Remembering Yuri Gagarin, born March 9, 1934.

Remembering Yuri Gagarin, born March 9, 1934 and passed away on March 27, 1968.

Gagarin was the first human to ever travel to space, an accomplishment he achieved in 1961 in the soviet spacecraft Vostok 1.

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Happy birthday to Rod Roddenberry, born February 5, 1974.

Happy birthday Rod Roddenberry, born February 5, 1974.

Eugene Wesley “Rod” Roddenberry Jr. is the only son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and his second wife, Majel Barrett-Roddenberry. He has two sisters, Darleen Roddenberry and Dawn Roddenberry, both from Gene Roddenberry’s first marriage to Eileen Anita Rexroat. He has a wife, Heidi, and a son named Zale.

Roddenberry is the chief executive officer at Roddenberry Entertainment, a company through which he is producing the newest Star Trek series Star Trek: Discovery.

Roddenberry acted as executive producer and narrator of Trek Nation, a Star Trek documentary released in late 2011.

He discussed his father Gene during an appearance in The Captains of The Final Frontier, a 2010 Star Trek documentary made for American television.

Roddenberry acted as a consultant for and advocate for, and promoter of the fan-made Star Trek: New Voyages series.

Roddenberry was interviewed and introduced the Gene Roddenberry: Up Close And Personal video documentary release from 2006.

He wrote an episode of the science fiction series called Earth: Final Conflict, which was a project conceived by Gene Roddenberry in the 1970s and produced by Majel Barrett Roddenberry in Toronto starting in 1997.

Roddenberry has also been involved with a large number of real-world science endeavors including The Ansari X-Prize, NASA, JPL, The Planetary Society, The Roddenberry Dive Team, and the Kennedy Space Center.

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The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986.

The NASA Space Shuttle orbiter Challenger (OV-099) (mission STS-51-L) broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its seven crew members, which included five NASA astronauts and two Payload Specialists. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:39 EST (16:39 UTC).

Disintegration of the vehicle began after an O-ring seal in its right solid rocket booster (SRB) failed at liftoff. The O-ring failure caused a breach in the SRB joint it sealed, allowing pressurized burning gas from within the solid rocket motor to reach the outside and impinge upon the adjacent SRB aft field joint attachment hardware and external fuel tank. This led to the separation of the right-hand SRB’s aft field joint attachment and the structural failure of the external tank. Aerodynamic forces broke up the orbiter.

The crew compartment and many other vehicle fragments were eventually recovered from the ocean floor after a lengthy search and recovery operation. The exact timing of the death of the crew is unknown; several crew members are known to have survived the initial breakup of the spacecraft. The shuttle had no escape system, and the impact of the crew compartment with the ocean surface was too violent to be survivable.

The disaster resulted in a 32-month hiatus in the shuttle program and the formation of the Rogers Commission, a special commission appointed by United States President Ronald Reagan to investigate the accident. The Rogers Commission found NASA’s organizational culture and decision-making processes had been key contributing factors to the accident. NASA managers had known since 1977 that contractor Morton Thiokol’s design of the SRBs contained a potentially catastrophic flaw in the O-rings, but they had failed to address this problem properly. They also disregarded warnings (an example of “go fever”) from engineers about the dangers of launching posed by the low temperatures of that morning, and failed to adequately report these technical concerns to their superiors.

What the Rogers Commission report did not highlight was that the vehicle was never certified to operate in temperatures that low. The O-rings, as well as many other critical components, had no test data to support any expectation of a successful launch in such conditions. Bob Ebeling from Thiokol delivered a biting analysis: “[W]e’re only qualified to 40 degrees …’what business does anyone even have thinking about 18 degrees, we’re in no man’s land.'” Ken Iliff, a former NASA Chief Scientist who had worked the Space Shuttle Program since its first mission (and the X-15 program before that) stated in an official 2004 NASA publication, “Violating a couple of mission rules was the primary cause of the Challenger accident.

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January 27, 1967 NASA Apollo 1, tragedy.

01-27-1967 NASA Apollo 1 tragedy.

Today, we remember Lt. Colonel Virgil I. Grissom, Lt. Colonel Edward H. White II, and Lt. Commander Roger B. Chaffee – all great men whom we lost today in 1967 when a flash fire occurred in the command module during a preflight test. The fire was first reported at 6:31 PM EST from Launch Pad 34-A at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. This crew was supposed to fly the first Apollo crewed mission, to have been launched in late February. At the time, the vehicle was referred to as AS-204 (since it hadn’t launched yet) and many reports refer to this as the AS-204 accident. Following the tragedy NASA began calling it Apollo 1.

To learn more about the Apollo I, the History Office website includes a summary of the mission, an investigation of the fire, and links to biographies for the three men at http://history.nasa.gov/Apollo204/.

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Happy birthday Buzz Aldrin, born January 20, 1930.

Buzz Aldrin (born Edwin Eugene Aldrin, Jr.) is an American engineer and former astronaut, and the second person to walk on the Moon. He was the Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing in history. He set foot on the Moon at 03:15:16 (UTC) on July 21, 1969, following mission commander Neil Armstrong. He is also a former U.S. Air Force officer and a Command Pilot.

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Bill Nye was born November 27, 1955.

William Sanford Nye popularly known as Bill Nye The Science Guy​, is an American science communicator, television presenter, and mechanical engineer. He is best known as the host of the PBS and syndicated children’s science show Bill Nye the Science Guy (1993–1998), the Netflix show Bill Nye Saves the World (2017–present), and for his many subsequent appearances in popular media as a science educator.

Nye began his career as a mechanical engineer for Boeing Corporation in Seattle, where he invented a hydraulic resonance suppressor tube used on 747 airplanes. In 1986, Nye left Boeing to pursue comedy, writing and performing jokes and bits for the local sketch television show Almost Live!, where he would regularly conduct wacky science experiments. Nye aspired to become the next Mr. Wizard and with the help of several producers successfully pitched the children’s television program Bill Nye the Science Guy to KCTS-TV, channel 9, Seattle’s public television station. The show—which proudly proclaimed in its theme song that “science rules!”—ran from 1993 to 1998 in national TV syndication. Known for its “high-energy presentation and MTV-paced segments,” the program became a hit for both kids and adults. The show was critically acclaimed and was nominated for 23 Emmy Awards, winning nineteen.

Following the success of his show, Nye continued to advocate for science, becoming the CEO of the Planetary Society and helping develop sundials for the Mars Exploration Rover missions. Nye has written two best-selling books on science, including Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation in 2014 and Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World in 2015. Nye has made frequent media appearances, including on Dancing with the Stars, The Big Bang Theory and Inside Amy Schumer. Nye starred in a documentary about his life and science advocacy titled Bill Nye: Science Guy, which premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March 2017, and, in October 2017, was chosen a NYT Critic’s Pick. In 2017, he debuted a Netflix series, entitled Bill Nye Saves the World.

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Alan Shepard was born November 18, 1923.

Alan Shepard was born November 18, 1923 and passed away on July 21, 1998.

Alan Bartlett “Al” Shepard, Jr., (RADM, USN), was an American naval officer and aviator, test pilot, flag officer, one of the original NASA Mercury Seven astronauts, and businessman, who in 1961 became the second person and the first American to travel into space. This Mercury flight was designed to enter space, but not to achieve orbit. Ten years later, at age 47 and the oldest astronaut in the program, Shepard commanded the Apollo 14 mission, piloting the lander to the most accurate landing of the Apollo missions. He became the fifth and oldest person to walk on the Moon, and the only astronaut of the Mercury Seven to walk on the Moon. During the mission, he hit two golf balls on the lunar surface.

These were his only two space flights, as his flight status was interrupted for five years (1964–69) during the Mercury and Gemini programs by Ménière’s disease, an inner-ear disease that was surgically corrected before his Moon flight. Shepard served as Chief of the Astronaut Office from November 1963 to July 1969 (the approximate period of his grounding), and from June 1971 to August 1, 1974 (from his last flight to his retirement). He was promoted from Captain to Rear Admiral on August 25, 1971.He retired from the United States Navy and NASA in 1974.

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