Mars Quiz

1959: The first colour photograph of the Earth from space was taken from the nose of a Thor missile launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The data capsule containing the camera was recovered on 16 February 1960 on the beach of Mayaguana Island, Bahama Islands, approximately 3 000 kilometres from the launch site. Unfortunately the photo taken by this missile is not available to the general public.

1960: Pchelka (Little Bee) and Mushka (Little Fly) were launched aboard Korabl-Sputnik-3 (AKA Sputnik 6). The launch went well, and the dogs spent a day in orbit, but there were problems with the retrofire burn and the re-entry angle was too steep. The rocket and its passengers were burned up in the Earth's atmosphere.

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1997: Eight planets from our Solar System lined up from West to East beginning with Pluto, followed by Mercury, Mars, Venus, Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter, and Saturn, with a crescent moon alongside, in a rare alignment visible from Earth that lasted until 8 December.

1935: Bernhard Voldemar Schmidt died. He was an Estonian-born astronomer and optical instrument maker who invented the telescope named after him. In 1929, he devised a new mirror system for reflecting telescopes which overcame previous problems of aberration of the image. He used a vacuum to suck the glass into a mold, polishing it flat, then allowing in to spring back into shape. The Schmidt telescope is now widely used in astronomy to photograph large sections of the sky because of its large field of view and its fine image definition.