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The Soviet Union launches first satellite called Sputnik, it weighed 184 pounds. Sputnik circled the Earth beeping radio signals. This event causes the space race between the U.S and the Soviet Union.
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The Soviet Union launched a female dog named Laika into space in Sputnik 2. She lived for 7 days, proving that animals and humans can survive in space. Sputnik 2 then falls to Earth that April of next year.
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Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. The case spacelight caused him to behave strangely , the controls locked, and Vostok 1(the space shuttle) to shake wildly. When he was low enough he dropped out of the shuttle with a parachute.
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Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov takes the first space walk in history. He was ten minutes outside Voshkod 2.
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While testing the launchpad, a fire kills Apollo 1 astronauts Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. On April 24, 1967, the Soviet craft Soyuz 2 crashes on re-entry killing Vladimir Komarov-the first cosmonaut to die during flight.
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During Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon, Buzz Aldrin was the second. Armstrong said “ That one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”. Millions of people watched it live on television.
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The Soviets launched Salyut 1 the first orbiting space station. The station’s original crew died, but they spent a total of 23 days in space.
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An oxygen tank exploded on Apollo 13, With the help of the Mission Control , the crew- Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and John Swigert- return back home 4 days later
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Skylab was the first American Space Station but was damaged right away. The first of three crews arrived eleven days later to make in-orbit repairs. They stayed a total of twenty-eight days setting records for time in space.
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American and Soviet spacecraft dock together in space. They show peaceful cooperation in the Apollo-Soyuz Mission.
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Scientist in space controlled a scientific probe named the Viking 1. It transmitted the first images of Mars.
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The space shuttle named Columbia takes John Young and Robert Crippen into space. It takes off like a rocket and lands like an airplane.
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Sally Ride was the first women in space. She was part of the crew for the space shuttle flight, STS-7.
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Svetlana Savitskaya was the first women to do a space walk. She was with her partner Vladimir Dzhanibekov.
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The space shuttle , Challenger, exploded killing all seven crew members. Including the first teacher in space, Christa McAuliffe.
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Musa Manarov and Vladimir Titov completed 366 years in a Russian space station. This record was later broken in 1995.
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The crew from the space shuttle STS-31 deployed the Hubble Space Telescope but soon find that its primary mirror is damaged. In December 1993 the crew of shuttle STS-61 fixed it and took it back, the hubble then sends the first pictures of galaxies and planet outside our solar system.
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Arriving in the ‘Pathfinder’, the robot Sojourner explored the surface of Mars for three months. The solar-powered rover collected images and Martian soil. It also found other scientific items in Mars.
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Dennis Tito, a California billionaire, was the first passenger to pay to go into space. Tito was age 60 when his dream of 40 years was accomplished. He payed 20 million dollars.
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The first space craft to orbit Saturn was Cassini-Huygens. Later in the year that spacecraft flew within 800 miles of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.