Anniversaries

50th Anniversary of Human Spaceflight

Little more than a century ago, the Wright brothers took flight and entered humans into a world of controlled movement in three dimensions. In less than fifty years humans then envisioned, designed, built, and flew the most amazing collection of aircraft. The biplanes of of the early 1900's, to the Corsairs, spitfires, and huge bombers of World War II, the commercial passenger planes of the 1920's, 30's, and 40's. Then the jet age of the 1950's and the beginning of the space age and launching rockets in the 50's. In less than half a century, humans had moved from flying barely faster than we could run, to flying faster than the speed of sound.

On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin, launched from the Kazakhstan steppes near Baikunor in Vostok 1. With that launch, the Soviet Union proved that it was possible to safely launch a human into space and bring them safely home to Earth.

This was the beginning of the Space Race. In May of 1961 Alan Shepard became the first American in space, and in February 1962,  John Glenn became the first human to enter Earth orbit. Later in 1962, Soviet Cosmonauts were launched Vostok "group flights," maintaining two orbiting craft and rendezvous maneuvers. In 1965, cosmonaut Leonov executed the first spacewalk, and NASA's Gemini program began with two-man capsules and more spacewalks. 1967 ushered in the beginning of the Apollo program that would take Armstrong, Conrad, and Cooper to the moon in July of 1969.

1971 was the beginning of long duration missions on space stations when cosmonauts Dobrovolsky, Volkov, Patsayev spent 24 days orbiting Earth aboard Salyut 1. A year later, in December of 1972, the Apollo program came to a close with Apollo 17 making the final mission to the moon. In 1973, NASA began the Space Lab program, an orbiting laboratory.

April 12th is also the 30th anniversary of NASA's Space Shuttle program. Shuttle Columbia would make 5 test flights over the next two years. Next came shuttles Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and finally Endeavour, which is now perched on launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center awaiting its final mission (STS-134) bringing the construction of the International Space Station to completion.

In 1986, the Russian space station Mir saw its first crew, and the International Space Station (ISS) was launched in October of 2000. In November 2010, ISS celebrated ten years of continuous human habitation in space. Last week, on April 6, three additional members of the station's 27th mission boarded ISS from their Soyuz capsule named "Gagarin," bringing Station crew to full strength at six members. In a few more weeks the Endeavour STS-134 crew of seven will join them for two weeks.

In 108 years, humans have gone from flying at a speed of 1 mph on the Wright 1903 Flyer to 17,500 mph on the Space Station!

Where will the next ten, thirty, or fifty years take us?