July 7
1914: rocket pioneer Robert Goddard acquires a patent for the multistage rocket.
1972: NASA awards North American Rockwell a $2.6 billion contract to build the space shuttle.
July 8
1976: ‘s first communications satellite, the Boeing-built Palapa A1, launches on a Delta rocket from ,
2001: The Mars Exploration Rover-B, which was later named Cape Canaveral, , aboard a Delta 2 rocket.
July 10
2005: launches the Suzaku X-ray space observatory, initially called Astro-E2, from on an M-5 rocket.
July 11
1960: NASA selects four companies – North American, Hughes, McDonnell and Space Technology Laboratory – to study designs for spacecraft capable of performing soft- landings on the Moon.
1979: Due to atmospheric expansion from unexpectedly high solar activity, NASA’s Skylab space station re-enters Earth’s atmosphere, crashing into the and a sparsely inhabited region of
1990: Gamma, the Soviet-French science spacecraft, launches from BaikonurCosmodrome on a modified Soyuz to study gamma and X-ray energy.
July 12
1988: The launches the Phobos 2 Mars orbiter on a Proton rocket from BaikonurCosmodrome. Two months after reaching orbit, contact was lost due to a computer failure.
July 13
1969: The launches Luna 15 on a Proton rocket from BaikonurCosmodrome to extract and return lunar soil samples. The spacecraft failed during descent and crashed onto the Moon’s surface.