A Quiet Flame in Vacuum
Stardate 447.7170 (October 16, 1969)
On the morning of 16 October 1969, Georgy Shonin and Valeri Kubasov closed the hatch of Soyuz 6 and let the orbital module fall into vacuum. From the descent module they switched on Vulkan, an automatic welder built at the Paton Institute, and for the first time metal was joined in the conditions of space.
The machine ran through electron-beam, plasma-arc, and consumable-electrode trials. When the crew returned for the samples they found the beam had burned past the tray and into the wall covering. They retreated, gathered what they could, and later that morning landed northwest of Karaganda. The experiment had nearly opened the hull, and it had also shown that structures might one day be built, not only launched.
Fossils of the Outer System
Stardate 3182.7454 (October 16, 2021)
Before dawn on 16 October 2021, an Atlas V rose from Cape Canaveral with Lucy aboard. NASA's first mission to the Trojan asteroids left the pad at 09:34 UTC, bound for swarms that have shared Jupiter's path since the planets were young.
The spacecraft separated about an hour later and began to open its great circular arrays. Over twelve years it would pass a main-belt asteroid and seven Trojans, more independent destinations than any single probe had been sent to visit. The name came from a fossil that changed how we read human origins. The flight was meant to do something similar for the outer solar system, slowly, and from very far away.
