A Brief History On September 12, 1992, NASA launched mission STS-47, an historic flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour. Digging Deeper Among the notable facts about this particular flight, is that this mission marked the 50th space shuttle flight. Another first, was the first African American woman in space, Mae Carol Jemison. Mamoru Mohri became the first ever Japanese astronaut aboard a US spacecraft, and the first married couple to be together in space when Mark Lee and Jan Davis made the space flight as crew members. Endeavor made a total of 25 successful space flights from 1992 until retirement in…
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A Brief History On September 8, 2016, NASA launched its OSIRIS-Rex mission to near-Earth asteroid 101955 Bennu with the goal of returning to Earth with a sample of the asteroid. The sample size is to be at least 2.1 ounces. Digging Deeper The sample is to be returned to the Earth about September 24, 2023. The rendezvous with the asteroid took place in 2018 and the sample was not collected until October of 2020 when the spacecraft made a landing on the space rock. Despite mechanical difficulty, a sample between 400 and 1,000 grams was collected. NASA hopes to find…
A Brief History On September 5, 1980, the Gotthard Road Tunnel from Uri Canton to Airolo in Switzerland opened for travel, at the time the longest highway tunnel in the world at 10.5 miles long. Today, we look at some other real and fictional tunnels: Digging Deeper The Channel Tunnel, or, “Chunnel,” connecting France and England with an under the sea section of 23.5 of its 31 mile length. The Time Tunnel, a TV show from 1966 to 1967, featuring two lost time travelers going from one historical adventure to another. The Delaware Aqueduct, the longest tunnel in the world,…
A Brief History On September 3, 1935, Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah was the scene of an historic automobile event, the first ever car to achieve a documented speed of over 300 mph. Sir Malcolm Campbell, motor journalist and race car driver, piloted a Rolls-Royce V-12 powered Campbell-Railton Blue Bird to a new land speed world record, a record he himself already held since March of 1935 in the same car. Digging Deeper Campbell had set new world land speed records in his Blue Bird five times, and in other cars four more times, making him a nine time world…
A Brief History On August 29, 1915, US Navy salvage crews raised the submarine, F-4, from the seabed off Honolulu where she had sunk with all hands on March 25, 1915, the first USN sub lost and another in a long list of Naval “Oops Moments.” Digging Deeper Tiny by today’s standards, the F-4 was only 142 feet and 7 inches long with a beam of 15 feet, with a crew of only 21 on the day she sank. Her original name had been USS Skate, although it was changed before her launch. Interesting trivia regarding her salvage is that…