MOONBEAMEDJanuary 10th, 2014 at 9:05 pm by Kevin Orpurt under Kevin Orpurt's Blog
It was on this day in 1946 at 11:58 am, that the Army Signal Corps in Belmar, New Jersey pointed a radar at the Moon and shot a beam in its direction. Called Project Diana, after the Roman Moon Goddess Diana, it was the first successful attempt at bouncing a radar signal off an object that wasn’t on this planet. This event might well be considered both the birth of the U.S. space program and radar astronomy. Project Diana was also the beginning of the tradition of naming U. S. space projects after Roman gods deities.