The spatial adventure of man
The space adventure of man began with the Russian Yuri Gagarin, which on April 12, 1961 became the first person to travel to space. Gagarin traveled in the Nave Vostok 1, which went around the earth on a mission that only lasted 108 minutes.
On October 4, 1957, the USSR launched from the Baikoniur cosmodrome (the largest and oldest space launching in the world, even in the activity) the first artificial satellite in history, Sputnik 1, as a contribution to the geophysical yearInternational proposed by the UN.
The United States does not like the idea of having a Soviet ball of 80 kilos flying over their territory continuously for months.
This caused the so -called Sputnik crisis, which led to the DARPA foundation to develop military space technology, and NASA to develop civil space technology.
Mercury program
The first American manned space program was the Mercury program. The Mercury ship was a capsule bar.
To man Mercury capsules, the first group of American astronauts, known as Mercury 7, were chosen, all outstanding military pilots with a lot of experience in test flights and a very high level technical training.
In the period 1960/1963 there were 11 Mercury Missions (10 successful), six of them manned by humans, a manned by Ham el Chimpanzee, and 4 unmanned.
Gemini program
The Mercury program was a first step in the direction of Kennedy’s goal, but to achieve this success, more ambitious missions were necessary. The Gemini program began in 1965 and, although it is not usually remembered by the general public, it was essential to develop the necessary technologies and techniques to be able to carry out missions to the moon.
The Gemini ship was an evolution of Mercury: something bigger, with capacity for two astronauts and the possibility of making orbit change maneuvers. A total of 11 flights were made between 1964 and 1966.
Apollo program
The Apollo program officially began in July 1960, the first manned flight was not carried out until October 1968, with the Apollo 7 mission. The Apollo ship had capacity for three astronauts and had a thermal shield capable of withstanding atmospheric resentments from a lunar trajectory.
To place this set in terrestrial orbit and perform the injection after mole, the Saturn V rocket was built, the launch vector with the highest load capacity in history.
All this happened in a competition known as "the space race" with the arrival of man to the moon. It occurred on July 20, 1969, in the space mission called Apollo 11, whose crew was composed of the commander of the Neil Armstrong mission, Edwin Eugene Aldrin and Michael Collins.
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