Portal:Spaceflight/On This Day/31 January

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• 1961 - Mercury-Redstone 2 is launched, carrying Ham, a chimpanzee, on a sub-orbital flight with an apogee of 251 kilometres.
• 1961 - An Atlas-Agena launches a Samos spy satellite.
• 1966 - Luna 9, the first spacecraft to perform a soft landing on the Moon, is launched atop a Molniya-M rocket.
• 1967 - A Scout rocket fails to launch an OV3 scientific satellite.
• 1971 - A Saturn V rocket launches Apollo 14, with three astronauts, on a mission to land on the Moon.
• 1973 - A Delta-L launches HEOS 2, a scientific spacecraft.
• 1978 - A Soyuz-U launches a Zenit-4MKM spy satellite
• 1979 - A Soyuz-U launches Kosmos 1074, an unmanned test of the Soyuz-T spacecraft.
• 1984 - A Titan 34D launches a Chalet spy satellite.
• 1998 - Space Shuttle Endeavour lands, completing mission STS-89.
• 2004 - The Opportunity rover begins its exploration of Mars.