The History of Space Exploration

1. The History of Space Exploration

2. The first living things in space were fruit flies. In 1946, they were sent to high altitude to study the effects of radiation.

3. 1951 All animals sent to high altitude died until 1951. The second test that year resulted in the first successful launch and recovery of animals. The launch held a monkey and 11 mice.

4. Laika inside USSR’s (Soviet) Sputnik 2 in 1957. She was the first animal to enter space. She died there.

5. Project Mercury (1958 – 1963) • Place a manned spacecraft in orbital flight around the earth. • Investigate man's performance capabilities and his ability to function in space. • Recover the man and the spacecraft safely.

6. Rhesus monkey suited up for Little Joe launch of Mercury capsule December 1959

7. 1963 - Cats in Spacesuits

8. Project Mercury - 1961 A chimpanzee named Ham (left and center) went into space on January 31, 1961 followed 10 months later by Enos (right). These missions were dress rehearsals for human flights.

9. The Mercury Seven: (front row) Grissom, Carpenter, Slayton, Cooper (back row) Shepard, Schirra, Glenn

10. Project Mercury Astronauts

11. 1961 Yuri Gagarin from the Soviet Union was the first human being in space.

12. Gagarin’s home has been preserved and a statue of his mother placed outside to honor her.

13. Gagarin’s fancy car is also on display.

14. 1961- one month later Alan Shepherd became the first American in space. He spent 15 minutes in suborbital flight.

15. 1962 John Glenn was the first American to orbit Earth. He went around the Earth three times. (In 1998, he spent 9 days on the shuttle Discovery, making him the oldest person to go to space. He was 77 years old.)

16. First Woman in Space - 1963 Valentina Tereshkova was a textile worker whose hobby was parachute jumping, which brought her to the attention of the USSR’s space program.

17. TOP SECRET: CLASSIFIED • Astrospies 1960 – 1969 • This secret program to spy on the Russians was discovered by accident in 2004. It was run by a secret agency inside the Pentagon. The program was called MOL for Manned Orbiting Laboratory, which was actually a spy station with a camera the size of a car. • Major Robert Lawrence, an Air Force pilot with a Ph.D. in chemistry, was the first African American selected to become an astronaut. He died during a training mission. • The program was cancelled 6 weeks before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Satellite technology replaced the need to have people in space. • Russians had a competing program called Almaz.

18. Gemini (1965-1966) • Consisted of 10 manned space flights • To subject man and equipment to space flight up to two weeks in duration • To rendezvous and dock with orbiting vehicles and to maneuver the docked combination by using the target vehicle's propulsion system • To perfect methods of entering the atmosphere and landing at a preselected point on land.

19. Return to Earth

20. The History of Space Travel "I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important in the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish." John F. KennedySpecial Joint Session of CongressMay 25, 1961

21. Apollo Program

22. 1961-1972 • The Apollo program included a large number of uncrewed test missions and 11 crewed missions. The 11 crewed missions include two Earth orbiting missions, two lunar orbiting missions, a lunar swingby and six Moon landing missions. • The Apollo program was designed to land humans on the Moon and bring them safely back to Earth. Six of the Apollo missions -- 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 -- achieved this goal. • Lunar surface experiments included soil mechanics, meteoroids, seismic, heat flow, lunar ranging, magnetic fields and solar wind experiments. • This year marks the 40th anniversary of Apollo 16!

23. 1969 – Apollo 11 • After 24 hours in lunar orbit, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin separated Eagle from Columbia to descend to the lunar surface. Michael Collins remained in Columbia. • The Lunar Module touched down on the Moon at Tranquility Base. Armstrong reported: “The Eagle Has Landed.” • Armstrong, descending from Eagle's ladder and touching one foot to the Moon's surface, announced: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

25. 1969

26. Only 12 people have walked on the moon. The last visit was by Apollo 17 in 1972.

27. 1972 First motor vehicle accident on moon – lunar rover fender bender on the Apollo 17 mission.

28. Apollo Missions returned to the sea, not onto land.

29. 1973 Skylab • America's first experimental space station was launched into orbit in 1973. The program objectives were to prove that humans could live and work in space for extended periods, and to expand our knowledge of solar astronomy. • Circling 50 degrees north and south of the equator at an altitude of 435 km, Skylab had an orbital period of 93 minutes.

30. 1973 The Skylab crew carried a high school student’s experiment. Arabella and Anita, orb weaving garden spiders, were able to weave in weightlessness but only with practice. Over 300 experiments were carried out on Skylab over 171 days.

31. 1979 Skylab was abandoned in 1974 and it fell from orbit in 1979. The empty spacecraft scattered debris over the Indian Ocean and the sparsely settled region of Western Australia, killing a cow.

32. 1975 Apollo Soyuz • First international manned spaceflight • Designed to test the compatibility of rendezvous and docking systems for American and Soviet spacecraft, to open the way for international space rescue • Soviet and American launches occurred on the same day. The 2 craft docked in space and joint operations were conducted for two full days. • Both spacecraft landed safely and on schedule.

33. 1981 • USA begins Space Shuttle Program. • Officially called the Space Transportation System or STS. • A reusable spacecraft with wings for controlled descent in the atmosphere, designed to transport astronauts between Earth and an orbiting space station and also used to deploy and retrieve satellites.

34. Each shuttle was designed to last 10 years and be launched 100 times. The rocket boosters are also reusable. The shuttles are: Enterprise, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavor. Challenger was lost in 1986 and Columbia was lost in 2003.

35. When they return from a mission, they land like gliders. Shuttles are transported on the backs of 747 aircraft when they are moved.

36. 1986 - 2001 • The first part of Mir was launched in 1986. • Mir was built in orbit by connecting different modules, each of which was launched separately. When complete, Mir was the size of 6 school buses. • Mir commonly housed 3 to 6 crewmembers for up to one month. Except for two short periods, Mir was continuously occupied until August 1999 when it was abandoned. Mir had become very unsafe.

37. Russia’s Mir Space Station

38. Mir means peace and community in Russian.

39. Shuttle Mir During the Shuttle-Mir Program, the orbiting Mir provided a large and livable scientific laboratory in space. The visiting space shuttles provided transportation and supplies. The USA sent 11 shuttles to Mir over a four year period.

41. 2001 The 15-year-old Russian space station “died” on March 23, 2001. Mir fell out of orbit. It entered Earth's atmosphere near Fiji and fell into the South Pacific.

42. 1998 • The first two modules of the International Space Station were launched and joined together in orbit, 200 miles above Earth. • Other modules soon followed and the first crew arrived in 2000. • The space station travels at a speed of 5 miles per second!

43. International space station

44. March 12, 2008. Endeavor docks with the International Space Station

45. The LAST shuttle mission, STS-135, ended on July 21, 2011 when Atlantis landed at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The shuttle fleet will be retired and moved to museums.

46. Retirement • Shuttle Enterprise, the first orbiter built, will move to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York. • Shuttle Discovery will go to the Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia. • Shuttle Endeavour will go to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. • Shuttle Atlantis will be displayed at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor’s Complex in Florida.

47. Constellation ProgramWhy go back to the moon? • Return to the moon by 2020 • to develop a sustained human presence on the moon • to learn to cope with harmful radiation, electrified dust, and extreme temperatures • to promote exploration, commerce, and U.S. preeminence in space • to serve as a stepping stone for the future exploration of Mars and other destinations

48. 2008 NASA used the cold, harsh, isolated landscape of Antarctica to test one of its concepts for astronaut housing on the moon. The agency sent a prototype inflatable habitat to Antarctica to see how it fared during a year at McMurdo Station.

49. April 15, 2010 President Obama announced the cancellation of the Return to the Moon program.

50. NASA’s 18th Annual Moon Buggy Race 2011 winning high school and college teams were both from Puerto Rico. This event celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Lunar Rover. The half-mile course of craters, pits, gravel mounds, and other obstacles simulates lunar surface conditions. The team completed it in 3 minutes and 41 seconds.