January 9, 2017 - Trading Places
Trading Places Having spent 118 days on the Mir space station as part of the Shuttle-Mir program, astronaut John Blaha caught a ride home with the crew of STS-81, which visited Mir twenty years ago this week on the fifth of nine Shuttle-Mir docking missions. Trading places with Blaha on Mir was astronaut Jerry Linenger, who flew up with the crew of Atlantis and would remain on Mir for another three months. Soon after Atlantis docked with Mir, Mission Specialist Marsha Ivins took an electronic still camera aboard the Mir complex and recorded this dramatic image of the Shuttle’s forward section, which appears to be resting on the limb of Earth. During five days of docked activities, several tons of supplies and equipment were transferred to Mir. Atlantis returned to Earth after ten days in space.
Image credit: NASA
Weekly Calendar
January 9-15, 2017
Holidays - Sky Events - Space History
Monday 9
Aldebaran 0.4° south of Moon
1839: Thomas Henderson publishes distance to Alpha Centauri
1968: Surveyor 7 lands on Moon
1990: STS-32 Columbia launched
Tuesday 10
Moon at perigee
1946: U.S. Army bounces radar signal off the Moon
1969: Venera 6 launched
Wednesday 11
1787: William Herschel discovers Uranian moons Oberon and Titania
1978: First triple docking: Soyuz 26, Soyuz 27, Salyut 6
1996: STS-72 Endeavour launched
1998: Lunar Prospector arrives at Moon
Thursday 12
Full Moon 6:34 AM ET
Venus 0.4° N of Neptune
Venus at greatest elong (47° E)
1907: Sergei Korolev born
1986: STS-61C Columbia launched
1997: STS-81 Atlantis launched
2005: Deep Impact spacecraft launched
Friday 13
1610: Galileo discovers Ganymede, moon of Jupiter
1978: NASA selects first women astronauts
1993: STS-54 Endeavour launched
Saturday 14
1975: Earth Resources Technology Satellite is renamed Landsat
2005: Huygens probe lands on Titan
2008: MESSENGER spacecraft makes its first flyby of Mercury
Sunday 15
Regulus 0.8° north of Moon
1973: Luna 21 lander and Lunokhod 2 rover land on Moon
1976: Helios 2 launched
2006: Stardust spacecraft returns samples of comet dust