lobizero.blogg.se

In the early 21st century, private companies joined government agencies in crewed spaceflight: in 2004, the sub-orbital spaceplane SpaceShipOne became the first privately funded crewed craft to enter space in 2020, SpaceX's Dragon 2 became the first privately developed crewed vehicle to reach orbit when it ferried a crew to the ISS. In 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space, aboard Vostok 6. Dozens of countries have sent at least one traveler to space. Other firsts in spaceflight involve demographics, private enterprise, and distance. Following their first mission of détente on the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the Soviet Union and the United States again collaborated with each other on the Shuttle-Mir initiative, efforts which led to the International Space Station (ISS), which has been continuously inhabited by humans for over 20 years. In the 1980s, the United States began launching its Space Shuttles, which carried larger crews and thus could increase the number of people in space at a given time. No human has traveled beyond low Earth orbit since 1972, when the Apollo program ended.ĭuring the 1970s, the Soviet Union directed its energies to human habitation of space stations of increasingly long durations. In 1961, Soviet Vostok 1 cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to enter space and orbit the Earth, and in 1969 American Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the Moon. In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial orbital satellite. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Soviet Union and the United States competed to be the first countries to accomplish various feats.

The notion of "firsts" in spaceflight follows a long tradition of firsts in aviation, but is also closely tied to the Space Race.

Records involving animal spaceflight have also been noted in earlier experimental flights, typically to establish the feasibility of sending humans to outer space.

Records and firsts in spaceflight are broadly divided into crewed and uncrewed categories. Extreme benchmarks set off Earth by astronauts, launchers and probes The first space rendezvous was accomplished by Gemini 6A and Gemini 7 in 1965.