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Space Exploration
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First Animal In Space
On June 11, 1948, a V-2 Blossom launched into space from White Sands, New Mexico carrying Albert I, a rhesus monkey. Lack of fanfare and documentation made Albert an unsung hero of animal astronauts. On June 14, 1949, a second V-2 flight carrying a live Air Force Aeromedical Laboratory monkey, Albert II, attained an altitude of 83 miles. The monkey died on impact. -
Sputnic1 Launches
History changed on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a beach ball (58 cm.or 22.8 inches in diameter), weighed only 83.6 kg. or 183.9 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. That launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments. While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the space age and the U.S.-U.S. -
First US Satellite
The first successful U.S. satellite, Explorer I, was launched into Earth orbit by the Army on Jan. 31, 1958, at Cape Canaveral, Florida, four months after Russia orbited Sputnik. The 18-pound satellite had a cylindrical shape and was 80 inches long and six inches in diameter. -
NASA Founded
October 1, 1958, the official start of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), was the beginning of a rich history of unique scientific and technological achievements in human space flight, aeronautics, space science, and space applications. Formed as a result of the Sputnik crisis of confidence, NASA inherited the earlier National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and other government organizations, and almost immediately began working on options for human space fligh -
First Man MAde Satellite Orbits Moon
Luna 1, first man-made satellite to orbit the moon, is launched by the U.S.S.R. -
Yuri Gagarin: First Man in Space
April 12 was already a huge day in space history twenty years before the launch of the first shuttle mission. On that day in 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, making a 108-minute orbital flight in his Vostok 1 spacecraft. -
First Man On The Moon
Apollo 11 blasted off on July 16, 1969. Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins were the astronauts on Apollo 11.
Four days later, Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon. They landed on the moon in the Lunar Module. It was called the Eagle. Collins stayed in orbit around the moon. He did experiments and took pictures. -
First Space Station
Salyut 1 was the first space station put into orbit. The Soviets launched it from Baikonur Cosmodrome on April 19, 1971 using a three-stage Proton launch vehicle. It completed 362 orbits before deorbiting and reentering the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean in October. It was destroyed by frictional heating during its return. -
STS-1 Launches
Early on the morning of April 12, 1981, two astronauts sat strapped into their seats on the flight deck of Columbia, a radically new spacecraft known as the space shuttle. -
Hubble Space Telescope
On April 24, 1990, Hubble finally launched into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. The telescope carried five instruments: The Wide Field/Planetary Camera, the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph, the Faint Object Camera, the Faint Object Spectrograph and the High Speed Photometer.
