2012 Space & Exploration Events — Verified Historical Highlights
2012 Space & Exploration Events — Verified Historical Highlights | TakeMeBack.to
- 06 Mar Significant Solar Flare Event: A powerful X5-class solar flare erupted from the sun at 6:28 p.m. CST, producing a coronal mass ejection (CME) directed towards Earth, potentially impacting satellite and communication systems.
- 23 Jul Near-Miss Solar Storm of 2012: On July 23, 2012, a massive coronal mass ejection (CME) erupted from the Sun, narrowly missing Earth by approximately nine days. This event was comparable in strength to the 1859 Carrington Event, which caused widespread damage to electrical equipment. Had it struck Earth, it could have severely disrupted electrical grids, satellites, and GPS systems. source: news.berkeley.edu
- 04 Aug NASA Invests in Private Space Exploration: NASA signed $1.1 billion in agreements with Space X, Boeing, and Sierra Nevada to launch American astronauts, marking a new era of commercial space exploration after retiring the space shuttle program.
- 21 Aug Cosmological Study Challenges Big Bang Theory: A study published in Physical Review explores cosmogony, describing the Big Bang as a phase shift potentially challenging existing understanding of spacetime's origin.
- 09 Sep Indian Space Agency Achieves Milestone with Satellite Launch: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully placed its heaviest foreign satellite into orbit, marking its 21st consecutive successful PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) launch. source: Wikipedia (day-month pages)
- 14 Oct Felix Baumgartner's historic stratospheric jump: Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner completed a record-breaking jump from the stratosphere, reaching speeds of over 800 miles per hour. The event was a significant milestone in aerospace and extreme sports. source: bbc.com
- 13 Nov Mars Rover Curiosity Sample Collection: NASA's Mars rover Curiosity made a significant scientific milestone by collecting its first Martian solid sample of dust and sand at the Rocknest patch, which was then deposited in the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument for detailed analysis.
- 04 Dec NASA announces plans for second Mars rover mission: On December 4, 2012, NASA announced plans for a new robotic science rover to launch in 2020, building on the success of the Curiosity mission. source: jpl.nasa.gov
- 15 Dec Russian Satellite Positioned in Orbit: After multiple adjustments, the Yamal-402 Russian communications satellite successfully reaches its geostationary orbit.
- 17 Dec Large Hadron Collider completes first proton run: On December 17, 2012, CERN concluded the first three-year proton run of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This milestone was marked by halving the space between proton bunches, enhancing beam intensity and luminosity. The LHC had achieved over 6 million billion proton-proton collisions, with experiments like ATLAS and CMS recording around 5 billion collisions of interest, leading to significant discoveries, including a Higgs-like particle. source: home.cern
- 31 Dec Pleiades Supercomputer Completion: NASA's Ames Research Center completed the Pleiades supercomputer, developed by Intel and SGI, with an impressive peak performance of 10 Petaflops (10 quadrillion floating-point operations per second).
What happened in 2012?
Discover what the world looked like in 2012: