"Navy, Air Force and Marine test pilot programs. On May 5, 1961, astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space aboard ""Freedom 7"", launched by a Redstone booster on a 15-minute ballistic (suborbital) flight. John Glenn became the first American to be launched into orbit, by an Atlas launch vehicle on February 20, 1962, aboard ""Friendship 7"". Glenn completed three orbits, after which three more orbital flights were made, culminating in L. Gordon Cooper's 22-orbit flight ""Faith 7"", May 15–16, 1963. The Soviet Union (USSR) competed with its own single-pilot spacecraft, Vostok. They sent the first man in space,"
"the Atlas ICBM and Titan II, were re-purposed as human launch vehicles for manned spaceflight, both were used in the civilian Project Mercury and Project Gemini programs respectively, which are regarded as stepping stones in the evolution of US manned spaceflight. The Atlas vehicle sent John Glenn, the first American into orbit. Similarly in the Soviet Union it was the R-7 ICBM/launch vehicle that placed the first artificial satellite in space, Sputnik, on 4 October 1957, and the first human spaceflight in history was accomplished on a derivative of the R-7, the Vostok, on 12 April 1961, by cosmonaut Yuri"
"a human into orbit. Mercury-Atlas 5 Mercury-Atlas 5 was an American unmanned spaceflight of the Mercury program. It was launched on November 29, 1961 with Enos, a chimpanzee, aboard. The craft orbited the Earth twice and splashed down about south of Bermuda. By November 1961, the Soviet Union had launched Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov into orbit during the Vostok 1 and Vostok 2 manned orbital flights while the United States had managed only suborbital ones. At that time NASA was still debating placing a chimpanzee in orbit as part of the Mercury-Atlas subprogram, with NASA headquarters questioning the wisdom"
"Skylab 2 Skylab 2 (also SL-2 and SLM-1) was the first manned mission to Skylab, the first U.S. orbital space station. The mission was launched on a Saturn IB rocket on May 25, 1973, and carried a three-person crew to the station. The name Skylab 2 also refers to the vehicle used for that mission. The Skylab 2 mission established a twenty-eight-day record for human spaceflight duration. Furthermore, its crew were the first space station occupants ever to return safely to Earth – the only previous space station occupants, the crew of the 1971 Soyuz 11 mission that had manned"
"were large enough to be adapted to carry the first artificial satellites into low Earth orbit. After the first satellites were launched in 1957 and 1958, the US worked on Project Mercury to launch men singly into orbit, while the USSR secretly pursued the Vostok program to accomplish the same thing. The USSR launched the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin, into a single orbit in Vostok 1 on a Vostok 3KA rocket, on 12 April 1961. The US launched its first astronaut, Alan Shepard, on a suborbital flight aboard ""Freedom 7"" on a Mercury-Redstone rocket, on 5 May 1961."
"Human spaceflight Human spaceflight (also referred to as crewed spaceflight or manned spaceflight) is space travel with a crew or passengers aboard the spacecraft. Spacecraft carrying people may be operated directly, by human crew, or it may be either remotely operated from ground stations on Earth or be autonomous, able to carry out a specific mission with no human involvement. The first human spaceflight was launched by the Soviet Union on 12 April 1961 as a part of the Vostok program, with cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin aboard. Humans have been continuously present in space for on the International Space Station. All"
"spacecraft was given a name ending with a ""7"" by its pilot. The Space Race began with the 1957 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1. This came as a shock to the American public, and led to the creation of NASA to expedite existing US space exploration efforts, and place most of them under civilian control. After the successful launch of the Explorer 1 satellite in 1958, manned spaceflight became the next goal. The Soviet Union put the first human, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, into a single orbit aboard Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. Shortly after this, on May"
"100 km. As of 2016, only three nations have flown crewed spacecraft: USSR/Russia, USA, and China. The first crewed spacecraft was Vostok 1, which carried Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961, and completed a full Earth orbit. There were five other crewed missions which used a Vostok spacecraft. The second crewed spacecraft was named ""Freedom 7"", and it performed a sub-orbital spaceflight in 1961 carrying American astronaut Alan Shepard to an altitude of just over . There were five other crewed missions using Mercury spacecraft. Other Soviet crewed spacecraft include the Voskhod, Soyuz, flown un crewed as Zond/L1,"
"It flew two manned missions, Voskhod 1 (world's first multi-crewed mission, launched on 12 October 1964) and Voskhod 2 (featuring the world's first Extra-vehicular activity, or EVA, commonly called a ""spacewalk"", launched on March 18, 1965). The Voskhod spacecraft—and its ""Globus"" IMP instruments—is a close derivative of Vostok, which flew six Soviet individuals to low Earth orbit, including the world's first human in space, Yuri Gagarin, and the world's first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova. The main difference between IMP versions 1 and 2 (Vostok spacecraft) and later versions (Voskhod and Soyuz) is the addition of the disc-shaped longitude and"
"recovering him safely on April 12, 1961. The US launched its first Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard on a suborbital flight almost a month later, on May 5. The Soviets launched a second Vostok on a one-day flight on August 6, before the US finally orbited the first American, John Glenn, on February 20, 1962. The United States launched a total of two manned suborbital Mercury capsules and four manned orbital capsules, with the longest flight, Mercury-Atlas 9, making 22 orbits and lasting 32 and one-half hours. Since the Soviets had plenty of lift capability from launch vehicles derived from their"
"Mercury-Atlas 5 Mercury-Atlas 5 was an American unmanned spaceflight of the Mercury program. It was launched on November 29, 1961 with Enos, a chimpanzee, aboard. The craft orbited the Earth twice and splashed down about south of Bermuda. By November 1961, the Soviet Union had launched Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov into orbit during the Vostok 1 and Vostok 2 manned orbital flights while the United States had managed only suborbital ones. At that time NASA was still debating placing a chimpanzee in orbit as part of the Mercury-Atlas subprogram, with NASA headquarters questioning the wisdom of the Manned Spacecraft"
"to proceed with launches of an automated variant of ""Vostok 3KA"", the spacecraft design that would conduct a manned spaceflight. The approval of a manned mission was contingent upon the success of the two automated ""Vostok 3KA"" missions. Unlike the previous ""Vostok 1K"" flights, the two unmanned ""Vostok 3KA"" flights were planned to last only a single orbit, to imitate the plan for the first manned flight. The first of these unmanned flights, Korabl-Sputnik 4, was launched on March 9, 1961. It carried the dog Chernushka into orbit, as well as a mannequin called Ivan Ivanovich, who wore a functioning"
"following the ground path taken by ""Vostok 1"". The resulting film, ""First Orbit"", was released online to celebrate the 50th anniversary of human spaceflight. Vostok 1 Vostok 1 (, ""East"" or ""Orient"" 1) was the first spaceflight of the Vostok programme and the first manned spaceflight in history. The Vostok 3KA space capsule was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome on April 12, 1961, with Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin aboard, making him the first human to cross into outer space. The orbital spaceflight consisted of a single orbit around Earth which skimmed the upper atmosphere at at its lowest point. The flight"
"Vostok 1 Vostok 1 (, ""East"" or ""Orient"" 1) was the first spaceflight of the Vostok programme and the first manned spaceflight in history. The Vostok 3KA space capsule was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome on April 12, 1961, with Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin aboard, making him the first human to cross into outer space. The orbital spaceflight consisted of a single orbit around Earth which skimmed the upper atmosphere at at its lowest point. The flight took 108 minutes from launch to landing. Gagarin parachuted to the ground separately from his capsule after ejecting at altitude. The Space Race between"
"Mercury-Redstone 3 Mercury-Redstone 3, or Freedom 7, was the first United States human spaceflight, on May 5, 1961, piloted by astronaut Alan Shepard. It was the first manned flight of Project Mercury, the objective of which was to put an astronaut into orbit around the Earth and return him safely. Shepard's mission was a 15-minute suborbital flight with the primary objective of demonstrating his ability to withstand the high g-forces of launch and atmospheric re-entry. Shepard named his space capsule ""Freedom 7"", setting a precedent for the remaining six Mercury astronauts naming their spacecraft. The number 7 was included in"
"which is just close enough for telepresence operation. Telepresence has also been suggested as a way to repair satellites in Earth orbit from Earth. The Exploration Telerobotics Symposium in 2012 explored this and other topics. The first human spaceflight was Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961, on which cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin of the USSR made one orbit around the Earth. In official Soviet documents, there is no mention of the fact that Gagarin parachuted the final seven miles. Currently, the only spacecraft regularly used for human spaceflight are the Russian Soyuz spacecraft and the Chinese Shenzhou spacecraft. The U.S. Space"
"Vostok (spacecraft) The Vostok (, translated as ""East"") was a type of spacecraft built by the Soviet Union. The first human spaceflight was accomplished with Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961, by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. The spacecraft was part of the Vostok programme, in which six manned spaceflights were made, from 1961–63. Two further manned space flights were made in 1964 and 1965 by Voskhod spacecraft, which were modified ""Vostok"" spacecraft. By the late 1960s both were superseded by the Soyuz spacecraft, which are still used . The Vostok spacecraft was originally designed for use both as a camera"
"board, including unprecedented solar studies. The longest manned mission of the program was Skylab 4 which lasted 84 days, from November 16, 1973 to February 8, 1974. The total mission duration was 2249 days, with Skylab finally falling from orbit over Australia on July 11, 1979. Although its pace slowed, space exploration continued after the end of the Space Race. The United States launched the first reusable spacecraft, the Space Shuttle, on the 20th anniversary of Gagarin's flight, April 12, 1981. On November 15, 1988, the Soviet Union duplicated this with an unmanned flight of the only ""Buran""-class shuttle to"
"Unlike Gagarin, Shepard manually controlled his spacecraft's attitude, and landed inside it. The first American in orbit was John Glenn aboard ""Friendship 7"", launched 20 February 1962 on a Mercury-Atlas rocket. The USSR launched five more cosmonauts in Vostok capsules, including the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova aboard Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963. The US launched a total of two astronauts in suborbital flight and four into orbit through 1963. US President John F. Kennedy raised the stakes of the Space Race by setting the goal of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely by"
"early human spaceflight was crewed, where at least some of the passengers acted to carry out tasks of piloting or operating the spacecraft. After 2015, several human-capable spacecraft are being explicitly designed with the ability to operate autonomously. From the retirement of the US Space Shuttle in 2011 to the first SpaceShipTwo spaceflight in 2018, only Russia and China have maintained human spaceflight capability with the Soyuz program and Shenzhou program. Currently, all expeditions to the International Space Station use Soyuz vehicles, which remain attached to the station to allow quick return if needed. The United States is developing commercial"
"space program. Naval aviator Alan B. Shepard's Freedom 7 spacecraft, the United States' first manned spacecraft, was tracked and located by VS-22 on 5 May 1961. In August 1965, while embarked on USS ""Lake Champlain"", VS-22 recovered Gemini 5 astronauts Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad. Finally, VS-22 was engaged in the recovery of Apollo 7 astronauts while deployed aboard USS ""Essex"". Jet transitions started in the summer of 1974 with pilots training in Rockwell T-2C ""Buckeye""s and Douglas TA-4J ""Skyhawk""s at NAS Meridian, Mississippi, making VS-22 the first east coast based S-3A squadron. With the retirement of the anti-submarine carriers"
"the U.S., who chose instead to bypass the stepping stone of a manned circumlunar loop mission and never developed a separate spacecraft for this purpose. Initial manned spaceflights in the early 1960s placed a single person in low Earth orbit during the Soviet Vostok and U.S. Mercury programs. A two-flight extension of the Vostok program known as Voskhod effectively used Vostok capsules with their ejection seats removed to achieve Soviet space firsts of multiple person crews in 1964 and spacewalks in early 1965. These capabilities were later demonstrated by the U.S. in ten Gemini low Earth orbit missions throughout 1965"
"to its objectives. The first manned Gemini flight, Gemini 3, was flown by Gus Grissom and John Young on March 23, 1965. Nine missions followed in 1965 and 1966, demonstrating an endurance mission of nearly fourteen days, rendezvous, docking, and practical EVA, and gathering medical data on the effects of weightlessness on humans. Under the direction of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, the USSR competed with Gemini by converting their Vostok spacecraft into a two- or three-man Voskhod. They succeeded in launching two manned flights before Gemini's first flight, achieving a three-cosmonaut flight in 1963 and the first EVA in 1964."
"was recovered after landing, and the two dogs aboard the spacecraft survived the flight. On 12 April 1961, a Vostok-K rocket was used to launch Vostok 1, the first manned spaceflight, which made Yuri Gagarin the first human to fly in space. All six manned missions of the Vostok programme were launched using Vostok-K rockets. The first two Zenit reconnaissance satellites were also launched with the Vostok-K, but it was soon replaced in that capacity with the uprated 8A92 booster. After the conclusion of the Vostok program, there were two remaining 8K72Ks left; these were used to launch four Elektron"
"meteoroid. ""Sputnik 1"" was launched by an R-7 rocket. It burned up upon re-entry on 3 January 1958. The second one was ""Sputnik 2"". Launched by the USSR on November 3, 1957, it carried the dog Laika, who became the first animal in orbit. This success led to an escalation of the American space program, which unsuccessfully attempted to launch a Vanguard satellite into orbit two months later. On 31 January 1958, the U.S. successfully orbited ""Explorer 1"" on a Juno rocket. The first successful human spaceflight was ""Vostok 1"" (""East 1""), carrying 27-year-old Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on 12"
"the U.S. first put a monkey into space, and 22 years after the Soviet Union started putting humans into space. The mission differed markedly from earlier Cosmos flights, both in terms of Soviet scientific goals and in the degree of cooperation required between the United States and the USSR. The two countries had to interact at a high level to integrate U.S. experiment hardware with the Soviet spacecraft and instrumentation systems. Experiments focused on the effect of weightlessness on various physiological parameters. A study of circadian rhythms was concerned with the synchronization of primate motor activity, body temperature and skin"
"develop the technology to do so. For example, he claims that, during the Apollo program, the USSR had five times more manned hours in space than the United States, and notes that the USSR was the first to achieve many of the early milestones in space: the first man-made satellite in orbit (October 1957, Sputnik 1); the first living creature in orbit (a dog named Laika, November 1957, Sputnik 2); the first man in space and in orbit (Yuri Gagarin, April 1961, Vostok 1); the first woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova, June 1963, Vostok 6); and the first spacewalk (EVA)"
"were several models of the Vostok leading up to the manned version: Prototype spacecraft. Photo-reconnaissance and signals intelligence spacecraft. Later named Zenit spy satellite. The Vostok 3KA was the spacecraft used for the first human spaceflights. They were launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome using Vostok 8K72K launch vehicles. The first flight of a Vostok 3KA occurred on March 9, 1961. The first flight with a crew—Vostok 1 carrying Yuri Gagarin—took place on April 12, 1961. The last flight—Vostok 6 carrying the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova—took place on June 16, 1963. A total of 8 Vostok 3KA spacecraft were flown,"
"space travelers), Yuri Gagarin. Gagarin's flight, part of the Soviet Vostok space exploration program, took 108 minutes and consisted of a single orbit of the Earth. On August 7, 1961, Gherman Titov, another Soviet cosmonaut, became the second man in orbit during his Vostok 2 mission. By June 16, 1962, the Union launched a total of six Vostok cosmonauts, two pairs of them flying concurrently, and accumulating a total of 260 cosmonaut-orbits and just over sixteen cosmonaut-days in space. On May 5, 1961, the US launched its first suborbital Mercury astronaut, Alan Shepard, in the Freedom 7 capsule. The US"
"missions from orbit, though the capsule did not have enough energy to remain in orbit. After re-entry, the capsule landed by parachute on the North Atlantic Ocean off the Bahamas. Shepard and the capsule were picked up by helicopter and brought to U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS ""Lake Champlain"""". The mission was a technical success, though American pride in the accomplishment was dampened by the fact that just three weeks before, the Soviet Union had launched the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, who completed one orbit on Vostok 1. In 2017 the first National Astronaut Day was held on"
"by the time of the launch of the first manned Earth-orbiting Apollo flight (Apollo 7), the USSR had made only nine spaceflights (seven with one cosmonaut, one with two, one with three) compared to 16 by the United States. In terms of spacecraft hours, the USSR had 460 hours of spaceflight; the United States had 1,024 hours. In terms of astronaut/cosmonaut time, the USSR had 534 hours of manned spaceflight whereas the United States had 1,992 hours. By the time of Apollo 11, the United States had a lead much wider than that. (See List of human spaceflights, 1961–1970, and"
"of which have flown in space. ""Enterprise"" was used only for approach and landing tests, launching from the back of a Boeing 747 SCA and gliding to deadstick landings at Edwards AFB, California. The first Space Shuttle to fly into space was ""Columbia"", followed by ""Challenger"", ""Discovery"", ""Atlantis"", and ""Endeavour"". ""Endeavour"" was built to replace ""Challenger"" when it was lost in January 1986. ""Columbia"" broke up during reentry in February 2003. The first automatic partially reusable spacecraft was the ""Buran""-class shuttle, launched by the USSR on November 15, 1988, although it made only one flight and this was uncrewed. This"
"STS-1 STS-1 (""Space Transportation System""-1) was the first orbital spaceflight of NASA's Space Shuttle program. The first orbiter, ""Columbia"", launched on 12 April 1981 and returned on 14 April, 54.5 hours later, having orbited the Earth 36 times. ""Columbia"" carried a crew of two – mission commander John W. Young and pilot Robert L. Crippen. It was the first American manned space flight since the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project in 1975. STS-1 was also the only maiden test flight of a new US spacecraft to carry a crew, though it was preceded by atmospheric testing of the orbiter and ground testing"