View of the Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew traveling toward the Moon on Dec. 7, 1972. This translunar coast photograph extends from the Mediterranean Sea area to the Antarctica south polar ice cap. This is the first time the Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the south polar cap.
Apollo 7, the first crewed flight of an Apollo spacecraft, launched on the Saturn IB #OTD in 1968, with astronauts Walter M. Schirra, Jr., Donn F. Eisele, and Walter Cunningham on board. The 10-day mission tested hardware and procedures essential for the flights to the Moon.
Soyuz MS-10 spaceflight with cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin and astronaut Nick Hague on board was aborted after launch due to a failure of the Soyuz-FG launch vehicle boosters #OTD in 2018. The crew returned safely to Earth 19 minutes 41 seconds after the launch.
Able 2, the second in the series of probes with the ambitious goal to orbit the Moon was launched #OTD in 1958. The mission was officially named Pioneer. The probe reached altitude of 113,810 km and reentered Earth’s atmosphere 43 hours 17 min after launch. beyondearthsky.blogspot.com/2025/10/2.html
Venera 15, the first of two Soviet radar imaging orbiter designed to make detailed radar maps of Venus' surface at a resolution of 1 to 2 km, entered orbit around Venus #OTD in 1983. Last contact was made with the spacecraft on January 5, 1985.
The first attempt to launch a spacecraft to the vicinity of another planet took place #OTD in 1960. The 1M No. 1 probe was the first of two Soviet spacecraft intended to fly past Mars. The launch attempt failed without reaching Earth orbit. beyondearthsky.blogspot.com/2025/10/firs...
Triton, the largest moon of Neptune, was discovered by William Lassell #OTD 1846 just 17 days after the discovery of Neptune. It is the only large moon in the Solar System with a retrograde orbit, an orbit in the direction opposite to its planet's rotation beyondearthsky.blogspot.com/2025/10/nept...
One of the most powerful explosions ever recorded, Gamma-Ray Burst GRB 221009A, was detected #OTD in 2022. It occurred 1.9 billion light-years away and was the most energetic and one of the nearest gamma-ray bursts ever observed. beyondearthsky.blogspot.com/2025/10/2210...
#OTD In 2009, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) and its Centaur upper stage crashed as planned on the lunar surface. The mission successfully confirmed that water ice resides in a permanently shadowed crater at the lunar south pole.
The first confirmed manned powered flight was made by French inventor and engineer Clément Ader in an uncontrolled monoplane Éole of his own design #OTD in 1890. He achieved a short flight of around 50 metres at a height of around 20 cm. beyondearthsky.blogspot.com/2025/10/ader...
Supernova SN 1604, also known as Kepler's Star, in Ophiuchus, was first seen by observers in northern Italy #OTD 1604. It was named after Johannes Kepler, even though he was not its first observer, as his observations tracked the object for an entire year. beyondearthsky.blogspot.com/2025/10/kepl...
#OTD in 2009, a superbolide – a large atmospheric fireball blast – was seen above Sulawesi island. The meteoritic impactor broke up at a height of 15–20 km, with an energy of 10 to 50 kiloton TNT, its likely size was 5–10 m diameter. The explosion was detected by many infrasound monitoring stations.
#OTD in 2008, asteroid 2008 TC3 exploded above the Nubian Desert in Sudan. It was discovered just 19 hours before the impact by Richard A. Kowalski at the Catalina Sky Survey. It was the first predicted asteroid impact. The asteroid had a diameter of 4.1 meters and a mass of 80 tonnes.
#OTD in 1995, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the University of Geneva announced the discovery of 51 Pegasi b (now officially named Dimidium), the first definitive detection of an exoplanet orbiting a main-sequence star.
Ulysses, the first mission to study the environment of space above and below the poles of the Sun, was launched aboard Space Shuttle Discovery #OTD 1990. The gravity-assist manoeuvre at Jupiter in February 1992 swung the craft into its unique solar orbit. beyondearthsky.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-...
Robert Hutchings Goddard, American engineer and physicist, considered one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics, was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, #OTD in 1882. In 1926 he successfully launched the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket. beyondearthsky.blogspot.com/2025/10/hutc...
#OTD 2004, SpaceShipOne rocketplane, flight 17P, with pilot Brian Binnie, reached a maximum altitude of 112.01 km and broke the record for a rocket plane set by the X-15 in 1963. It was the third of three record-setting flights to win the Ansari X-Prize. beyondearthsky.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-...
Soviet Automatic Interplanetary Station (retroactively named Luna 3), the first spacecraft to return images of the lunar far side, was launched #OTD in 1959. A total of 17 resolvable but noisy photographs were transmitted to Earth. beyondearthsky.blogspot.com/2025/10/3-an...
68 years ago #OTD, Sputnik 1 (PS-1), the world’s first artificial satellite, was launched from Tyuratam (now the Baikonur Cosmodrome) aboard a two-stage rocket, a variant of the R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile. Painting by Andrei Sokolov. beyondearthsky.blogspot.com/2025/09/sput...
The first successful test flight of a German Aggregat 4 — later known as V-2 — ballistic missile, prototype no. V-4, took place from Prüfstand VII in Peenemünde on the island of Usedom off the Baltic coast #OTD in 1942. beyondearthsky.blogspot.com/2025/10/4.html
HAPPY 90th BIRTHDAY to Apollo 16 Moonwalker Charlie Duke! 🚀 90 orbits of the Sun and a stroll on the Moon. One of only four men left with us who have walked on another world.
The Vanguard Six cosmonauts, selected for in-depth preparations for Vostok missions: (seated, left to right) Nikolayev, Gagarin, Chief designer Korolev, Cosmonaut Training Center Director Karpov and parachute instructor Nikitin; (standing, left to right) Popovich, Nelyubov, Titov and Bykovsky
Chang'e 2, the second Chinese lunar spacecraft, was launched #OTD in 2010. It orbited the Moon until June 2011 and flew, with a distance of less than 1 kilometre, by the near-Earth asteroid Toutatis on December 13, 2012.
#OTD in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) began operations. NASA was created from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and other related organizations, as the result of the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union.
