16 October
2002: On 16 October 2002, the countdown for the launch of the Integral mission started at 22:41 GMT in ESOC, ESA's mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany. To make the ...
27 FEB. 2004
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2002: On 17 October 2002, ESA launched the Integral mission. Integral is the first space observatory that can simultaneously observe objects in gamma rays, X-rays, and visible light. Its principal targets are violent explosions known as gamma-ray bursts, powerful phenomena such as supernova explosions, and regions in the Universe thought to contain black holes.
1941: On 17 October 1941, John Stanley Plaskett died.
Plaskett, the most important Canadian astronomer of his day, discovered many new binary stars, including Plaskett's star, a massive binary star previously thought to be a single star. His work on the radial velocities of galactic stars allowed him to confirm the rotation of the Milky Way and to locate the most probable location of its gravitational centre. Together with J.A. Pearce, he published the first detailed analysis of the structure of the Milky Way, demonstrating that the Sun is two-thirds out from the centre of our galaxy and rotates once in 220 million years.
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15 October
1997: On 15 October 1997, the joint NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens mission was launched. It was the first spacecraft sent to land on a world in the outer Solar System - on ...
14 October
1968: On 14 October 1968, the first live telecast from Earth orbit was transmitted from Apollo 7.NASA astronauts Walter Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walt Cunningham showed views of the inside ...
13 October
1997: On 13 October 1997, the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens mission had been due to be launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida, USA.At nearly the last moment, the launch was cancelled. Engineers ...
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