On This Date…March 13 and STS-29

#OTD in 1983…Challenger launched with America’s first woman astronaut. Watch the launch:

Today marks the 40th anniversary — July 20, 1976 — of the first U.S. robotic landing on another planet by the Viking 1 spacecraft on Mars.

Apollo 11 splashed down in the Pacific today in 1969, fulfilling President Kennedy’s challenge to a nation of landing a man to the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.