Since the first artificial satellite was launched in 1957, astronauts have traveled to the moon, spacecraft have explored the solar system, and space equipment has identified thousands of planets orbiting distant stars.
Who Is the First Person to Go to the Space?
The first human in space was Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who flew one orbit around the Earth on April 12, 1961, for 108 minutes. A little more than three weeks later, NASA sent astronaut Alan Shepard into space on a suborbital trajectory—a trip that travels into space but does not circle the Earth.
Shepard’s suborbital flight lasted slightly more than 15 minutes. Three weeks later, on May 25, President John F. Kennedy declared, “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.”
What is The History of Space Exploration?
Since October 4, 1957, when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth, humans have been going into space. This occurred during the Cold War, a time of political enmity between the Soviet Union and the United States. For several years, the two superpowers had been striving to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of transporting nuclear warheads between continents. Sergei Korolev, a rocket designer in the USSR, had constructed the first ICBM, a rocket called the R7, which would kick off the space race.
With the launch of Sputnik, this competition came to a head. The Sputnik satellite, which was carried atop a R7 rocket, was able to send out beeps from a radio transmitter. Sputnik orbited Earth every 96 minutes after reaching space. The radio beeps could be heard on the ground when the satellite passed overhead, confirming that it was indeed in orbit. The United States became concerned when it realized that the USSR had capabilities that outmatched US technologies and potentially imperiled Americans. The Soviets then accomplished an even more remarkable space endeavor a month later, on November 3, 1957. SputnikII was a satellite that carried a living being, a dog named Laika.
Prior to the launch of Sputnik, the United States had been developing its own satellite launch capacity. The United States made two failed attempts to launch a satellite into space before finally succeeding on January 31, 1958, with a rocket carrying the Explorer satellite. The team that launched the first American satellite was mostly made up of German rocket engineers who had previously worked on ballistic missiles for Nazi Germany.
The German rocket engineers, commanded by Wernher von Braun, were working for the United States Army at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, and had modified the German V2 rocket into a more powerful rocket known as the Jupiter C, or Juno. The Explorer transported numerous instruments into orbit for scientific studies. A Geiger counter was one of the instruments used to detect cosmic rays. This was for an experiment run by researcher James Van Allen, which demonstrated the existence of what are now known as the Van Allen radiation bands encircling Earth using readings from later satellites.
The first human in space was Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who flew one orbit around the Earth on April 12, 1961, for 108 minutes. A little more than three weeks later, NASA sent astronaut Alan Shepard into space on a suborbital trajectory—a trip that travels into space but does not circle the Earth.
Shepard’s suborbital flight lasted slightly more than 15 minutes. Three weeks later, on May 25, President John F. Kennedy declared, “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.”
In addition to launching the first artificial satellite, the first dog in space, and the first human in space, the Soviet Union surpassed the United States in other space accomplishments. Among these landmarks was Luna 2, which became the first human-made object to land on the Moon in 1959. Soon after, the Soviet Union launched Luna 3. A second Soviet human mission orbited Earth for a full day less than four months after Gagarin’s journey in 1961. The USSR also performed the first spacewalk and launched the Vostok 6 mission, making Valentina Tereshkova the first woman in space.
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
Categories: News
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
