1970 in science

The year 1970 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

February 11 – The Ohsumi satellite is launched, making Japan the fourth country to launch a satellite into orbit.
March 31 – The Explorer 1 satellite reenters the Earth's atmosphere after 12 years in orbit.
April 11 – The Apollo 13 space mission is launched, but has to be aborted on April 13.
April 17 – Apollo 13 returns safely to Earth.
June 1 – Soyuz 9, a two-man spacecraft, is launched from the Soviet Union for an orbital flight of nearly 18 days, an endurance record at this time.
August 31 – Solar eclipse of August 31, 1970: An annular solar eclipse is visible in Oceania, and is the 14th solar eclipse of Solar Saros 144.
September 20 – Luna 16 lands on the Moon and lifts off the next day with samples, landing back on Earth September 24.
October 20 – The Zond 8 lunar orbiter is launched by the Soviet Union.
November 17 – Lunokhod 1, the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world, lands on Mare Imbrium on the Moon after being released by the orbiting Luna 17 spacecraft.
December 15 – Venera 7 lands on Venus and becomes the first spacecraft to transmit data from another planet successfully.

August – Songs of the Humpback Whale, produced by Roger Payne, is released, publicly demonstrating whale vocalization for the first time and becoming influential in public support for whale conservation.
The Parc naturel régional de Camargue is established in the south of France.

January 1 – Unix time begins at 00:00:00 UTC.
June – The Datapoint 2200 is announced by the Computer Terminal Corporation.
June–August – The programming language FLOW is devised by Jef Raskin.
November 17 – The first United States patent for the computer mouse is issued to Douglas Engelbart.
Bomber by Len Deighton, the first novel written on a word processor, is published in England.
The first Pascal compiler is released by Niklaus Wirth.
The Xerox PARC computer laboratory is opened in Palo Alto, California.

January 4 – The Tonghai earthquake occurs in Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, killing an estimated 14,621 and injuring 26,783.
May 24 – Drilling on the Kola Superdeep Borehole begins on the Kola Peninsula of Russia.

The Dubowitz Score for estimating the gestational age of babies is published by Lilly and Victor Dubowitz.
The Exeter hip replacement stem is first implanted at the Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedic Hospital in Exeter, England.
The first case of monkeypox in humans is identified in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The minimal group paradigm is developed by Henri Tajfel.Studies in Animal and Human Behavior, Volume I is published by Konrad Lorenz.

June 2 – The Cleddau Bridge collapses during construction in Wales, killing four and leading to the introduction of new standards for box girder bridges in the United Kingdom.

June 19 – The Patent Cooperation Treaty is signed into international law, providing a unified procedure for filing patent applications.