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On This Day in Space! Feb. 26, 1966: 1st launch of Saturn 1B rocket Space 26/02/2021 Hanneke Weitering © Provided by Space NASA's first Saturn 1B rocket launches into space carrying the first Apollo spacecraft on Feb. 26, 1966. On Feb. 26, 1966, NASA launched its new Saturn IB rocket on its first test flight.  Also known as the Uprated Saturn I, the Saturn IB was built for the Apollo program. With a more powerful upper stage, it was designed to carry the Apollo Command/Service Module and Lunar Module into low-Earth orbit. NASA used the Saturn IB for flight tests early on...

On This Day in Space! Feb. 21, 1931: Germany's 1st liquid-fuel rocket (barely) launches Space 2/21/2021 Hanneke Weitering © Provided by Space A look at the Hückel-Winkler 1, the first German-built liquid fueled rocket, which launched on Feb. 21, 1931. On Feb. 21, 1931, Germany launched its first liquid-fueled rocket … sort of.  The rocket only made it about 10 feet off the ground. To be fair, the rocket itself was only two feet tall, so it did achieve an altitude of about five times its height. The rocket was named Hückel-Winkler 1 after the engineers who designed an...

On This Day in Space! Feb. 20, 1962: John Glenn becomes 1st American to orbit Earth Space 20/02/2021 Hanneke Weitering © Provided by Space John Glenn aboard the spacecraft Friendship 7 during his historic orbital mission of Feb. 20, 1962. John Glenn was the third American to launch into space and the third human to orbit Earth. Two Soviet cosmonauts had orbited Earth before him. He blasted off from Cape Canaveral in a Mercury spacecraft named Friendship 7 and circled the Earth three times.  The mission lasted close to 5 hours. After a bumpy re-entry, Friendship 7 splashe...

On This Day in Space! Jan. 30, 1964: Ranger 6 launches to the moon Space 30/01/2021 © Provided by Space An artist's illustration of a NASA Ranger spacecraft at the moon. On January 30, 1964, NASA launched the Ranger 6 spacecraft on a mission to obtain the first-ever close-up images of the surface of the moon. The spacecraft carried six television cameras to transmit videos and images of the moon, but the cameras failed, and no images were ever returned.  This was the sixth mission failure for the Ranger program. Congress wasn't too happy with the series of failures and called an investi...

On This Day in Space! Jan. 27, 1967: Apollo 1 fire kills NASA astronauts Space 27/01/2021 Hanneke Weitering © Provided by Space Apollo 1 astronauts (left to right) Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee posing in front of Launch Complex 34 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. All three were killed when a fire blazed up in their capsule during a ground test on Jan. 27, 1967. On January 27, 1967, Apollo 1 astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were killed during a routine preflight rehearsal at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. The Apollo 1 fire was the ...