The beginnings of the ISS

The first space station was launched by the Soviet Union, named Salyut 1, but this unfortunately was unsuccessful as the astronauts couldn't enter the Space Station due to a technical fault. The Soviet Union later launched Salyut 2,3,4,5,6,7 but these were all plagued with technical faults so didn't last any time at all. After the countless failures of the Salyut space stations the Soviet Union was successful in launching the Mir space station in February 1986. Cosmonauts on the Mir Space station were the first humans to spend more than a year in orbit.

In May of 1973 the United States launched its first space station, named Skylab which spent years successfully orbiting Earth. Meanwhile on the Mir space station a reliable system was developed for the transportation of equipment, food and crew members at Mir. Later in 1991, when the Soviet Union was divided, Russia took charge of Mir. By 2001, the space station was facing major problems and Russia decided to de-orbit the space station in March and it collapsed into the Pacific Ocean.

In 1984, President of US, Ronald Reagan, put forward the idea of a project of a permanent space station  named 'Freedom.' At that time, the estimated cost of the project was said to be  8 billion dollars. Many countries contributed, including the UK, Canada, Japan and Brazil. In 1993, President Bill Clinton, wanted to cancel the space program project, since it was facing a huge delay and it had exceeded the budget. At the same time, the Soviet Union was planning to build their next space station, Mir 2. After the division of Soviet Union, in 1993, Russia and United States came together and renamed the project as International Space Station.
 

On the 1st February 2003, the space shuttle Columbia broke apart whilst it was entering the Earth's atmosphere. All seven crew members died in this incident and the disaster happened all over Texas. NASA, rightly so, cancelled all flights to the ISS to ensure the safety of further flights to the ISS and beyond. The construction of the ISS was completed in 2011 and is the 9th space station and the largest artificial satellite in Earth's orbit. Altogether the space station takes around 90 minutes to complete one revolution of Earth.

The ISS - Credit : NASA

 

The First Man in Space

Yuri Gagarin

Happy New Year!


On 12th April 1961 history was made when Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (9th March 1934-27th March 1968)  became the first man in space with a 108 minute flight orbiting the earth once.


In 1960 he was shortlisted for the Vostok 1 space programme in an attempt to build on the success of the Sputnik 1 programme just three years earlier. Rivalling German Titov, Gagarin managed to impress the space programme director more so and was selected for the space programme in 1961.

Shortly following his resounding success with the mission he became an instant worldwide celebrity, he visited several countries including Britain in 1961. Unfortunatley he diedin a military training flight on the 27th March 1968 aged just 34.

Although he was awarded many medals and titles, including Hero of the Soviet Union, the nation's highest honour. Vostok 1 was his only space flight but he did serve as backup crew to the Soyuz 1 mission.

Less than a month later an American astronaut, Alan Shepard became the first American in space.

First news headlines following the mission

 The U.S and Soviet Union since this have carried out cooperative missions, the first of which happened in 1975. The mission was called "The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project" and it was designed to test the capability of docking systems for future American and Soviet spacecraft, something which later opened doors into future joint manned flights.