UPCOMING IMPORTANT CALENDAR DATES
Attention Docents, Teachers, Educators: As you know, I keep track of the anniversary dates for milestone events in aviation and Space exploration, along with dates for notable events and people, to help engage learner interest with familiar connections. It can be worthwhile to look ahead to see keys dates in 2025 that you may wish to use, or avoid, when planning educational programs, class activities, or other outreach interactions. Having info you don’t need is better than needing info you don’t have!
2026 ANNIVERSARY-RELATED PROGRAMMING OPPORTUNITIES! Round-number anniversaries/birthdays, etc. for 2026 can be found in the Archive: Other Stuff section of the website. Such dates likely attract media and other attention, and can be used in aviation, astronomy, and Space exploration programming to engage audiences.
Upcoming Round-Number Calendar Anniversaries
A number of the events below have been covered by a previous Item of the Week. Check the index of Items in the Archive section of the website if you want to conduct outreach programming on one of them, and if so, drop me a note via email and I’ll email you a copy of the Item you seek.
October 25 is the 355th anniversary of the discovery of Saturn’s unusual moon, Iapetus, by Giovanni Cassini. It appears to be six times brighter when it’s seen on one side of Saturn than the other, leading Cassini to think he had discovered two separate moons!
October 29 is the 35th anniversary of our getting the first close-up look of an asteroid, when the Jupiter-bound Galileo spacecraft flew closely by asteroid 951 Gaspra.
November 7 is the 30th anniversary of the launch of the phenomenally-successful Mars Global Surveyor orbiter.
November 9 would have been actress Hedy Lamarr’s 95th birthday. She was not only a movie star, but she played a key role in the invention of frequency-agile communications and detection system technology, vital in the U.S. War Effort and the basis of today’s Wi-Fi technology.
November 11 is the 60th anniversary of the launch of Gemini 12, the last of Project Gemini. James Lovell commanded rookie Buzz Aldrin. Both would be heard of later.
November 13 is the 55th anniversary of the insertion of Mariner 9 into Mars orbit, the first time any satellite orbited another planet. Previous fly-bys of Mars led to some misunderstandings of its interesting surface; Mariner 9 data advance our knowledge considerably!
November 25 is the 115th birthday of Athelstan Spilhaus, a geophysicist and inventor who also was an expert in science outreach, via the Sunday Funnies (no kidding). We can learn a lot from his example, so he makes a good subject for science outreach today.
November 26 is the 15th anniversary of the launch of the Mars Science Laboratory, aka Curiosity, still going strong at Gale Crater! Its wheels may be beat-up a bit, but they are still stamping “JPL” in Morse Code on the martian surface everywhere it roves!
December 4 is the 30th anniversary of the launch of the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft, the first to use the innovative air-bag system to land on Mars. Its small rover, Sojourner, was wildly popular, a radio-controlled car that examined the fancifully-named rocks at the landing site. This was NASA’s first Internet-supported mission, and the mission website took so many hits that it became the first to use mirror sites.