Space travel

  • On January 27 1967, U.S. astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died in a fire aboard the Apollo 1 spacecraft during a launch simulation at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. The Apollo program changed forever , when a flash fire swept through the Apollo 1 command module during a launch rehearsal test. The three men inside

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  • During the Cold War, the USSR built a look-alike space shuttle to compete with the U.S. program. The development of the “Buran” began in the early 1970s as a response to the U.S. Space Shuttle program. Soviet officials were concerned about a perceived military threat posed by the U.S. Space Shuttle. In their opinion, the

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  • On Oct. 24, 1946, the first extraterrestrial view of Earth was shot from 65 miles away aboard a Nazi-built V-2 rocket launched by American scientists, according to Smithsonian magazine. Thanks to a Devry 35-millimeter movie camera, Earthlings saw their planet for the first time as a grainy, black-and-white mass that looked more like paint under a microscope

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  • Apollo 13-Phew, we made it.

    There is a great message to be got from Apollo 13. NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE. It is one to thing to break down with your car in the middle of nowhere, but to break down in Space, how to you deal with that? Well the men on the Apollo 13 dealt with it by staying calm

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  • On this day 75 years ago the  first V-2 missile was fired successfully from Peenemunde, heralding the start of space travel. German scientists, led by von Braun, had been working on the development of these long-range missiles since the 1930s. Three trial launches had already failed; the fourth in the series, known as A-4, finally

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  • Laika, the ‘space dog’ was sent into orbit from Russia in 1957. She was the first living creature to orbit the Earth. She was sent on a one-way mission but sadly died less than a week after blast-off. Laika was a stray dog from the streets of Moscow before she was selected to become the

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  • A small step for man

    July 1969. It’s a little over eight years since the flights of Gagarin and Shepard, followed quickly by President Kennedy’s challenge to put a man on the moon before the decade is out. It is only seven months since NASA’s made a bold decision to send Apollo 8 all the way to the moon on the first

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  • Operation Paperclip (also Project Paperclip) was the code name for the O.S.S.–U.S. Military rescue of scientists from Nazi Germany, during the terminus and aftermath of World War II. In 1945, the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency was established with direct responsibility for effecting Operation Paperclip. The primary purpose for Operation Paperclip was for the U.S. to

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  • Vostok 6

    Vostok 6 (Russian: Восток-6, Orient 6 or East 6) was the first human spaceflight to carry a woman, cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, into space. The spacecraft was launched on June 16, 1963. While Vostok 5 had been delayed by technical problems, Vostok 6’s launch proceeded perfectly with no difficulties at all. Data collected during the mission

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  • Space Monkey

    There are many brave astronauts that have participated – and even given their lives – in the quest to put human beings into space. But before those astronauts had a chance to take flight, there was a long line of other creatures that paved the way for human spaceflight. The first living beings were fruit

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