November 10: 30th Anniversary (1970) of the Luna 17 probe from
the USSR carrying the first successful unmanned rover, Lunakhod 1
The Soviets placed the first robot rover on the lunar
surface on November 17, 1970, calling it Lunakhod 1. The
rover drove off a ramp from the Luna 17 probe and explored
Mare Imbrium for almost one full year. Lunakhod 1 survived
the bitter lunar nights with an onboard radioactive heat
source. Five controllers on Earth operated each set of
wheels of the rover.
Though not widely known at the time, the Lunakhod series was part of the Soviet's manned lunar program. These rovers would serve in the construction of the first lunar bases. Sadly, only one more Lunakhod made it to Earth's moon and the third probe was left in a museum.
There would not be another successful rover to an alien world after the Lunakhods until the Mars Pathfinder rover named Sojourner, which explored the Red Planet in late 1997.
Relevant URLs:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/tmp/1970-095A.html
http://vsm.host.ru/e_lunhod.htm
http://www.friends-partners.org/~mwade/craft/lunaye8.htm
http://titione75.free.fr/espace/engin/sonde/lunakhod.htm
http://www.nasm.edu/ceps/etp/tools/tools_rover.html#lunk
http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/models/sovietsp/lunokhod.html
http://www.seds.org/pub/info/newsletters/ejasa/jasa9601.txt
November 12 - 20th Anniversary (1980) of Voyager 1 Flyby of Saturn
Though not the first probe to flyby the planet Saturn -
that honor went to Pioneer 11 just over one year earlier -
Voyager 1 took far more data and much sharper images of
the beautiful ringed world than its predecessor.
Among its accomplishments was a very close flyby of the moon Titan. Voyager 1 learned that Titan's thick orange atmosphere completely covered the moon's surface and was composed primarily of nitrogen rather than methane as previously thought. The probe also discovered that Titan was the second largest known moon in the Sol system; that honor now went to Jupiter's Ganymede.
Saturn was Voyager 1's second and last planetary system encounter. In 1998 the probe exceeded the distance of Pioneer 10 and became the farthest human-made object in space.
Relevant URLs:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/calendar/voyager1.html
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/voyager.html
http://vraptor.jpl.nasa.gov/voyager/voyager.html
http://www.friends-partners.org/~mwade/craft/voyager.htm
http://www.btinternet.com/~consty/render/probes/voyager/voyager.htm
Voyager 1 and 2 carry on their sides a golden record designed to relay information about humanity should any ETI find the probes in interstellar space. They may last along with the probes for over one billion years during their journeys through the Milky Way galaxy.
For more information on the Voyager Interstellar Record:
http://vraptor.jpl.nasa.gov/voyager/record.html
http://www.re-lab.net/welcome/
http://www.cedmagic.com/featured/voyager/voyager-record.html