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DECEMBER21
* Apollo 8, first manned flight to the Moon, launched (1968). This photo of the far side of the Moon was taken by the Apollo 8 crew. They named eight craters for the 8 American astronauts who had died.
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* Cecil Grace, flying a short biplane, was killed over the English Channel as a result of structural failure of the aircraft (1910.)
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* Giovanni Cassini discovered Saturn's moon Rhea (1672).
Pictured is the surface of Saturn's moon Rhea imaged by Voyager 1. It is the northern polar region of the moon. Rhea is 1500 kilometers (950 miles) in diameter and has the most craters per unit area of any of Saturn's moons. The largest crater is 300 kilometers (190 miles) in diamater.
* Voyager completed a round-the- world flight without refueling (1986). The flight took 9 days, 3 minutes, and 44 seconds and covered 24,986.664 miles.
* First case of space sickness as a result of motion reported (1965).
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* Apollo 8 astronauts wished Earth a Merry Christmas, reading the story of creation from the Bible on Christmas Eve (1968).
* First launch of Ariane 3-stage liquid propellant rocket from Guiana Space Center, Korou (1979).
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* Was Christ really born on this date? Wisemen reported a star led to the birthplace. This may have been the conjunction (alignment) of several planets, but according to astronomy no conjunction occurred on December 25th .
* The Skylab 3 crew (Carr, Pogue, and Gibson) celebrated Christmas in Orbit (1973).
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* Soyuz 13 landed after completing 128 orbits. Soyuz had extended solar panels for electric power (1973).
* Australia plans to construct its first spaceport (1989).
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* Kepler born (1571).
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* The nuclear-powered Soviet satellite, Cosmos 1402, in preparation for descent from orbit, failed to place nuclear reactor in higher (600 mile) parking orbit (1982).
* First time an airplane was able to attain the height of 20,000 feet (1913).
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* STS-1 rolled-out onto Launch Complex 39-A in preparation for first Space Shuttle flight (1980).
* The famous inventor Charles Macintosh was born (1766).
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* The first time a comet was photographed from space when the Comet Kohoutek was photographed by the crew of Skylab (1973).
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