Time line in Space Exploration: On this Date: January 23 1930 - William R Pogue, US astronaut (Skylab 4) is born 1969 – NASA unveiled a moon-landing craft. 2003 – Final communication between Earth and Pioneer 10. Pioneer 10 (originally designated Pioneer F), an American space probe, weighing 258 kilograms, completed the first mission to the planet Jupiter. Thereafter, Pioneer 10 became the first spacecraft to achieve escape velocity from the Solar System. This space exploration project was conducted by the NASA Ames Research Center in California, and the space probe was manufactured by TRW. Pioneer 10 was assembled around a hexagonal bus with a 2.74 meter diameter parabolic dish high-gain antenna, and the spacecraft was spin stabilized around the axis of the antenna. Its electric power was supplied by four radioisotope thermoelectric generators that provided a combined 155 watts at launch. Pioneer 10 was launched on March 3, 1972, by an Atlas-Centaur expendable vehicle from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Between July 15, 1972, and February 15, 1973, it became the first spacecraft to traverse the asteroid belt. Photography of Jupiter began November 6, 1973, at a range of 25,000,000 km, and a total of about 500 images were transmitted. The closest approach to the planet was on December 4, 1973, at a range of 132,252 km. During the mission, the on-board instruments were used to study the asteroid belt, the environment around Jupiter, the solar wind, cosmic rays, and eventually the far reaches of the solar system and heliosphere. Radio communications were lost with Pioneer 10 because of the loss of electric power for its radio transmitter, with the probe at a distance of 12 billion kilometers (80 AU) from Earth. Today in Naval History: January 23’ 1856 - Steamer Pacific lost 1909 – RMS Republic, a passenger ship of the White Star Line, becomes the first ship to use the CQD distress signal after colliding with another ship, the SS Florida, off the Massachusetts coastline, an event that kills six people. The Republic sinks the next day. Florida came about to rescue Republic’s complement, and the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service cutter Gresham responded to the distress signal as well. Passengers were distributed between the two ships, with Florida taking the bulk of them, but with 900 Italian immigrants already on board, this left the ship dangerously overloaded. The White Star liner Baltic, commanded by Captain J. B. Ranson, also responded to the CQD call, but due to the persistent fog, it was not until the evening that Baltic was able to locate the drifting Republic. Once on-scene, the rescued passengers were transferred from Gresham and Florida to Baltic. Because of the damage to Florida, that ship’s immigrant passengers were also transferred to Baltic, but a riot nearly broke out when they had to wait until first-class Republic passengers were transferred. Once everyone was on board, Baltic sailed for New York. 1940 – Britain and France warn that they will attack German shipping encountered by their navies in the Pan-American neutral zone. 1960 – The bathyscaphe USS Trieste breaks a depth record by descending to 10,911 meters (35,797 ft) in the Pacific Ocean. Trieste is a Swiss-designed, Italian-built deep-diving research bathyscaphe, which with her crew of two reached a record maximum depth of about 10,911 metres (35,797 ft), in the deepest known part of the Earth’s oceans, the Challenger Deep, in the Mariana Trench near Guam in the Pacific. On 23 January 1960, Jacques Piccard (son of the boat’s designer Auguste Piccard) and US Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh achieved the goal of Project Nekton. Trieste was the first manned vessel to have reached the bottom of the Challenger Deep. 1968 – The U.S. intelligence-gathering ship Pueblo is seized by North Korean naval vessels and charged with spying and violating North Korean territorial waters. Negotiations to free the 83-man crew of the U.S. ship dragged on for nearly a year, damaging the credibility of and confidence in the foreign policy of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration. The capture of the ship and internment of its crew by North Korea was loudly protested by the Johnson administration. The U.S. government vehemently denied that North Korea’s territorial waters had been violated and argued the ship was merely performing routine intelligence gathering duties in the Sea of Japan. Some U.S. officials, including Johnson himself, were convinced that the seizure was part of a larger communist-bloc offensive, since exactly one week later, communist forces in South Vietnam launched the Tet Offensive, the largest attack of the Vietnam War. Despite this, however, the Johnson administration took a restrained stance toward the incident. Fully occupied with the Tet Offensive, Johnson resorted to quieter diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis in North Korea. In December 1968, the commander of the Pueblo, Capt. Lloyd Bucher, grudgingly signed a confession indicating that his ship was spying on North Korea prior to its capture. With this propaganda victory in hand, the North Koreans turned the crew and captain (including one crewman who had died) over to the United States. The Pueblo incident was a blow to the Johnson administration’s credibility, as the president seemed powerless to free the captured crew and ship. Combined with the public’s perception–in the wake of the Tet Offensive–that the Vietnam War was being lost, the Pueblo incident resulted in a serious faltering of Johnson’s popularity with the American people. The crewmen’s reports about their horrific treatment at the hands of the North Koreans during their 11 months in captivity further incensed American citizens, many of whom believed that Johnson should have taken more aggressive action to free the captive Americans. 1986 – U.S. began maneuvers off the Libyan coast. Following Libyan involvement in murderous attacks at the El Al counters at the Vienna and Rome airports in 1985, and after a considerable portion of Libya’s involvement in international terrorism had become public knowledge, U.S. President Reagan, in January 1986, ordered all economic ties with Libya severed and Libyan assets in the U.S. frozen. Reagan also called upon other countries to join the economic boycott against Libya. U.S. concentrated troops from the Sixth Fleet in the Gulf of Sidra opposite Libya. A series of terrorist attacks will lead the U.S. to take retaliatory military action in April 1986, American planes will attack government and military installations in Benghazi and Tripoli. Today in Coast Guard History: January 23 1009 - The schooner Roderick Dhu was discovered in distress on the bar by a Life-Saving Service patrol from the Point Bonita, California station. The schooner had been in tow by a tug, but parted hawsers when 5 1/2 miles SW of a LSS station. She hoisted a signal, and the keeper reported her condition to the Merchants Exchange. A tug was sent out and the schooner was towed to sea. The next day she was towed into port, leaking badly, and convoyed by the USRC McCulloch. Today in Aviation History: On This Date: January 23 1918: The first U.S. military balloon ascension in the American Expeditionary Force took place at the American Balloon School, Cuperly, Marne, France. 1940: In the first American test to check if a complete unit could be moved by air, the 7th Bombardment Group (BG) from Hamilton Field, Calif., used 38 bombers to transport a battalion of 65th Coast Artillery troops 500 miles. (Air Force Association) 1941 – Charles A. Lindbergh, a national hero since his nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic, testifies before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the Lend-Lease policy-and suggests that the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Hitler. Lindbergh was born in 1902 in Detroit. His father was a member of the House of Representatives. Lindbergh’s interest in aviation led him to flying school in Lincoln, Nebraska, and later brought him work running stunt-flying tours and as an airmail pilot. While regularly flying a route from St. Louis to Chicago, he decided to try to become the first pilot to fly alone nonstop from New York to Paris. He obtained the necessary financial backing from a group of businessmen, and on May 21, 1927, after a flight that lasted slightly over 33 hours, Lindbergh landed his plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, in Paris. He won worldwide fame along with his $25,000 prize. In March 1932, Lindbergh made headlines again, but this time because of the kidnapping of his two-year-old son. The baby was later found dead, and the man convicted of the crime, Bruno Hauptmann, was executed. To flee unwanted publicity, Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow, daughter of U.S. ambassador Dwight Morrow, moved to Europe. During the mid-1930s, Lindbergh became familiar with German advances in aviation and warned his U.S. counterparts of Germany’s growing air superiority. But Lindbergh also became enamored of much of the German national “revitalization” he encountered, and allowed himself to be decorated by Hitler’s government, which drew tremendous criticism back home. Upon Lindbergh’s return to the States, he agitated for neutrality with Germany, and testified before Congress in opposition to the Lend-Lease policy, which offered cash and military aid to countries friendly to the United States in their war effort against the Axis powers. His public denunciation of “the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt Administration” as instigators of American intervention in the war, as well as comments that smacked of anti-Semitism, lost him the support of other isolationists. When, in 1941, President Roosevelt denounced Lindbergh publicly, the aviator resigned from the Air Corps Reserve. He eventually contributed to the war effort, though, flying 50 combat missions over the Pacific. His participation in the war, along with his promotion to brigadier general of the Air Force Reserve in 1954 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a popular Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Spirit of St. Louis,, and a movie based on his exploits all worked to redeem him in the public’s eyes. 1951 – Thirty-three F-84s of the U.S. Air Force’s 27th Fighter-Escort Wing engaged 30 MiG-15s in a dogfight over the skies of Sinuiju. In less than a minute Captains Allen McGuire and William Slaughter each destroyed a MiG while First Lieutenant Jacob Kratt scored two kills, the first double MiG kill of the war. 1953 – The U.S. Air Force’s 18th Fighter-Bomber Wing flew the last F-51 Mustang mission of the war. 1999 – US jets attacked 2 Iraqi surface-to-air missile batteries after encountering anti-aircraft fire and MiG jets in the southern no-fly zone. Today in Military History: January 23 2013 – The United States Armed Forces overturns its ban on women serving in combat, reversing a 1994 rule, and potentially clearing the way for women to serve in front-line units and elite commando forces.
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 18:31:40 +0000
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