CHRONOLOGY – FEBRUARY 2007

3/21/06

45 YEARS AGO – 1962

Feb 8: Tiros 3 launched, 7:43 a.m., EST, ESMC.

Feb 20: Mercury Atlas 6 (MA-6), Friendship 7 launched, with astronaut

John Glenn, 9:47:39 a.m., first American to orbit the earth, ESMC.

Feb 27: Discoverer 38 launched, WSMC.

40 YEARS AGO – 1967

Feb 4: Lunar Orbiter 3 launched, 8:17 p.m., EST, ESMC.

Feb 8: Diamede 1 launched, Hammaquir, Algeria, French satellite.

Feb. 15: Diamede 2 launched, Hammaquir, Algeria, French satellite.

35 YEARS AGO – 1972

Feb 14: USSR launches Luna 20 which soft lands on the Moon four days later. A rotary-percussion drill retrieved samples from the surface which were returned to Earth by capsule on February 25

25 YEARS AGO – 1982

Feb 25: Westar IV launched, 7:04 p.m., EST, ESMC.

20 YEARS AGO – 1987

Feb 5: Soyuz TM-2 launched, 2138 Moscow time, Yuri Romanenko and Aleksandr Laveykin docked with space station MIR. Romanenko

established world space record of 326 days in space, Baikonur, USSR.

Feb 12: SDS launched for DOD, l0:40 p.m., PST, WSMC.

Feb 26: GOES 7 launched, 6:05 p.m., EST, ESMC.

10 YEARS AGO – 1997

Feb. 11: STS-82 launch at 3:55 a.m. EST, KSC. Astronauts: Kenneth D. Bowersox, Scott J. Horowitz, Mark C. Lee, Steven A. Hawley, Gregory J. Harbaugh, Steven L. Smith, and Joseph R. Tanner.

Second in a series of planned servicing missions to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Landed February 21 at 3:32 am EST, KSC. Mission Duration: 9 days, 23 hours, 38 minutes.

Feb. 26: SPRBIRD-B1, a Japanese communications satellite, and ARABSAT-1C, a Saudi Arabian communications satellite were launched using the Ariane-44L launch vehicle from the Kourou Space Center, French Guiana.

5 YEARS AGO – 2002

Feb. 5: HESSI (High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager) solar flare observatory launched at 3:58 PM EDT by a Pegasus XL rocket which was released from a L-1011 aircraft flying out of the Cape Canaveral AFS. Renamed Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) on March 29, 2002.