Arianespace will use an Ariane 5 ECA rocket to launch the TIBA 1 and Inmarsat 5 F5 communications satellites. It will lift off from the Guiana Space Center near Kourou, French Guiana, at 21:08 GMT.

The two bright planets will be visible within 1.4 degrees of each other in the evening sky. Look for this impressive sight in the western sky just after sunset.

Commemorates the day in 1964 when Mariner 4, a robotic interplanetary probe was launched by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Mariner 4 later became the first spacecraft to fly by Mars.

The waxing crescent moon will pass less than a degree to the south of Saturn. Catch the pair together in the evening sky. The pair will be difficult to observe as they will appear no higher than 13° above the horizon. They will become visible around 16:23 GMT.

4-17 December

It is considered to be the best shower, producing up to 120 multicolored meteors per hour. It is produced by debris left behind by an asteroid known as 3200 Phaethon, which was discovered in 1982.

The best time to view is around 2am on the 14th but can be visible as early as 9pm each night.

During the Hubble Servicing Mission 3, the crew spent Christmas aboard the International Space Station in 2000

Galileo came within 351 kilometers (218 miles) of Europa, and briefly passed behind the frozen moon. After the flight over Europa, Galileo was able to observe another three of Jupiter’s moons: Amalthea, Thebe and Metis.

NASA astronaut T.J. Creamer on the ISS sent the first live, unassisted tweet from space. Astro_TJ, wrote: “Hello Twitterverse! We r now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station — the 1st live tweet from Space! 🙂 More soon, send your ?s.”

Space Shuttle Endeavour delivered the third connecting module, the Tranquility node, to the ISS and a seven-windowed cupola to be used as a control room for robotics.

Japan becomes the fourth space power after it launches the satellite Ohsumi into orbit from Uchinoura Space Center, Japan. Ohsumi was launched on a Japanese Lambda 4-S booster at 04:25:00 UTC.

Image courtesy of JAXA

Explorer 1 reentered the Earth’s atmosphere, having travelled 2.67 billion kilometers (1.66 billion miles) and made 58,408 revolutions of the Earth during its 13-year lifetime.

Apollo 13 launched on its ill-fated flight to the moon. James A. Lovell Jr, John L. Swigert Jr. and Fred W. Haise Jr. aborted the mission after the service module oxygen tank ruptured on April 13.

Hubble Space Telescope launched from shuttle Discovery, weighing approximately 11,355 kg. The first image taken by Wide Field/Planetary Camera was released 20 May 1990. A spherical aberration in the optical system, which severely reduced the quality of the images produced was announced publicly June 27.