February 6, 1998
You are a way for the cosmos to know itself, Carl Sagan once said. On your birthday, the cosmos got to know itself a little better.
Happy Birthday Jules Verne
Birthday · February 6, 1998
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APOD published February 6, 1998. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Sunday marks the 170th anniversary of the birth of Jules Verne (born in Nantes, France on the 8th of February, 1828). Inspired by a lifelong fascination with machines, Verne wrote visionary works about "Extraordinary Voyages" including such terrestrial travels as Around the World in 80 Days, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. In 1865 he published the story of three adventurers who undertook a journey From the Earth to the Moon. Verne's characters rode a "projectile-vehicle" fired from a huge cannon constructed in Florida. Does that sound familiar? A century later, the Saturn V rocket and NASA's Apollo program finally turned this work of fiction into fact, propelling adventuresome trios on what was perhaps Verne's most extraordinary voyage. This stirring floodlit view shows the Apollo 9 space-vehicle atop its Saturn V. Launched from a spaceport in Florida in 1969, the Apollo 9 crew were the first to test all lunar landing hardware in space .