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Albert II was the first animal the USA sent into space, and he became the first monkey sent to space, after Albert I died during launch, however, Albert II ended up dying after a parachute failure.
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Sputnik 1 was the first artificial satellite, it was launched by the Soviet Union, weighing 184 pounds and being the size of a beach ball, it took 98 minutes for Sputnik I to orbit the earth.
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Laika the dog was launched into orbit in Sputnik 2 by the Soviet Union, the dog died during the flight but they expected this, as they had no way to land the satellite.
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Explorer 1 was the U.S.s first successful satellite, launched by the army, Explorer 1 was a cylindrical satellite weighing 18 pounds, it was 80 inches long and had a diameter of 6 inches.
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NASA was created to develop military space technology, since the creation of NASA there has been as many as over 500 missions including putting a man on the moon.
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The first person to fly in space was Yuri Gagarin, doing a little more than a single orbit around the earth, Yuri's flight lasted 108 minutes in the Soviet Union's Vostok spacecraft.
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Yuri Gagarin was the first man sent into orbit by the USSR, and the first man in orbit in the world, his trip took 89 minutes and he was aboard the Vostok 1.
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Alan Shepard was the first American in space, taking flight in the Freedom 7 spacecraft.
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John F. Kennedy, the president at the time made public his goal of getting man on the moon by the end of the decade, Kennedy gave a speech on his ambitions during a joint session of Congress, setting the U.S. on the path of putting a man on the moon.
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John Glenn Jr. was the first man the USA sent into orbit, riding in friendship 7, he circled the earth a total of three times in about 5 hours.
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Alexei Leonov was the first man by the USSR to do an EVA, he spent a total of 12 minutes outside of the spacecraft Voskhod 2.
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Gemini 3 was the first earth-orbiting spacecraft that was piloted by astronauts.
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Ed White was the first American to do an EVA, on the Gemini mission this EVA lasted 23 minutes.
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The second american astronaut piloted orbit, but this time with the first American space walk.
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The fourth astronaut piloted mission, the mission was to test out how a 2-week flight would effect the astronauts, to perform station keeping, and to test out new space shirt technology.
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Up there as the worst tragedy is a fire that started in a pretest flight capsule, there were three astronauts in the capsule, Ed White, Virgil Grissom and Roger Chaffee, when the fire started the astronauts died quickly due to the oxygen only space they were in.
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Apollo 8 was the first mission to orbit the moon.
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The first to travel to the moon with the entire Apollo spacecraft.
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Apollo 11 was the mission that had Americans walk on the moon for the very first time.
