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12 more amazing collectibles, From Spare Electronics Component

on December 23, 2014

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Landsat-1 satellite

On this day in 1972 Landsat-1, the first US Earth-resources satellite was launched. The satellite, based on a modified weather satellite, was placed in a polar orbit to obtain continual coverage of the whole globe for the next six years. L andsat-1 had a three-camera system to obtain visible light and near infrared photographic images of Earth; a four-channel multispectral scanner (MSS) to obtain radiometric images of Earth; a receiver to collect feedback from ground stations for relay back to NASA, and two video tape recorders to provide backup when the spacecraft was out-of-range of NASA's ground control. One of its more notable discoveries was a small island off the coast of Canada, which was later named Landsat Island after the satellite. You can read more about the Landsat program at http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/ (image courtesy of http://www.oneonta.edu/faculty/baumanpr/geosat2/RS%20Landsat/RS-Landsat.htm )

First powered, controlled, and sustained flight

In 1903, December 18 , Orville and Wilbur Wright made man's first powered, controlled, and sustained flight—120 feet in 12 seconds at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Photo courtesy of Library of Congress.

Efforts to control mosquitoes take on new urgency

The major mosquito spreading Zika virus has quirks that make it one of the toughest to fight BY SUSAN MILIUS 10:42AM, MARCH 17, 2016 Brazil, now a poster child for mosquito-borne virus spread, was once a model for mosquito eradication. “It was amazing,” says Dan Strickman, medical entomologist with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Aedes aegypti mosquito, today identified by epidemiologists as one of the carriers of the Zika virus, was attacked in the 1930s with the simple tools then available. By 1965, the mosquito was certified as eradicated from Brazil and 17 other countries in the Americas (but not the United States). The feat took ferocious effort, but as the threat dwindled, so did money and the political will to stay vigilant. Whether eradication would even be possible now is unclear. But the question of how to cope with Ae. aegypti has taken on new urgency as that m...

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