Thirty-five years ago today — November 3, 1974 — while on approach to its December flyby of Jupiter, the Pioneer-11 spacecraft sent back the first polar images of Jupiter, according to this NASA site.
(First image of Jupiter’s polar region, by Pioneer-11. NASA image from the National Air & Space Museum.)
We’ll have more about the Pioneer-11 flyby in December, when it made its closest approach to Jupiter.
And 15 years ago today — November 3, 1994 — the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-66.
(STS-66 mission patch. NASA image.)
U.S. astronauts Donald R. McMonagle, Curtis L. Brown, Jr., Ellen Ochoa, Scott E. Parazynski, and Joseph R. Tanner, along with French astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoy, conducted a variety of experiments on the third flight of the Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Sciences (ATLAS) payload. The mission landed at Edwards Air Force Base on November 14.
Of note: since shuttle pilot Curtis Brown hails from North Carolina, his STS-66 mission is also featured on the North Carolina Aerospace Initiative web site, specifically on this November history page. (Full disclosure: I’m the Associate Director of the NCAI, and built the web pages in question.)
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