18 December
1958: On 18 December 1958, the world's first communications satellite, SCORE, was launched from Cape Canaveral, United States.
31 DEC. 2003
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2003: on 19 December 2003, ESA's Mars Express released its Beagle 2 lander and set it on a trajectory for a landing on Mars.
At 9:31 CET, a sequence began to separate the Beagle 2 lander from Mars Express. A pyrotechnic device was fired to slowly release a loaded spring, which gently pushed Beagle 2 away from the mother spacecraft. An image from the on-board visual monitoring camera showed the lander drifting away.
On Christmas Day 2003, ESA's Mars Express successfully arrived in orbit around Mars. In early January, the Beagle 2 lander had still not yet signalled its safe landing.
By February 2004, Beagle 2 had failed to communicate since its first radio contact was missed after it was due to land on Christmas Day. The Beagle 2 Management Board met in London on 6 February and, following an assessment of the situation, declared Beagle 2 lost.
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17 December
1903: On 17 December 1903, the Wright brothers flew the first flight in an aeroplane.
16 December
1826: Giovanni Battista Donati was born.Donati was an Italian astronomer who, on 5 August 1864, was the first to observe the spectrum of a comet (Comet 1864 II). This observation ...
15 December
1612: On 15 December 1612, Simon Marius became the first person to spot another galaxy (Andromeda) through a telescope.Marius was a German astronomer who made observations of the stars and ...
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