. The accident rocked the nation and became embedded in the minds of an entire generation. The remains of some crewmembers were buried with honors at Arlington National Cemetery, and the wreckage of the spacecraft is sealed in a missile silo at Cape Canaveral. NASA grounded the Shuttle program for more than two years while safety improvements were made. The Challenger Learning Centers, dedicated to space science education, were founded in honor of the crew. Remember the brave men and women of Challenger, Apollo 1, and Columbia!
This week will see remembrances of the three tragedies whose anniversaries fall so closely on the calendar: Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia. Never forget the heroes of space exploration! WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's pledge to seek a worldwide ban on weapons in space marks a dramatic shift in U.S. policy while posing the tricky issue of defining whether a satellite can be a weapon. http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE50O15X20090125 |
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