Vostok and Mercury Program

The USSR was first to put a man into space. That man was cosmonaut Yury A. Gagarin. On April 12, 1961 in Vostok 1, Gagarin made one orbit around the Earth. Within his flight time of 1 hour, 48 minutes, Gagarin reached an apogee of 203 mi (327 km) and a perigee of 112 mi (180 km). Gargarin landed safely in Siberia. Within the following two years five other Vostok flights were made. Valentina Tereshkova was the pilot of Vostok 6. Tereshkova was the first woman to go into space. On June 16, 1963, Valentina Terechkova orbited the Earth 48 times.

Meanwhile, Mercury, a similar U.S. program, was taking shape. U.S. Navy Commander Alan B. Shepard, Jr., on May 5, 1961, became the first American to fly in space. Freedom 7, flew a ballistic trajectory and fabricated a 15-minute suborbital flight. On July 21, a similar flight followed , flown by the U.S. Air Force Captain Virgil I. Grissom. U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr., on February 20, 1962 became the first astronaut to orbit around the earth, a flight containing a total of three orbits. Three more Mercury flights were flown in 1962 and 1963 by Navy Lieutenant Colonel M. Scott Carpanter, Air Force Major Leroy Gordon Cooper, Jr.,and Navy Commander Walter M. Schirra, Jr.

Mars	Jupiter/Saturn	Venus
Mercury	Uranus	Voskhod/Gemini
Soyuz/Apollo	Space	History

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