Today is Pearl Harbor Day, the day that lives in infamy and spurred a generation of U.S. citizens we have called our greatest generation — who fought and won a wide-ranging and brutal war and ushered this nation into its role as a world leader. What a shame that today, because it is harder to put names, faces, and places to the enemy that confronts us, we are not united in the cause of victory for freedom. Let us never forget.
Today is also the 40th anniversary of the launch of Orbiting Astronomical Observatory 2 (OAO-2), the first functioning space observatory, launched from the Eastern Space & Missile Center on 7 December 1968. The OAO mission was a series of space observatories; the first attempt, OAO-1, was launched in April 1966 but a power failure kept it from making any observations.
OAO-2 …
made significant contributions to ultraviolet astronomy by studying high energy environments such as novae and super-novae, and it discovered that comets have a huge hydrogen haloes. OAO-2 carried 11 ultra-violet telescopes aloft and for the first time, scientists were able to observe in the ultraviolet region of the spectrum with no intervening atmosphere to block the light.
We’ve come a long way from OAO-2 to HST, but that’s still pretty impressive for the early days of spaceflight.
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