1959 in Science - Astronomy and Space Exploration

Astronomy and Space Exploration

  • August 7 - The United States launches Explorer 6 from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
  • September 15 - Russian probe Luna 3 sends back first photos of the far side of Earth's Moon.
  • September 19 - Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison establish the scientific rationale for SETI with the publishing of their seminal paper "Searching for Interstellar Communications" in Nature.
  • November 24 - Yardymli meteorite makes a landfall in Azerbaijan.
  • December 4 - Little Joe 2, a mission in the Mercury program, carries Sam the monkey into space.
  • Coma Berenicids discovered.

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