Eureka: If You Build It…
Syfy airs the 38th episode of the science fiction series Eureka, starring Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson, and Joe Morton. Niall Matter (Primeval: New World) guest stars.
More about Eureka in the LogBook and theLogBook.com Store
Eureka now streaming on Amazon Prime
Doctor Who Sontaran Stratagem set
British toymaker Character Options releases a boxed set of action figures based on characters from the Doctor Who episodes The Sontaran Stratagem and The Poison Sky. These are the first Sontaran action figures since one of the last waves of Dapol action figures in the late 1990s.
Eureka: Duck, Duck Goose
Sci-Fi Channel airs the 17th episode of the quirky modern-day science fiction series Eureka, starring Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson, Debrah Farentino, Joe Morton, and Matt Frewer. (In the UK and elsewhere, this series is retitled A Town Called Eureka.)
More about Eureka in the LogBook and theLogBook.com Store
Eureka now streaming on Amazon Prime
Witchblade: Apprehension
The ninth episode of Witchblade airs on cable channel TNT, based on the Top Cow comic book of the same name, starring Yancy Butler and David Chokachi. John Hensley (Nip/Tuck) guest stars.
The Outer Limits: Sarcophagus
Showtime airs the 80th episode of The Outer Limits, a revival of the 1960s science fiction anthology series. Lisa Zane (Roar, Dinotopia) and Robert Picardo (Star Trek: Voyager) guest star.
This series is not yet chronicled in the LogBook. You could help change that.
Stargate SG-1: Message In A Bottle
Pay cable channel Showtime premieres the 28th episode of Stargate SG-1.
More about Stargate SG-1 in the LogBook and theLogBook.com Store
Stargate SG-1 now streaming on Amazon Prime
STS-85
NASA launches Space Shuttle Discovery on the 86th shuttle flight, a 12-day mission to deploy a spectroscopy experiment and practice spacewalking construction techniques vital to the upcoming early missions to build the International Space Station. Aboard Discovery for her 23rd flight are Commander Curtis Brown, Pilot Kent Rominger, mission specialists Jan Davis, Robert Curbeam and Stephen Robinson, and payload specialist Bjarni Tryggvason.
Magellan arrives at Venus
Launched via space shuttle in May 1989, the long-delayed Magellan space probe reaches the planet Venus after an unusually long voyage (15 months) and begins an orbital insertion maneuver. Where most missions to Venus have reached the planet in only a few months, Magellan has had to make do without the more powerful Centaur liquid-fueled booster stage, resulting in a journey of a year and three months. (The Centaur upper stage had been cancelled after the Challenger disaster because it was felt that carrying an additional liquid-fueled rocket in a shuttle cargo bay was too risky.) Magellan is placed into an elliptical orbit, completely circling Venus every three hours, where it will conduct high-resolution radar mapping of the surface at the closest point in its orbit, and transmitting the resulting data to Earth while furthest from Venus. The first phase of the mapping mission will last through 1991.
Jellyfish: Bellybutton
Power pop supergroup Jellyfish releases its debut album Bellybutton through Charisma Records, including the hit singles “The King Is Half-Undressed” and “That Is Why”. Steady touring helps the group build an ardent fan base, especially in Japan.
1988 Writers’ Guild strike ends
The five-month-long strike of unionized Hollywood writers comes to an end, allowing numerous television series and movies to go back into pre-production. With the American television network schedule introducing new shows as early as September in many cases, the “new fall season” does not begin on time, and most series do not have new episodes on the air until the critical Nielsen TV ratings sweeps month of November.
Sapphire & Steel: Assignment Two, Part 3
ITV airs the ninth episode of P.J. Hammond’s science fiction series Sapphire & Steel, starring David McCallum and Joanna Lumley.
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Come Back, Mrs. Noah: Housing Problem
The fifth episode of the science fiction sitcom Come Back, Mrs. Noah, created by the writing duo behind the perennial favorite Are You Being Served? and starring Mollie Sugden, is aired by the BBC.
Doomwatch: Cause Of Death
BBC1 airs the 35th episode of Doomwatch. This episode, guest starring Nicholas Courtney (who is, at this time, still appearing in Doctor Who as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), no longer exists in the BBC’s archives.
The Guardians: Quarmby
London Weekend Television airs the fifth episode of the alternate-future-history series The Guardians, starring Gwyneth Powell and Cyril Luckham.
This series is not yet chronicled in the LogBook. You could help change that.
Zond 7
The Soviet Union launches the Zond 7 unmanned spacecraft, an unmanned version of the Soyuz 7K-L1 space vehicle intended to take cosmonauts around the moon. Carrying no crew, this vehicle takes pictures and tests various spacecraft systems without risking human lives. Zond 7 returns to Earth using an unusual multiple-skip atmospheric re-entry profile on August 14th. If Zond 7 had been carrying a crew, this would have been the first nominal flight of the Soyuz 7K-L1 vehicle. No cosmonaut crews would reach the moon prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the late 20th century.
Explorer 6
NASA launches the Earth-orbiting satellite Explorer 6 atop a Thor-Able rocket, intended to study various space and upper atmospheric phenomena, as well as to take photos of Earth with an experimental camera system designed to refine engineering concepts for monitoring weather from orbit. Explorer 6 does indeed capture the first (admittedly less than ideal) photo of Earth taken from orbit, from a vantage point of 17,000 miles above Mexico in its elliptical orbit. Explorer 6 will remain in orbit for just under two years.