Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was nearly killed during a shooting spree in Tucson in January, is planning to watch her astronaut husband Mark Kelly blast off into space in the space shuttle Endeavour on Friday. Her recovery has been described as a miracle, though there are still many hurdles to overcome. Kelly is the commander of the mission heading into space, which is to be the second-to-last one for the space shuttle program.
Office of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords / AP Photo
Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, when he blasted off on April 12, 1961. He made a 108-minute orbital flight before safely returning to earth.
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As missions to the moon became slightly more routine and more science-heavy, NASA needed to develop a way for astronauts to move around the moon easily and quickly. To solve this problem, NASA introduced the Lunar Roving Vehicle. Designed by Boeing, the LRV was 10 feet, 2 inches long, 6-feet wide, and less than 45 inches high, and weighed 463 pounds. Four rovers were built at a cost of $38 million ($200 million in today’s dollars). The top speed was 8 mph. The first rover was used during the Apollo 15 mission, when David Scott and James Irwin drove it on the moon on July 31, 1971. Two others were subsequently used on Apollo 16 and 17 respectively. The three rovers covered a cumulative 55 miles on the lunar surface. A fourth rover was intended for Apollo 18, which was never launched, and it is now in the Smithsonian Institution; the other three were left on the moon.
David R. Scott, NASA / Landov
The U.S. was not far behind the Russians. Alan Shepard became the first American in space less than a month after Yuri Gagarin, on May 5, 1961. He spent 15 minutes and 28 seconds in orbit and traveled 303 miles around the Earth, before safely returning, splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean.
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The Soviet Union launched Sputnik on October 4, 1957, becoming the first man-made object to successfully orbit the Earth. The launch caught the American public off-guard, as the U.S. project to launch a satellite was still in the early stages, and the planned payload for the U.S. project was much smaller than Sputnik’s. There were fears that the Soviet Union’s ability to launch satellites meant it could also launch nuclear missiles at the U.S. Right after Sputnik launched, the U.S. Defense Department approved funding for another satellite project, which would become Explorer I, and led directly to the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
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The Mars Pathfinder left Earth in December 1996 and landed on Mars in July 1997, as the first unmanned mission to that planet. As soon as the spacecraft landed, the Pathfinder went to work. It returned 2.3 million bits of data back to NASA, including more than 17,000 photos. Although it was designed to roam the planet for a few days and transmit information for only three months, the Pathfinder roamed for a month and continued to send information for a year.
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Sally Ride went into space aboard the Challenger on June 18, 1983, and became the first American woman in space. It was the second flight of the Challenger and the first flight with a five-person crew. In the 20 years after Ride went into space, 30 women followed in her footsteps.
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The United States launched its first satellite in 1958. The Explorer I was 80 inches long, 6.25 inches in diameter, and weighed 30.8 pounds. It circled the planet 12.5 times per day as it measured cosmic radiation in its environment. It finally came back down to Earth and burned up in the atmosphere in March 1970, after orbiting 56,000 times.
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On February 20, 1962, John Glenn became the third American in space and the first to make a full orbit of the Earth. He was selected for the mission from an original pool of 508 people. During the 4 hour and 56 minute mission, he made three full orbits of the Earth, and reached speeds of more than 17,000 miles per hour.
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The Challenger wasn’t one of the greatest moments in space, but certainly one of the memorable ones. On January 28, 1986, NASA suffered its first fatal in-flight accident when the Challenger exploded at 46,000 feet, killing seven astronauts. The disaster was broadcast on live television and it was witnessed across the country by children who had tuned in to watch Christa McAuliffe become the first teacher in space. NASA waited almost three years before launching another shuttle after this incident. The investigation showed that low temperatures on the day of the launch caused a rubber “O-ring” seal on one of the rocket boosters to fail, which led to a leak of explosive gases. The space program would not suffer another disaster until 2003, when the shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry.
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The International Space Station is the largest space station ever built. The first two pieces were sent to space and attached in 1998. The first crew members arrived in 2000, and the U.S., Russia, and many other countries have since sent other modules to be attached since. The Space Station has been used to study the long-term effects of space living on astronauts, which will be helpful in determining if, and when, it will be safe to travel longer distances in space. After international rivalries launched the first satellites into space, one of the greatest achievements in space travel was this international collaboration.
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