This Week In Space History (01/11 - 01/17)

This Week in Space History: 01/11 - 01/17 🚀✨

From 18th-century discoveries to the farthest landing humanity has ever achieved, it’s been a massive week in the history of exploration! Here’s what happened in the cosmos this week:

🪐 Jan 11, 1787: Astronomer William Herschel discovers two of Uranus’s moons, Titania and Oberon. (He had discovered the planet itself just six years earlier!)

🛰️ Jan 14, 2005: A major milestone! The ESA's Huygens probe successfully lands on Saturn’s moon, Titan. It remains the most distant landing of any spacecraft from Earth. It sent back incredible images of a world with liquid methane lakes and riverbeds.

☄️ Jan 15, 2006: NASA’s Stardust mission capsule returns to Earth, landing in the Utah desert. It brought back the first pristine samples of dust from a comet (Wild 2) and interstellar dust particles.

🤝 Jan 16, 1969: A spaceflight first! Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 docked in orbit. Two cosmonauts performed a spacewalk to transfer from one vehicle to the other—the first-ever crew transfer in space.

🚀 Jan 16, 2003: Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-107) launches on its 28th and final mission. We remember the seven brave astronauts who dedicated their lives to science and exploration on this flight.

Discussion: The Huygens probe showed us that Titan looks eerily like Earth, but with methane instead of water. If you could send a probe to any moon in the solar system, which one would you choose? 🌑👇

#SpaceHistory #NASA #ESA #Huygens #Titan #Astronomy #OnThisDay #SpaceExploration