The first earthling in space was the canine cosmonaut Laika (Barker), a female part-samoyed rescue dog. Though she died after a few days, she proved she could survive liftoff and weightlessness. She would not be the last to lose her life in pursuit of space exploration. In the next photo, see who went down in history as the first human in space.
Image Credit: NASA/National Space Science Data Center
The U.S./Soviet space race intensified in April 1961, when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space -- an event that made headlines all over the world. Gagarin would also be the first to orbit the Earth. Do you know the name of the first U.S. astronaut launched into space?
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The next month, the U.S. launched its first astronaut into space: Alan B. Shepard, Jr., who went up 115 miles in the Freedom 7 Mercury spacecraft. Next up, see the crew members of the Mercury-Atlas 6.
Image Credit: NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Collection
Astronaut John H. Glenn Jr., NASA flight surgeon William Douglas and equipment specialist Joseph W. Schmidt before the Mercury-Atlas 6 mission, which made Glenn the first American to orbit the Earth. In the next photo, see the first woman who went to space.
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Valentina Tereshkova (right) was the first woman in space. She is shown here before her 1963 Vostok 6 mission with fellow cosmonauts Valentina Ponomareva (left) and Irina Solovyeva. Next, see an image of the first spacewalk.
Image Credit: NASA/Files of Asif Siddiqi
A television image of Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov performing the first spacewalk outside Voshkod 2 in 1965. However, traveling to space is not all about the glory and fame. In the next photo, see three men who lost their lives in the pursuit of a dream.
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Apollo 1 astronauts (L-R) Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee in front of the Saturn 1 launch vehicle at Kennedy Space Center. A fire in the capsule during pre-launch testing killed all three men; it also led to safety improvements in future missions. Can you name the man on the moon in the next picture?
Image Credit: NASA
A man on the moon: Apollo 11 lunar module pilot Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin, Jr., in a July, 20 1969 photograph by Neil Armstrong, the first human to step on the lunar surface. See what a bootprint looks like on the moon in the next picture.
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One small step: a bootprint from "Buzz" Aldrin during his July 1969 moonwalk. Next up, see what led to the International Space Station.
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Cold War on Earth, cooperation in space: Apollo Commander Thomas P. Stafford (foreground) and Soyuz Commander Alexei A. Leonov shake hands during the Apollo Soyuz Test Project, a joint Societ/American docking mission in 1975. This effort would be a step in the development of the International Space Station.
Image Credit: NASA
U.S. Senator John Glenn and former astronaut John Glenn flew again in 1998, on a space shuttle mission. He served as a payload specialist and researchers gathered data about the effects of space on seniors. In the next photo, learn why the Space Shuttle Atlantis is so significant.
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The crew of Space Shuttle Atlantis July 8. 2011, just before the final flight of the shuttle program. From left, mission specialists Rex Walheim and Sandy Magnus, pilot Doug Hurley and commander Chris Ferguson. At liftoff, NASA had only unmanned missions scheduled for the future.
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Though no further manned missions have been planned by NASA, children still dream of becoming astronauts. Astronaut Susan Kilrain, a shuttle pilot who has logged more than 471 hours in space, meets kids in Hampton, Va. at the NASA Langley Child Development Center Lunar Camp.
Image Credit: NASA/Sean Smith
Before there could ever be space flight, we were going to need really good rockets. In July of 1950, the Bumper 2 two-stage rocket program became the first rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Launched under the direction of General Electric, the Bumper 2 was used for the most part in testing rocket systems and for performing research on the upper atmosphere. The rockets carried small payloads that allowed them to measure attributes such as air temperature and cosmic ray impacts. Just seven years after this launch, Sputnik I and Sputnik II would be launched by the Soviet Union. They were the first satellites to orbit Earth and kicked off the space race between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. that would culminate in the U.S. putting a man on the moon.
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Here we see the International Space Station's first crew. Expedition 1 Commander Bill Shepherd is in the center, with Soyuz Commander Yuri Gidzenko on the right and flight engineer Sergei Krikalev on the left. The three men are wearing Sokol space suits, like those used for voyages in the Soyuz (Russian spacecraft) to the station. On the bottom of this crew portrait are national flags that represent all of the international partners in the station. Expedition 1 was the first crew to live onboard the orbital platform and the trio launched to the space station on Oct. 31, 2000. We'll visit the aftermath of a big splash in our next picture.
Image Credit: NASA
The Apollo 7 crew is welcomed aboard the USS Essex, which was the primary recovery ship for the mission. It was the first Apollo splashdown and as such it was the first three-person "landing" for NASA. Show here in the foreground, from left to right, are astronauts Walter M. Schirra Jr., commander; Donn F. Eisele, command module pilot; and Walter Cunningham, lunar module pilot. We'll check out a sizable space flight first in our next image.
Image Credit: NASA
Shown here is the space shuttle Columbia at Florida's Kennedy Space Center, launching on April 12, 1981. It marked the start of the first space shuttle mission (STS-1) into orbit. Mission Commander John Young had flown in space on four previous missions, and he even walked on the moon in 1972. Meanwhile, Bob Crippen, the STS-1 mission pilot, was a Navy test pilot who in later years would command three shuttle missions. The space shuttle was mankind's first re-usable spacecraft. Take it out for a spin, land it, then take it up again (well, with a lot of detailed steps in between launches!) The orbiter took off strapped to a rocket and landed like an ordinary airplane. It was also the first time in history a new spacecraft was launched on its maiden voyage with a crew aboard.
Image Credit: NASA
In 2009, NASA launched the first test flight of its next-generation spacecraft and launch vehicle system. The test flight was called Ares I-X, meant to help NASA prepare to return to the moon for further exploration of the lunar surface and also to one day travel to Mars. Unfortunately, though, there is a sad note to this particular first. The Ares I program was cancelled when the Obama administration made cuts at NASA.
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Here we catch a close-up glimpse of the first American spacewalk, conducted by astronaut Ed White on June 3, 1965 during the Gemini 4 mission. He used a hand-held, oxygen-jet gun to launch himself out of the Gemini capsule and then spent 23 minutes spacewalking. Note the gold-plated visor on his helmet. It protected him from the unfiltered rays of the sun. Next, we'll see a mass media first.
Image Credit: NASA
Here's an image from New York's Times Square of the world's first live, HDTV broadcast from space. The broadcasting featured Expedition 14 Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria on the International Space Station, with Flight Engineer Thomas Reiter pitching in as the camera operator aboard the famous floating laboratory perched 220 miles (354 kilometers) above Earth. Next up, we'll see a space flight first with an inhuman twist.
Image Credit: Discovery Channel
Robonaut 2 (R2) has its claim to fame as the first dexterous humanoid robot in space. In this picture, the robot is in the Destiny laboratory of the International Space Station. Crew members conducted onboard tests of R2, which was put in motion for the first time in orbit.
Image Credit: NASA
NASA began developing new communication satellites back in 1960. They were working on the premise that geosynchronous satellites (which orbit Earth 22,300 miles -- 35,900 kilometers -- above the ground) offered the best location because of how stable they could remain, relative to the rotation of the Earth. NASA launched Syncom I after just a year and a half of development work. It stopped sending signals just a few seconds before it reached its final orbit, but, undeterred, NASA five months later launched Syncom II. The second version had better success and demonstrated that the system could work. The next Syncom was able to transmit live coverage of the 1964 Olympic games in Tokyo to stations in North America and Europe.
Image Credit: NASA
Before the International Space Station there was Skylab, America's first space station and orbital science and engineering laboratory. Skylab contains a double-first in our gallery, as it also became the first U.S. manned space station. Here, astronaut Charles Conrad Jr., commander of the first manned Skylab mission, goes over a checklist of planned experiments during Skylab training. Before Skylab's fall back to Earth, and disintegration, at the end of its operational life in 1979, three crews would visit the station.
Image Credit: NASA
The Viking 1 lander, a plucky explorer spacecraft from the 1970s, took this first-ever photograph from the surface of Mars. It was snapped on July 20, 1976. Viking I's top objectives were to take high-resolution images of the Martian surface, study Mars's atmosphere and surface and be on the lookout for evidence of life on the red planet. Next up, we'll check in with another spacecraft that captured historic-first pictures.
Image Credit: NASA
Mankind got a look at the first-ever images of the surface of Mercury, thanks to NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, which in the spring of 2011 settled into orbit around our solar system's closest planet to the sun.
Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Before we could ever notch any of the space flight firsts we've cataloged here, there was a need for speed. For a long time, the mythical "sound barrier" (i.e., flying faster than the speed of sound) could not be breached by an aircraft. But Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager did just that in 1947 when he piloted the Bell XS-1, notching mankind's first supersonic flight.
Image Credit: NASA
Here are seven women who were members of what were known as First Lady Astronaut Trainees (FLATs, also called the "Mercury 13"). The FLATs was a group of women who trained to become astronauts for America's first human spaceflight program in the early 1960s. It was never an official NASA program, but the effort of these women helped paved the way for other female astronauts in the future. In this picture, the former FLATs are visiting NASA as invited guests of Shuttle Pilot Eileen Collins, who was the first female shuttle pilot and later the first female shuttle commander. From left, they are: Gene Nora Jessen, Wally Funk, Jerrie Cobb, Jerri Truhill, Sarah Rutley, Myrtle Cagle and Bernice Steadman.
Image Credit: NASA
SpaceX notched a historical first in 2010 when its Dragon reusable spacecraft became the first private company spacecraft to go into orbit and return to Earth. The company was preparing in early 2012 to make a demonstration flight to the International Space Station, carrying a shipment of dried food. Private industry is expected to make key contributions to future space endeavors, in the wake of the cancellation of the space shuttle program. Next, we'll meet the man who was the world's first space tourist.
Image Credit: SpaceX
U.S. financier Dennis Tito is credited with being the first space tourist. He visited the International Space Station (ISS) in 2001, having booked his trip with a private company in Virginia that had an office in Moscow. He was flown to the ISS aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. His trip lasted nearly eight days, during which time he orbited the Earth 128 times. Here he is attending a post-flight news conference on May 8, 2001.
Image Credit: Getty Images
In our final image, we see Dr. Christopher C. Kraft, Jr. at his flight director console in the NASA Mission Control Center during a Gemini-Titan V flight simulation. Kraft was America's first human space flight mission director. Many remember more readily one of his successors, Gene Krantz, who was portrayed in the film Apollo 13 (1995; "Failure is not an option."), but Kraft was the first, in 1965, to be in charge of human flights at mission control.
Now that you've seen our Space Flight Firsts Pictures, do you think you know how rockets first took flight? Take the Rockets Quiz and find out!
Image Credit: NASA
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