SciByte

First woman in space

In 1963, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova returned to Earth after spending nearly three days as the first woman in space. She had been interested in parachute jumping when she was young, and that expertise was one of the reasons she was picked for the cosmonaut program. She became the first person to be recruited without experience as a test pilot. On 16 Jun 1963, Tereshkova was launched into space aboard Vostok 6, and became the first woman to travel in space. Her radio name was "Chaika," Russian for "seagull." Her flight made 48 orbits of Earth. Tereshkova never made a second trip into space. She became an important member of the Communist Party and a representative of the Soviet government.

Eratosthenes

Friday, June 20

the two brightest stars of summer, Arcturus and Vega, shine equally high overhead as evening grows late: Arcturus in the southwest, Vega toward the east

Saturday, June 21

Opportunity rover has reached a long sought after region of aluminum-rich clay mineral outcrops at a new Endeavour crater ridge now “named ‘Pillinger Point’ after Colin Pillinger the Principal Investigator for the [British] Beagle 2 Mars lander”

‘Pillinger Point’ – where ancient water once flowed billions of year ago.

The Beagle 2 lander was built to search for signs of life on Mars

2013 UQ4 Catalina is brightening on schedule and should be a binocular object greater than +10th magnitude by the end of June

2013 UQ4 belongs to a class of objects known as damocloids

These are thought to be inactive varieties of comet nuclei

This is the first transit of the sun by a planet observed from any planet other than Earth, and also the first imaging of Mercury from Mars

Mercury fills only about one-sixth of one pixel as seen from such great distance, so the darkening does not have a distinct shape, but its position follows Mercury's expected path based on orbital calculations.

The observations were made on June 3, 2014,

Space station Mir accident

In 1997, the space-station Mir suffered a near-fatal mishap when a Progress ferry being docked via remote control by Russian cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev accidentally rammed into the Spektr science module, putting a hole in the pressure vessel and damaging its solar arrays beyond use. To salvage the station, which consisted of a core, a connecting node, and five science modules, crew members severed electrical and data connections between Spektr and the rest of the station and then sealed off the module. They saved the station but lost about half of their electrical power

Tunguska meteorite

In 1908, at around 7:15 am, northwest of Lake Baikal, Russia, a huge fireball nearly as bright as the Sun was seen crossing the sky. Minutes later, there was a huge flash and a shock wave felt up to 650 km (400 mi) away. Over Tunguska, a meteorite over 50-m diameter, travelling at over 25 km per second (60,000 mph) penetrated Earth's atmosphere, heated to about 10,000 ºC and detonated 6 to10 km above the ground. The blast released the energy of 10-50 Megatons of TNT, destroying 2,200 sq km of forest leaving no trace of life. The Tunguska rock came out of the Taurid Meteor storm that crosses Earth's orbit twice a year. The first scientific expedition for which records survive was made by Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik in 1927

Bar code

In 1974, at 8:01 a.m., a package of Wrigley’s chewing gum with a bar code printed on it passed over a scanner at the Marsh Supermarket, Troy, Ohio, and became the first product ever logged under the new Universal Product Code (UPC) computerized recognition system. Invented by IBM, and approved for use in 1973, the UPC is a 12-number bar code representing the manufacturer's identity and an assigned product number. Within nanoseconds, this information is read with a laser beam moving at around 10,000 inches per second and transfers it to the store’s database computer for price lookup and inventory management

Toothbrush

Satellite

In 1965, the first commerical telephone conversation over a satellite took place over Early Bird I between America and Europe. It had capacity for 240 voice circuits or one black and white TV channel. Positioned to serve the Atlantic Ocean region, Early Bird provided commercial communications service between North America and Western Europe. It exceeded its 18 months designed in-orbit life by 2 additional years. (It was later renamed as Intelsat I.) By 1 Jul 1969, three Intelsat satellites in geostationary orbit provided full global coverage. Only 19 days after Intelsat III became operational, Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 crew made their historic first landing on the moon, watched by 500 million people back on Earth

India’s

Mars Orbiter Mission or MOM, has just celebrated 100 days and 100 million kilometers out from Mars on June 16, until the crucial Mars Orbital Insertion (MOI) engine firing

NASA’s MAVEN orbiter

Curiosity

just drove outside her landing ellipse

The six wheeled rover marked a major milestone on Sol 672, June 27, 2014, by traversing beyond her targeted landing ellipse

A potentially habitable Earth-like planet that is only 16 light years away has been discovered

The "super-Earth" planet, GJ 832 c, takes 16 days to orbit its red-dwarf star

has a mass at least five times that of Earth.

Two potentially habitable planets in the Gliese 581 system are just false signals arising out of starstuff, a new study said

Gliese 581d and 581g are (study authors said) instead indications of the star’s activity and rotation

Planets were first announced around the system in 2007

Curiosity’s Stunt Double

Scarecrow has a full-size version of Curiosity's wheels and other driving equipment, but doesn't have the "brains."

Engineers use it to test drive on different types of terrain