15 Years of Control Design: Flashback 1997-2012 - February

As Control Design celebrates its 15th anniversary, each month we bring you a look back at some of the events and developments that shaped technology during that time. In the month of February, highlights included several advances in both space and cyberspace.

Feb. 9, 1997: "The Simpsons" became the longest-running prime-time animated series. "The Flintstones" held the record previously.

Feb. 13, 1997: Astronauts on the space shuttle Discovery brought the Hubble Space Telescope aboard for a tuneup, enabling the telescope to see further into the universe.

Feb. 22, 1997: Scottish scientist Ian Wilmut and colleagues announced that an adult sheep had been successfully cloned. Dolly, who had been born July 5, 1996, was the first mammal to have been successfully cloned from an adult cell.

Feb. 10, 1998: A man became the first to be convicted of committing a hate crime in cyberspace. The college dropout had emailed threats to Asian students.

Feb. 27, 1999: Colin Prescot and Andy Elson set a new hot air balloon endurance record when they had been aloft for 233 hours and 55 minutes in an attempt to circumnavigate the Earth.

Feb. 7, 2000: California's legislature declared that Feb. 13 would be Charles M. Schulz Day. Schulz died Feb. 12, 2000, and his last original Sunday "Peanuts" comic strip appeared in newspapers the next day.

Feb. 11, 2000: The space shuttle Endeavor took off to gather information for the most detailed map of Earth ever made.

Feb. 12, 2001: The space probe NEAR landed on the asteroid Eros, marking the first time any craft had landed on a small space rock.

Feb. 15, 2002: Honda's Asimo humanoid robot rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

Feb. 19, 2002: NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft began using its thermal emission imaging system to map Mars.

Feb. 1, 2003: NASA's space shuttle Columbia exploded while re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere. All seven astronauts on board were killed.

Feb. 10, 2005: North Korea publicly announced for the first time that it had nuclear arms. The country also rejected attempts to restart disarmament talks in the near future, saying that it needed the weapons as protection against an increasingly hostile U.S.

Feb. 14, 2005: YouTube was born when three former PayPal employees started a website that let people upload and share videos.

Feb. 16, 2005: The Kyoto global warming pact went into effect in 140 nations.

Feb. 10, 2009: Russian and American satellites collided over Siberia.