Civil Rights
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
Black towns, communities, institutions and places where history happened.
Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
In 1968 Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress. In 1972 she launched a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, breaking another political barrier.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
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The Phobos program (Russian: Фобос, Fobos) was an uncrewed space mission consisting of two probes launched by the Soviet Union to study Mars and its moon Phobos. Phobos 1 was launched on 7 July 1988, and Phobos 2 on 12 July 1988.[1]
Phobos 1 suffered a terminal failure en route to Mars.[2] Phobos 2 attained Mars orbit and made several passes collecting data on the Martian system, but contact was lost before the final phase, prior to deployment of the planned Phobos landers.[1]
Phobos 1 and 2 were of a new spacecraft design, the 1F, succeeding the 4MV type used in the Venera planetary missions of 1975–1985, and the 5VK design last used during the Vega 1 and Vega 2 missions to Comet Halley. They each had a mass of 2600 kg (6220 kg with orbital insertion hardware attached), and were launched aboard a Proton-K rocket.[2]
The program featured cooperation from 14 other nations, including Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, France, West Germany, Czechoslovakia, and the United States (which contributed the use of its NASA Deep Space Network for tracking the twin spacecraft).[3][4][5]
The objectives of the Phobos missions were to:
The main section of the spacecraft consisted of a pressurized toroidal electronics section, surrounding a modular cylindrical experiment section. Below these were mounted four spherical tanks (the Fregat stage) containing hydrazine for attitude control and, after the main propulsion module was to be jettisoned, orbit adjustment. A total of 28 thrusters (twenty-four 50 N thrusters and four 10 N thrusters) were mounted on the spherical tanks, with additional thrusters mounted on the spacecraft body and solar panels. Attitude was maintained through the use of a three-axis control system, with pointing maintained with Sun and star sensors.
Phobos 1 operated nominally until, a few weeks into the cruise to Mars, an expected communications session on September 2, 1988, failed to occur. The failure of controllers to regain contact with the spacecraft was traced to an error in the software uploaded on August 29/August 30, which had deactivated the attitude thrusters.[6] By losing its lock on the Sun, the spacecraft could no longer properly orient its solar arrays, thus depleting its batteries.
Software instructions to turn off the probe's attitude control, normally a fatal operation, were part of a routine used when testing the spacecraft on the ground. Normally this routine would be removed before launch. However, the software was coded in PROMs, and so removing the test code would have required removing and replacing the entire computer. Because of time pressure from the impending launch, engineers decided to leave the command sequence in, though it should never be used. However, a single-character error in constructing an upload sequence resulted in the command executing, with subsequent loss of the spacecraft.[7]

Phobos 2 was launched atop a Proton-K with a Blok D upper stage from Baikonur cosmodrome on July 12, 1988, and entered Mars orbit on January 29, 1989. Phobos 2 operated nominally throughout its cruise and Mars orbital insertion phases on January 29, 1989, gathering data on the Sun, the interplanetary medium, Mars, and Phobos. Phobos 2 investigated Mars's surface and atmosphere and returned 37 images of Phobos[8] with a resolution of up to 40 meters. Communications were lost before planned deployment of a Phobos lander.
Phobos probes carried several instruments: solar x-ray and ultraviolet telescopes, a neutron spectrometer and the Grunt radar experiment designed to study the surface relief of Phobos. The lander had an x-ray/alpha spectrometer to provide information on the chemical element composition of the surface of Phobos, a seismometer to determine the internal structure of Phobos, and the "Razrez" penetrator with temperature sensors and an accelerometer for testing the physical and mechanical properties of the surface.
The Phobos 2 infrared spectrometer (ISM) obtained 45000 spectra in the near infrared (from 0.75 to 3.2 μm) in the equatorial areas of Mars, with a spatial resolution ranging from 7 to 25 km, and 400 spectra of Phobos at 700 m resolution. These observations made it possible to retrieve the first mineralogical maps of the planet and its satellite, and to study the atmosphere of Mars. ISM was developed at IAS and DESPA (Paris Observatory) with support from CNES.[9]
List of instruments:
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The Phobos program (Russian: Фобос, Fobos) was an uncrewed space mission consisting of two probes launched by the Soviet Union to study Mars and its moon Phobos. Phobos 1 was launched on 7 July 1988, and Phobos 2 on 12 July 1988. Phobos 1 suffered a terminal failure en route to Mars. Phobos 2 attained Mars orbit and made several passes collecting data on the Martian system, but contact was lost before the final phase, prior to deployment of the planned Phobos landers. Phobos 1 and 2 were of a new spacecraft design, the 1F, succeeding the 4MV type used in the Venera planetary missions of 1975–1985, and the 5VK design last used during the Vega 1 and Vega 2 missions to Comet Halley. They each had a mass of 2600 kg (6220 kg with orbital insertion hardware attached), and were launched aboard a Proton-K rocket. The program featured cooperation from 14 other nations, including Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, France, West Germany, Czechoslovakia, and the United States (which contributed the use of its NASA Deep Space Network for tracking the twin spacecraft).
Phobos 1 was a failed uncrewed Soviet space probe of the Phobos Program, intended to explore Mars and its moon Phobos, launched in July 1988. The Phobos 1 probe failed on 28 August 1988 when a mistyped command deactivated crucial systems onboard the spacecraft. It was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard a Proton-K, with its twin probe Phobos 2. At 6,220 kg, they remained the heaviest interplanetary spacecraft until the 2011 Fobos-Grunt.
The Mars program was a series of uncrewed spacecraft launched by the Soviet Union between 1960 and 1973. The spacecraft were intended to explore Mars, and included flyby probes, landers and orbiters. Early Mars spacecraft were small, and launched by Molniya rockets. Starting with two failures in 1969, the heavier Proton-K rocket was used to launch larger 5 tonne spacecraft, consisting of an orbiter and a lander to Mars. The orbiter bus design was likely somewhat rushed into service and immature, considering that it performed very unreliably in the Venera variant after 1975. This reliability problem was common to much Soviet space hardware from the late 1960s and early 1970s and was largely corrected with a deliberate policy, implemented in the mid-1970s, of consolidating (or "debugging") existing designs rather than introducing new ones. The names of the "Mars" missions do not need to be translated, as the word "Mars" is spelled and pronounced approximately the same way in English and Russian. In addition to the Mars program, the Soviet Union also sent a probe to Mars as part of the Zond program; Zond 2, however it failed en route. Two more spacecraft were sent during the Phobos program; both failed. In 1996, Russia launched Mars 96, its first interplanetary mission since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, however it failed to depart Earth orbit.
Phobos And Deimos & Mars Environment (PADME) is a low-cost NASA Mars orbiter mission concept that would address longstanding unknowns about Mars' two moons Phobos and Deimos and their environment. The PADME mission competed for Discovery Program funding, but lost to the Psyche and Lucy missions. The Principal Investigator is Anthony Colaprete. Other principals include Pascal Lee (Deputy Principal Investigator) and Butler Hine (Project Manager).
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.