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The US public was becoming increasingly shocked and alarmed at the widening lead obtained by the USSR, so [[President of the United States|President]] [[John F. Kennedy]] announced on May 25 a plan to land a man on the moon by 1970, launching the three-man [[Apollo program]]. In January 1962, NASA announced a two-man spacecraft program named [[Project Gemini]] to support Apollo. |
The US public was becoming increasingly shocked and alarmed at the widening lead obtained by the USSR, so [[President of the United States|President]] [[John F. Kennedy]] announced on May 25 a plan to land a man on the moon by 1970, launching the three-man [[Apollo program]]. In January 1962, NASA announced a two-man spacecraft program named [[Project Gemini]] to support Apollo. |
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After one more suborbital Mercury flight, the US launched [[John Glenn]] to make three orbits in [[Friendship 7]] on February 20, 1962. The US launched a total of six Project Mercury astronauts by May 16, 1963, logging a cumulative 34 Earth orbits, and 51 hours in space. By June 16 of the same year, the Soviets had also launched a total of six Vostok cosmonauts, two pairs of them flying concurrently, but had demonstrated longer duration flights, accumulating a total of 260 cosmonaut-orbits, and just over 16 cosmonaut-days in space. |
After one more suborbital Mercury flight, the US launched [[John Glenn]] to make three orbits in [[Friendship 7]] on February 20, 1962. The US launched a total of six Project Mercury astronauts by May 16, 1963, logging a cumulative 34 Earth orbits, and 51 hours in space. By June 16 of the same year, the Soviets had also launched a total of six Vostok cosmonauts, two pairs of them flying concurrently, but had demonstrated longer duration flights, accumulating a total of 260 cosmonaut-orbits, and just over 16 cosmonaut-days in space. good bye |
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===First woman in space=== |
===First woman in space=== |
Revision as of 01:53, 8 July 2011
Spaceflight, particularly human spaceflight, has long been a dream of humankind, but it was only in the 20th century that it became a reality.
Background
The realistic proposal of spaceflight goes back to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. His most famous work, "Исследование мировых пространств реактивными приборами" (The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices), was published in 1903, but this theoretical work was not widely influential outside of Russia.[1]
Spaceflight became an engineering possibility with the work of Robert H. Goddard's publication in 1919 of his paper 'A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes'; where his application of the de Laval nozzle to liquid fuel rockets gave sufficient power that interplanetary travel became possible. This paper was highly influential on Hermann Oberth and Wernher Von Braun, later key players in spaceflight.
In 1929, the Slovene officer Hermann Noordung was the first to imagine a complete space station in his book The Problem of Space Travel.[2][3]
The first rocket to reach space was a German V-2 Rocket, on a test flight in June 1944.
Space Race
Orbital space flight, both unmanned and manned, was first developed by the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War, in a competition dubbed the Space Race.
First unmanned satellite
The race began on July 29, 1957, when the US announced at the convention of the 1957-1958 International Geophysical Year, its intent to launch an artificial satellite known as Vanguard by the spring of 1958. The Soviets reacted on July 31 by announcing they would launch a satellite in the fall of 1957. They succeeded in launching Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957. After a series of Vanguard failures, the US succeeded in launching its first satellite, Explorer 1 on February 1, 1958. This carried scientific instrumentation and detected the theorized Van Allen radiation belt.
The US public shock over Sputnik 1 became known as the Sputnik crisis. On July 29, 1958, the US Congress passed legislation turning the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) with responsibility for the nation's civilian space programs. In 1959, NASA began Project Mercury to launch single-man capsules into Earth orbit, and chose a corps of seven astronauts introduced as the Mercury Seven.
First man in space
On April 12, 1961, the USSR announced the successful launch and return of its first cosmonaut (their chosen term for space travelers), Yuri Gagarin who made a single orbit aboard Vostok 1. On May 5, 1961 the US launched its first Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard in a capsule he named Freedom 7, but on a suborbital flight.
The US public was becoming increasingly shocked and alarmed at the widening lead obtained by the USSR, so President John F. Kennedy announced on May 25 a plan to land a man on the moon by 1970, launching the three-man Apollo program. In January 1962, NASA announced a two-man spacecraft program named Project Gemini to support Apollo.
After one more suborbital Mercury flight, the US launched John Glenn to make three orbits in Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962. The US launched a total of six Project Mercury astronauts by May 16, 1963, logging a cumulative 34 Earth orbits, and 51 hours in space. By June 16 of the same year, the Soviets had also launched a total of six Vostok cosmonauts, two pairs of them flying concurrently, but had demonstrated longer duration flights, accumulating a total of 260 cosmonaut-orbits, and just over 16 cosmonaut-days in space. good bye
First woman in space
The Soviets launched the first woman in space in the Vostok program, a civilian parachutist named Valentina Tereshkova in Vostok 6 on June 16, 1963. Though the Soviet government, led by Nikita Khrushchev, derived propaganda value from an apparent demonstration of women's equality, the exclusively male Soviet air force of the 1950s and 1960s was no more welcoming of women into its pilot fraternity than its American counterpart. Though the chief Soviet spacecraft designer, Sergey Korolyov, first conceived of the idea to recruit a female cosmonaut corps and launch two women concurrently on Vostok 5/6, his plan was changed to launch a male first in Vostok 5, followed shortly by Tereshkova. Khrushchev personally spoke to Tereshkova by radio during her flight.[4]
On November 3, 1963, Tereshkova married the bachelor cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev, who had previously flown on Vostok 3.[5] On June 8, 1964, she gave birth to the first child conceived by two space travelers.[6] The Nikolayevs divorced in 1982.
The female cosmonaut corps was dissolved in October 1969, and the idea of female astronauts and cosmonauts on an equal footing with men would not be taken seriously until 1978, when the United States admitted its first female astronaut, Sally Ride. The Soviets recruited another female cosmonaut corps two years later, and the the second female to fly was aviator Svetlana Savitskaya, aboard Soyuz T-7 on August 18,1982.[7] Ride first flew aboard Space Shuttle mission STS-7 on June 18, 1983.
Competition develops
Khrushchev pressured Korolyov to quickly produce greater space achievements in competition with the announced Gemini and Apollo plans. Rather than allowing him to develop his plans for a crewed Soyuz spacecraft, he was forced to make modifications to squeeze two or three men into the Vostok capsule, calling the result Voskhod. Only two of these were launched. Voskhod 1 was the first spacecraft with a crew of three, who could not wear space suits because of size and weight constrictions. Alexei Leonov made the first spacewalk when he left the Voskhod 2 on March 8, 1965. He was almost lost in space when he had extreme difficulty fitting his inflated space suit back into the cabin through an airlock, and a landing error forced him and his crewmate to be lost in dangerous woods for hours before being found by the recovery crew.
The start of manned Gemini missions was delayed a year later than NASA had planned, but ten largely successful missions were launched in 1965 and 1966, allowing the US to overtake the Soviet lead by achieving space rendezvous (Gemini 6A) and docking (Gemini 8) of two vehicles, long duration flights of eight days (Gemini 5) and fourteen days (Gemini 7), and demonstrating the use of extra-vehicular activity to do useful work outside a spacecraft (Gemini 12).
The USSR made no manned flights during this period, but continued to develop its Soyuz craft and secretly accepted Kennedy's implicit lunar challenge, designing Soyuz variants for lunar orbit and landing. They also attempted to develop the N1, a large, manned moon-capable launch vehicle similar to the US Saturn V.
As both nations rushed to get their new spacecraft flying with men, the intensity of the competition caught up to them in early 1967, when they suffered their first crew fatalities. On January 27, the entire crew of Apollo 1, "Gus" Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, were killed by suffocation in a fire that swept through their cabin during a ground test approximately one month before their planned launch. Then on April 24, the single pilot of Soyuz 1, Vladimir Komarov, was killed in a crash when his landing parachutes tangled, after a mission cut short by electrical and control system problems. Both accidents were determined to be caused by design defects in the spacecraft, which were corrected before manned flights resumed.
The US succeeded in achieving President Kennedy's goal on July 20, 1969, with the landing of Apollo 11. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to set foot on the Moon. Six such successful landings were achieved through 1972, with one failure on Apollo 13.
The N1 rocket suffered four catastrophic unmanned launch failures between 1969 and 1972, and the Soviet government officially discontinued its manned lunar program on June 24, 1974 when Valentin Glushko succeeded Korolyov as General spacecraft Designer.[8]
Both nations went on to fly relatively small, non-permanent manned space laboratories Salyut and Skylab, using their Soyuz and Apollo craft as shuttles. The US launched only one Skylab, but the USSR launched a total of seven "Salyuts", three of which were secretly Almaz military manned reconnaissance stations, which carried "defensive" cannons. Manned reconnaissance stations were found to be a bad idea, since unmanned satellites could do the job much more cost-effectively. The United States Air Force had planned a manned reconnaissance station, the Manned Orbital Laboratory which was cancelled in 1969. The Soviets cancelled Almaz in 1978.
In a season of detente, the two competitors declared an end to the race and shook hands (literally) on July 17, 1975 with the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, where the two craft docked and the crews exchanged visits.
Post-Space Race US and Russian programs
US Space Shuttle
Although its pace slowed, space exploration continued after the end of the Space Race. The United States launched the first reusable spacecraft (Space Shuttle) on the 20th anniversary of Gagarin's flight, 12 April 1981. On 15 November 1988, the Soviet Union attempted to duplicate this with the Buran shuttle, its first and only reusable spacecraft. It was never used again after the first flight; instead the Soviet Union continued to develop space stations using the Soyuz craft as the crew shuttle.
Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983. Eileen Collins was the first female Shuttle pilot, and with Shuttle mission STS-93 in July 1999 she became the first woman to command a U.S. spacecraft.
The longest single human spaceflight is that of Valeriy Polyakov, who left earth on January 8, 1994, and didn't return until March 22, 1995 (a total of 437 days 17 hr. 58 min. 16 sec. aboard). Sergei Krikalyov has spent the most time of anyone in space, 803 days, 9 hours, and 39 seconds altogether. The longest period of continuous human presence in space lasted as long as 3,644 days, eight days short of 10 years, spanning the launch of Soyuz TM-8 on September 5, 1989 to the landing of Soyuz TM-29 on August 28, 1999.
International Space Station
Recent space exploration has proceeded, to some extent in worldwide cooperation, the high point of which was the construction and operation of the International Space Station. At the same time, the international space race between smaller space powers since the end of the 20th century can be considered the foundation and expansion of markets of commercial rocket launches and space tourism.
The United States continued missions to the ISS and other goals with the high-cost shuttle system, which will be retired in 2010. It also continues other space exploration, including major participation with the ISS with its own modules. It also plans a set of unmanned Mars probes, military satellites, and more. The Constellation space program, begun by President George W. Bush in 2004, aimed to launch a next-generation multifunction Orion spacecraft by 2018. A subsequent return to the Moon by 2020 was to be followed by manned flights to Mars, but the program was canceled in 2010 in favor of encouraging commercial US manned launch capabilities.
Russia, the successor to the Soviet Union, has high potential but smaller funding. Its own space programs, some of a military nature, perform several functions. They offer a wide commercial launch service while continuing to support the ISS with a several of their own modules. They also operate manned and cargo spacecraft which will continue after US Shuttle program ends. They are developing a new multi-function PPTS manned spacecraft for use in 2018 and have plans to perform manned moon missions also. The program aims to put a man on the moon in the 2020s, becoming the second country to do so.
Programs of other nations
Later, cosmonauts and astronauts from other nations flew in space, beginning with the flight of Vladimir Remek, a Czech, on a Soviet spacecraft on March 2, 1978. As of 2007, citizens from 33 nations (including space tourists) have flown in space aboard Soviet, American, Russian, and Chinese spacecraft.
China, India, and Japan are increasingly capable of competing in space research and activity. These nations form the main players in the Asian space race.
European Union
The European Space Agency has taken the lead in commercial unmanned launches since the introduction of the Ariane 4 in 1988, but is in competition with NASA, Russia, Sea Launch (private), China, India and others. The ESA-designed manned shuttle Hermes and space station Columbus, were under development early on in Europe,[when?] however these projects were canceled, and Europe did not become the third major "space power".
Europe has launched various satellites, has utilized the manned Spacelab module aboard US shuttles, and has sent probes to comets and Mars. It also participates in ISS with its own module and the unmanned cargo spacecraft ATV.
Currently ESA has a program for development of an independent multi-function manned spacecraft CSTS scheduled for completion in 2018. Further goals include an ambitious plan called the Aurora Programme which intends to send a human mission to Mars soon after 2030. A set of various landmark missions to reach this goal are currently under consideration. The ESA has a multi-lateral partnership, and plans for spacecraft and further missions with foreign participation and co-funding.[9]
China
The People's Republic of China, while possessing less funding than Europe's ESA and the United State's NASA, has achieved manned space flight, currently operate a commercial unmanned launch service, and owns multiple satellites. There are plans for a Chinese space station and a program to send unmanned probes to Mars in the near future. China stands poised to become the third space power.
China's first attempt at a manned spacecraft, Shuguang. was abandoned after years of development. But on October 15, 2003, it became the third nation to achieve human spaceflight when Yang Liwei launched into space on Shenzhou 5. This flight demonstrated China's capability to build its own manned spacecraft and launch vehicle.
The aggressiveness of China's progress has raised concerns by other nations. The US Pentagon released a report in 2006 detailing concerns of China's growing presence in space, including its capability for military action.[10] In 2007 China tested a ballistic missile designed to destroy satellites in orbit, in violation of an international consensus against military maneuvers in space.
India
ISRO, India's national space agency, maintains an active space program and leads the group of Asian nations in major achievements and future plans. It operates a small commercial launch service and launched a successful unmanned lunar mission dubbed Chandrayaan-1 in October, 2007. India has plans for a further unmanned mission to the Moon in the near future, as well as a missions to Mars by 2012. The ISRO is currently developing a small shuttle system. With the recent success and a developing missions for manned inter-planet flights by 2025 to 2030, India has positioned itself as a contender for the third space power.[11]
Japan
Japan's space agency, JAXA, is the third major player in the Asian space race. While not maintaining a commercial launch service, Japan has deployed a module in the ISS and operates an unmanned cargo spacecraft, the H-II Transfer Vehicle.
JAXA has plans to launch a Mars fly-by probe. Their lunar probe, SELENE, is touted as the most sophisticated lunar exploration mission in the post-Apollo era.
Although Japan developed the HOPE-X, Kankoh-maru, and Fuji manned capsule spacecraft, none of them have been launched. Japan's current ambition is to deploy a new manned spacecraft by 2025, and to establish a Moon base by 2030.
Other nations
Iran recently announced plans [when?] to begin its manned program in 2021.[citation needed]
See also
Notes
- ^ Walking in Space By David Shayler, p.4
- ^ The Story of Manned Space Stations, 2007, by Philip Baker, SpringerLink p.2 [1]
- ^ Walking in Space By David Shayler, p.6
- ^
Gatland, Kenneth (1976). Manned Spacecraft (Second revision ed.). New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc. pp. 125–126. ISBN 0025428209.
{{cite book}}
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(help) - ^ Gatland (1976), p. 123
- ^ Gatland (1976), p. 129
- ^ Space mission details
- ^ Siddiqi, Asif. Challenge To Apollo The Soviet Union and The Space Race, 1945-1974. NASA. p. 832.
- ^ http://technology.sympatico.msn.ca/News/ContentPosting?newsitemid=0744824027&feedname=CP-SCIENCE&show=False&number=0&showbyline=True&subtitle=&detect=&abc=abc&date=True&pagenumber=2&paginationenabled=false
- ^ "Report: China’s Military Space Power Growing" by Leonard David, Space.com, June 5, 2006, Accessed June 8, 2006.
- ^ India's Mars odyssey - Hindustan Times