Make Your Career Soar
Fifty-six years ago this month, a USAF/Convair B-58A Hustler from the 43rd Bomb Wing at Carswell AFB, Texas set a trio of transcontinental speed records in a round trip from Los Angeles to New York and back. This historic feat was accomplished as part of Operation Heat Rise. The USAF/Convair… Read More
Fifty-two years ago this week, the crew of Gemini VIII successfully regained control of their tumbling spacecraft following failure of an attitude control system thruster. The incident marked the first life-threatening on-orbit emergency and resulting mission abort in the history of American manned spaceflight. Gemini VIII was the sixth manned… Read More
Forty-nine years ago this month, the Apollo Lunar Module (LM) was flown by an astronaut crew in space for the first time during the Apollo 9 earth-orbital mission. This technological achievement was critical to the success of the first lunar landing mission which occurred a little over 4 months later.… Read More
Ten years ago this month, a United States Navy STANDARD Missile SM-3 Block IA interceptor engaged and destroyed a defunct NRO satellite at an altitude of 133 nautical miles. The relative velocity at intercept was in excess of 22,000 mph. The United States Navy/Raytheon Missile Systems SM-3 (RIM-161) is the… Read More
Fifty-six years ago today, Project Mercury Astronaut John Herschel Glenn, Jr. became the first American to orbit the Earth. Glenn’s spacecraft name and mission call sign was Friendship 7. Mercury-Atlas 6 (MA-6) lifted-off from Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 14 at 14:47:39 UTC on Tuesday, 20 February 1962. It was the… Read More
Seventy-three years ago this month, the Consolidated Vultee XP-81 made its flight test debut at Muroc Army Air Field, California with Vultee test pilot Frank Davis in the cockpit. The XP-81 was a prototype long range escort fighter powered by a combination of single turbojet and single turboprop engines. The… Read More
Sixty-three years ago this month, North American test pilot George F. Smith became the first man to survive a high dynamic pressure ejection from an aircraft in supersonic flight. Smith ejected from his F-100A Super Sabre at 777 MPH (Mach 1.05) as the crippled aircraft passed through 6,500 feet in… Read More
Sixty years ago today, the United States successfully orbited the country’s first space satellite. Known as Explorer I, the artificial moon went on to discover the Van Allen Radiation Belts, the extensive system of charged particles trapped in the magnetosphere that surrounds the Earth. The Explorer I satellite was designed… Read More
Fifty-four years ago this month, the United States successfully launched the first Saturn I Block II heavy-lift launch vehicle. Known as Saturn-Apollo No. 5 (SA-5), the space booster developmental mission featured the largest mass ever orbited up that time in the history of spaceflight. The Saturn I vehicle was a… Read More
Thirty-two years ago this month, the seven member crew of STS-51L were killed when the Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds after launch from LC-39B at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The tragedy was the first fatal in-flight mishap in the history of American manned spaceflight. In remarks made at a memorial… Read More
