OTD…Oct. 15 and Cassini

The U.S. launched its first man into space on this date, May 5, 1961, as Alan Shepard rode the Freedom 7 capsule on a 15-minute suborbital flight to 116.5 miles in altitude and 303 miles downrange to splashdown.

A mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope blasted off on this date in 2002.

#OTD in 1992…Columbia launched the LAGEOS-2 laser-reflection satellite