Space Programmes Manned

     Manned space flight was an arena of intense national competition between the United States and the Soviet Union from the time of Yuri Gagarin's pioneering flight in 1961 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union 30 years later. Although the race visibly reached its climax with the first Apollo Moon landing in 1969, space flight continued to be a component of Cold-War rivalry for the following two decades.

Vostok and Mercury Programmes

    The USSR was first into space with a man, cosmonaut Yury A. Gagarin, who made one orbit of the Earth in Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. During his flight time of 1 hour, 48 minutes, he reached an apogee of 327 km (203 mi) and a perigee of 180 km (112 mi). He landed safely in Siberia. In the next two years five more Vostok flights were made. The pilot of Vostok 6 was Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to fly in space. Launched on June 16, 1963, she orbited the Earth 48 times.


Preparing Vostok for launch

       Meanwhile, a similar US programme, called Mercury, was taking shape. On May 5, 1961, Commander Alan B. Shepard, Jr., of the US Navy, became the first American in space. The Mercury spacecraft, named Freedom 7, flew a ballistic trajectory and made a 15-minute sub-orbital flight. A similar flight followed on July 21, flown by Captain Virgil I. Grissom of the US Air Force. On February 20, 1962, Lieutenant Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr. of the US Marine Corps became the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth, in a flight of three orbits (in 1998, Glenn made a flight on the shuttle mission STS-95, becoming, at the age of 77, the oldest person ever to go into space). Three additional Mercury flights were made in 1962 and 1963 by Lieutenant Colonel M. Scott Carpenter of the navy, Commander Walter M. Schirra, Jr., also of the navy, and Major Leroy Gordon Cooper, Jr., of the air force.
 

 

Astronaut Alan B. Shepard completed the first piloted flight of the United States space programme on board Freedom 7 on May 5, 1961. After 15 minutes 22 seconds of flight, the capsule splashed down into the Atlantic Ocean, where Shepard was picked up by a naval helicopter.

 

Mercury lift-off