2 -- Asteroid 1999 MN Near-Earth Flyby (0.156 AU)
3 -- 35th Anniversary Gemini 4 Launch (1965)
3 -- Ed White became first American to walk in space (1965)
8 -- Asteroid 1999 LS7 Near-Earth Flyby (0.158 AU)
8 -- 25th Anniversary of the Launch of Venera 9, USSR Venus Lander and Orbiter (1975)
8 -- Giovanni Cassini's 375th birthday (1625)
9 -- Johann Gottfried Galle, who discovered Neptune, would be 188
9 -- Skylab placed in low-drag altitude for the first time but escaped using 1/3 of remaining nitrogen (1978)
13 -- Pioneer 10 became the first manmade object to leave the solar system in 1983, 2.814 billion miles from the Sun
16 -- Valentina Tereshkova became first woman ever in space, on USSR's Voskok 6 (1963)
17 -- Asteroid 1999 JV6 Near-Earth Flyby (0.163 AU)
18 -- Sally Ride became first American woman in orbit (1983)
18 -- AAS Meeting - Solar Physics Division, Stateline, Nevada
20 -- Longest duration solar eclipse ever observed (Philippines, 1955)
21 -- Summer Solstice at 0136 UT
22 -- Charon, Pluto's moon, discovered (1978)
25 -- Hale detected magnetic fields on the Sun (1908)
26 -- Astronomer Charles Messier (who compiled his catalogue of 110 of the brightest deep sky objects, would turn 270
27 -- One of the largest solar flares in recorded history (1984)
29 -- George Ellery Hale, founder of the Yerkes, Mt. Wilson, and Palomar Observatories, would be 132

1 -- Partial Solar Eclipse, visible from South America and the South Pacific Ocean
1 -- National Air and Space Museum opens in 1976
4 -- Earth at Aphelion (1.017 AU from Sun)
4 -- 946th presumed anniversary of the supernova explosion that made the Crab Nebula (Messier 1)
6 -- Newspapers predicted Skylab would fall (1979)
6 -- 313th Anniversary of the publication of Isaac Newton's Principia
11 -- Asteroid 1986 JK Near-Earth Flyby (0.1218 AU)
11 -- Skylab falls from the sky due to atmospheric drag caused by solar activity (1979)
13 -- Launch of Cluster 2
14 -- 35th Anniversary of Mariner 4 Mars Flyby (1965)
16 -- Lunar Eclipse
17 -- The star Vega becomes the first star other than the sun to have its picture taken(1850)
17 -- Newton's Principia was published 313 years ago (1687)
18 -- India launches its first satellite, Rotini 1 (1980)
20 -- Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans land on the moon (1969)
22 -- The day the Sun stood still according to Professor C.A. Totten's 1896 calculations (1475 B.C.)
24 -- 8th anniversary of the launch of the Geotail satellite
25 -- Svetlana Savitskaya becomes first woman to space-walk (1984)
28 -- First photograph of the Sun during a total eclipse is made, and the corona is discovered (1951)
31 -- Partial Solar Eclipse (visible from North Asia and Eastern USA)

1 -- Peak of the Alpha Capricornids meteor shower
1 -- Maria Mitchell, the first woman elected as an astronomer to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, would be 182
3 -- First flight of the X-38
4 -- Huge solar flare observed (1972)
5 -- Neil Armstrong will be 70 years old
6 -- Peak of the Southern Iota Aquarids meteor shower
6 -- Kepler estimated in 1618 that the Sun is 14 million miles away
9 -- Launch of Cluster II
12 -- Peak of the Perseids meteor shower
18 -- Norman Lockyer sees helium in the Sun's spectrum in 1868
20 -- Full Earth Day
25 -- Peak of the Northern Iota Aquarids meteor shower
30 -- Guion S. Bluford, Jr., became the first black American to fly in space aboard the Shuttle (1983).

1 -- Solar physicist Richard Carrington observes the first solar flare ever recorded, in 1859; an intense aurora followed the next day.
8 -- Ulysses begins its third solar passage
12 -- The Russian spacecraft Luna 2 becomes the first manmade object to strike the moon in 1959
19 -- Israel launches its first satellite in 1988
22 -- Autumnal Equinox at 1711 UT

1 -- Congress establishes NASA in 1958
4-10 -- World Space Week
4 -- In 1957, Sputnik 1 becomes the first manmade object to orbit the Earth
5 -- Robert Goddard, the "father of U.S. astronautics," would be 112 years old
6 -- Tenth anniversary of the Ulysses launch (1990)
9 -- Peak of the Draconids meteor shower
14 -- First supersonic flight, by Chuck Yeager in a Bell X-1 aircraft, in 1947
19 -- Robert Goddard's "dream day" in 1899, when he first dreamed of space travel
21 -- Peak of the Orionids meteor shower
22 -- First recorded solar eclipse is witnessed in China in 2136 BC
28 -- Great Britain launches its first satellite in 1971
29 -- Daylight Savings Time begins; fall back one hour in North America and Europe

3 -- Peak of the Taurids meteor shower
3 -- The first Earth life goes into space in 1957, in the form of the dog Laika on Sputnik 2
5 -- First picture of a full side of Earth taken from space in 1967
8 -- Edmund Halley was born in 1656
9 -- Carl Sagan's birthday (1934)
17 -- Peak of the Leonids meteor shower
23 -- 23rd anniversary of ESA's first satellite launch, Meteosat 1
26 -- France launches its first satellite in 1965
29 -- Australia sends up its first satellite in 1967
29 -- Enos, a chimp, becomes the first American in orbit in 1961

1 -- Fortieth anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 6 (1960)
2 -- Solar Maximum Mission (SMM) satellite re-enters Earth's atmosphere in 1989
8 -- Tenth anniversary of Galileo's first Earth flyby (1990)
11 -- Last day humans stood on the moon (1972)
11 -- Annie Jump Cannon, pioneer American classifier of stellar spectra, would turn 137
13 -- Peak of the Geminids meteor shower
13 -- Pioneer 8 successfully launched to explore Earth's magnetotail and wake which streams from the Sun (1967)
14 -- Tycho Brahe was born in 1546
20 -- Launch of HESSI
20 -- Anniversary of the founding of the Mt. Wilson Solar Observatory in 1904
21 -- Winter solstice at 1334 UT
24 -- Apollo 8 becomes the first manned spacecraft to orbit the moon in 1968
25 -- Partial solar eclipse visible from North America
27 -- Kepler's birthday in 1571

Credits: This Day in Space includes information from The Space Calendar by Ron Baalke of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory; from This Month In the History of Astronomy by Chris Wetherill of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs; and from Days of Air and Space by Jerry Woodfill of NASA's Johnson Space Center.

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