Space History for April 1

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CalliArcale

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It's been ages since I've done one of these threads. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /><br /><br />April 1, 1945, the US Government authorized the formation of a rocket launch site at Wallops Island, to be used by NACA for testing sounding rockets and missiles. As NACA later became NASA, this is arguably the oldest NASA rocket facility. In addition to general rocket research, Wallops was useful in the Apollo program as the site for a series of Apollo abort tests, used to validate the escape tower.<br /><br />April 1, 1960 saw a new age in weather forecasting with the launch of Tiros 1, a polar-orbiting spacecraft capable of returning television images of the Earth. Though TIROS 1 is long since defunct, the program continues today under the auspices of NOAA. Today, we are so accustomed to satellite weather imagery that we take it quite for granted.<br /><br />Today is also the birthday of a couple of cosmonauts. Sergei Nikolayevich Anokhin, born in 1910, never flew in space. After acheiving great reknown as a test pilot before and during the war, he was eventually assigned to Korolev's design bureau as a test pilot and flight instructor. He was injured in a test flight and unfortunately was consequently unable to fly into space. He died in 1986 of natural causes.<br /><br />Sergey Aleksandrovich Volkov was born April 1, 1973. He is a second-generation cosmonaut; his father was Alexandr Volkov. The younger Volkov has not yet been selected for a spaceflight mission. His father, however, racked up an impressive 391 cumulative days in space over a career that spanned Salyut and Mir. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>
 
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