Valentine Space History: Ups and Downs

[CalliArcale]

On Valentine's Day, 1963, Syncom 1 was launched aboard a Delta B rocket from Cape Canaveral's LC17B. It was an experimental telecommunications satellite. The idea was to place a satellite into geosynchronous orbit so that it would be easy to point a satellite dish at it and relay signals. Alas, it failed. The spacecraft was inserted into geosynchronous orbit, but shortly thereafter stopped responding. Five months later, Syncom 2 was placed into geosynchronous orbit and became the first operational geosychronous satellite.<br /><br />Nine years later, February 14, 1972, Luna 20 blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard a Proton rocket. It touched down in Mare Fecunditatis on February 21 in the Apollonius highlands. This was essentially a second attempt at the Luna 18 mission, which crashed a bit over a hundred kilometers away. It returned panoramic TV imagery and collected soil samples. 30 grams of these samples were then blasted away from the Moon by Luna 20's ascent stage on February 22. The samples arrived on Earth on February 25. This was the second Soviet lunar sample return mission. They would attempt two more, of which one would be successful. Luna 24, in 1976, would be the last mission to return any samples from the surface of the Moon and the last return of any celestial samples until the Genesis and Stardust missions in the 21st Century.<br /><br />Eight years later, February 14, 1980, the Solar Maximum Mission (popularily called "Solar Max") was launched in order to observe the upcoming solar max (period of heightened solar activity). It was launched aboard a Delta 3 rocket from Cape Canaveral's LC17A and was a great success over its nine and a half year mission. Perhaps the most memorable event in its career came in 1984 when the crew of STS-41C snatched it out of its orbit, repaired its attitude control system, replaced some electronics (restoring its coronagraph to operation), and released it back into orbit. Solar Max was the first unmanne <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>