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79,433 pages · 13,741 images · since 1994 Browse A–Z Today in space history
Encyclopedia Astronautica The full story of spaceflight

Encyclopedia Astronautica

Image Sky & Earth In 1960 two stray Moscow dogs named Belka and Strelka became the first dogs to orbit Earth and come home alive, and a year later Nikita Khrushchev sent one of Strelka’s puppies, a fluffy female called Pushinka, to the White House as a gift for Caroline Kennedy Brendan Brown ·
ExplorationIn August 1961 a 25-year-old Soviet cosmonaut named Gherman Titov spent a full day in orbit and became the first person to sleep in space, and he overslept by about half an hour, waking up to find his arms floating in the air in front of himExplorationIn 1962 an American engineer designed a 150-metre rocket that would be built in a shipyard, towed out to sea and launched straight out of the ocean, able to lift 550 tonnes into orbit, more than the entire International Space StationRobert Truax of Aerojet designed Sea Dragon in 1962, a 150 m sea-launched rocket to be built in a shipyard and capable of lifting 550 tonnes to orbit, but the vehicle remained a design study and was never built.Sky & EarthIn 1954 a grapefruit-sized meteorite smashed through the roof of a house in Sylacauga, Alabama, bounced off a radio and hit Ann Hodges on the hip as she napped on her couch, making her the first person known for certain to have been struck by a space rock
October 27

Today in space history

  1. 1961Dynasoar accelerated
  2. 1967Arecibo cal Ionosphere mission
  3. 1993Meteorological mission
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Exploration

Rockets, missions and the people who flew them
ImageIn 1968 a Soviet cosmonaut got within 200 metres of an empty Soyuz and burned almost all his fuel trying to dock, because it was upside down relative to him.ImageBefore Yuri Gagarin flew in 1961, the Soviet Union sent a life-size mannequin into orbit with a sign under his visor reading “dummy”, and so radio listeners wouldn’t mistake him for a real cosmonaut, he played a recording of a choir and a recipe for beetroot soupImageOn 24 October 1946 a camera mounted on a captured German V-2 rocket took the first photograph of Earth from space, from about 105 km over New Mexico

Sky & Earth

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ImageWhen Chris Hadfield came home from five months on the International Space Station in 2013, he said he could suddenly feel the weight of his own lips and tongue, and had to adjust the way he talkedImageThe Moon looks bright white in the night sky, but its surface is actually about as dark as worn asphalt, reflecting only around 12 percent of the sunlight that hits it, and it only seems dazzling because it hangs against the total blackness of space
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Every rocket, spacecraft and crew, in one archive

79,433 pages and 13,741 images compiled since 1994, the reference NASA's own history office has pointed researchers to.