In 2013 NASA’s Maven Mars Mission Launched
Maven stands for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN Mission and is tasked with discovering what happened to the Martian atmosphere and water which is believed to have once been able to sustain life. It will study the upper atmosphere which is now too thin to provide the atmospheric pressure needed to maintain large amounts of water on the surface. Without a dense atmosphere the once abundant oceans on Mars evaporated and escaped into space.
Maven travelled over 442 million miles and arrived at its destination on the 21st of September 2014 and began orbiting the red planet. On the 6th of November 2014 Maven tested its radio relay capabilities by receiving images from NASA’s Curiosity Rover, which is on the Martian surface, and beaming them back to Earth. NASA’s older Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have previously been used to relay the data but Maven was able to greatly increase the amount of data which could be sent.
NASA first began their exploration of Mars 50 years previously with the launch of Mariner 4 on the 28th of November 1964 when the spacecraft made the first successful fly-by of the Red Planet.
In 1991 hostages Terry Wait and Thomas Sutherland were released
On the 20th of April 1987 Britain Terry Wait who was acting as special envoy to the Archbishop of Canterbury, went missing in Lebanon.
After his success in facilitating the release of hostages in Iran he was sent to secure freedom for the Western Hostages held in Lebanon. But He was also captured by Shiite Muslims and held hostage for nearly five years (four years of which he was held in solitary confinement) finally being released on the 18th of November 1991.
American Thomas Sutherland was also captured by Islamic terrorists while he was in Lebanon on the 9th of June 1985. After more than six years of captivity (a total of 2,353 days) he was also released with Terry Wait. Fellow countrymen Terry Anderson was also kidnapped in Lebanon on the 16th of March 1985 (3 months before Anderson) but was released two weeks before Anderson and Wait on the 4th of December 1991.
In 1961 the U.S Ranger 2 mission launched
The mission was similar to the failed Ranger 1 mission which was to reach high Earth orbit and test various systems. It too malfunctioned during the same sequence as Ranger 1 causing it to plummet towards Earth entering the atmosphere the next day.
