2001:
The Indian Space Research Organisation launches its Technology Experimental Satellite into a sun-synchronous orbit.
Oct. 24
1946:
Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory launches a V-2 rocket from Wallops Island, Va. The rocket took moving pictures of the Earth from altitudes as high as 104.6 kilometers.
1960:
To rush the launch of a Mars probe before the Nov. 7 anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, Field Marshall MitrofanNedelin ignored several safety protocols. As a result
126 people are killed when the R-16 ICBM explodes at the BaikonurCosmodrome in Kazakhstan, during launch preparations, according to RussianSpaceWeb.com.
1998:
NASA’s Deep Space 1 launches from Kennedy Space Center, Fla. on a Delta rocket. It would eventually perform
a
flyby of Comet Borrelly.
Oct. 25
1961:
NASA announces the establishment of a national rocket test site in Hancock County Mississippi. Mississippi Test Operations (renamed John C. Stennis in 1998),
would become the test site for the Apollo program’s Saturn rocket boosters.
1974:
Piloted by Air Force Major Michael Love, the X-24 B becomes the fastest lifting body airframe reaching Mach 1.76 during a test flight from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif.
Oct. 26
1957:
The U.S.S.R.’s Sputnik 1 ceases transmissions.
Oct. 27
1961:
Saturn 1, the rocket for the initial Apollo missions, launches successfully
for its first test
at Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Oct. 28
1974:
The Soviet Union’s Luna 23 spacecraft launches on a Proton rocket from the BaikonurCosmodrome.
Damage to some of its equipment during the lunar
landing leaves
it
unable to return a lunar soil sample.
Oct. 29
1991:
While on its way to Jupiter, the U.S. Galileo spacecraft flies past
the asteroid Gaspra, obtaining images and other data.
