The world’s first space station launches, the U.S. heads back to the moon, and a popular video sharing site is born.… It all happened This Week in Tech History.
This week in 1971 – The Soviet Union Launched Salyut 1, the very first space station. Salyut 1 spent 175 days in orbit, before re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere and breaking apart over the Pacific Ocean. The Salyut program followed this with five more successful launches. The final module of the program became the core of the Russian segment of the International Space Station and remains in orbit today.
In 1972 – The Apollo 16 Lunar Module, commanded by John Young and piloted by Charles Duke, landed on the moon. The module enjoyed a three-day stay on the moon and the crew spent a total of 20 hours and 14 minutes exploring the surface of the moon.
1977 – Fiber optic cables were first used to carry live telephone traffic. Optical communication began way back in the 1790s with the invention of the optical semaphore telegraph. Today, more than 80 percent of long distance telephone and data traffic is carried over fiber optic cables.
1990 – The space shuttle Discovery was launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying the $1.5-billion Hubble Space Telescope. The Space Telescope was named after American astronomer Edwin P. Hubble.
And this week in 2005 – The first ever YouTube video was uploaded by co-founder Jawed Karim. The 19-second video, titled “Me at the zoo”, was shot by his high school friend at the San Diego Zoo in front of the elephant exhibit. Today, about 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.