Step by Step

Next Friday, March 29th an historic spacewalk will take place; Anne McClain and Christina Koch will step outside International Space Station to replace a set of batteries on the solar panel array. It will be the first time in history a spacewalk is conducted entirely by women. For McClain, it will be her second spacewalk, but the first for Koch. The first woman to ever complete a spacewalk was Svetlana Savitskaya in July 1984, followed by American astronaut Kathryn Sullivan three months later.

107 years ago on this date, rocket engineer and Nazi Werner Von Braun was born in Virsisk, Poland.
He developed rocket technology for Nazi Germany during WWII then was brought to the United States where he eventually developed the Saturn V rocket that boosted astronauts to the moon from 1968-1972. It is still the most powerful rocket ever built.

Easter will arrive on April 21 rather than tomorrow; even though tomorrow is the first Sunday after the first full moon following the equinox. The challenge comes from trying to reconcile the Gregorian calendar which, when adopted in 1582, fixed the Vernal Equinox on March 21. The actual date of the vernal equinox wanders a bit because the Earth’s rotational period isn’t precisely 365 days. A proposal to fix the date of Easter has been widely discussed and the 1963 Second Vatican Council agreed to the second Sunday in April. The Vatican has never taken action on the proposal.