Sputnik 1

Sputnik 1 was the first satellite launched into space.

It showed America's rival, the USSR, was more advanced, leading to NASA and the Space Race. It only transmitted a beeping sound.

History of Sputnik 1:
Launched: 04/10/1957
Stopped transmitting: 25/10/1957
Burned up: 01/04/1958

Sputnik 2

Carried the first living being into space: Laika the dog. Sadly, she died a few hours after launch.

History:
Launched: 03/11/1957
Laika died: 03/11/1957
Burned up: 14/04/1958

Sputnik 3

First satellite to gather real scientific data, using a magnetometer, radiation sensors, and temperature sensors.

History:
Launched: 15/05/1958
Died: August 1958
Burned up: 06/04/1961

Sputnik 4 (Vostok 1 Test)

Test flight for the future human missions. Carried mice, rats, cress seeds, two dogs, tortoises, and fruit flies. Sadly, none survived.

History:
Launched: 15/05/1960
Reentered: 18/05/1960

Voyager Space Probes

The Voyager probes are two spacecraft launched in 1977 to explore the outer Solar System and beyond.

Voyager 1 visited Jupiter and Saturn.
Voyager 2 visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

Instrument Abbreviations:

Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS)
Ultraviolet Spectrometer (UVS)
Infrared Interferometer Spectrometer (IRIS)
Planetary Radio Astronomy (PRA)
Photopolarimeter System (PPS)
Magnetometer (MAG)
Plasma Spectrometer (PLS)
Low Energy Charged Particles Experiment (LECP)
Plasma Wave Subsystem (PWS)
Cosmic Ray Subsystem (CRS)
Radio Science System (RSS)

History of Voyager 1

Launch: 05/09/1977
Crossed asteroid belt: 10/12/1977
Start of Jupiter observation: 01/04/1979
Jupiter flyby: 05/03/1979
End of Jupiter observation: 05/01/1979
Start of Saturn observation: 05/08/1980
Saturn flyby: 12/11/1980
End of Saturn observation: 22/12/1980
PPS shutdown: 29/01/1980
"Pale Blue Dot" image taken: 14/02/1990
ISS shutdown: 14/02/1990
Became farthest man-made object: 17/02/1998
IRIS shutdown: 03/06/1998
PLS shutdown: 01/02/2007
PRA shutdown: 15/01/2008
Entered interstellar space: 25/08/2012
UVS shutdown: 19/04/2016
CRS shutdown: 25/02/2025

History of Voyager 2

Launch: 20/08/1977
Crossed asteroid belt: 10/12/1977
Start of Jupiter observation: 07/05/1979
Jupiter flyby: 07/09/1979
End of Jupiter observation: 01/08/1979
Start of Saturn observation: 12/08/1981
Saturn flyby: 25/08/1981
End of Saturn observation: 01/09/1981
Start of Uranus observation: 10/01/1986
Uranus flyby: 24/01/1986
End of Uranus observation: 06/02/1986
Start of Neptune observation: 10/08/1989
Neptune flyby: 25/08/1989
End of Neptune observation: 15/09/1989
ISS shutdown: 05/12/1989
PPS shutdown: 03/04/1989
UVS shutdown: 12/11/1998
IRIS shutdown: 01/02/2007
PRA shutdown: 21/02/2008
Entered interstellar space: 05/11/2018
PLS shutdown: 26/09/2024
LECP shutdown: 24/03/2025

Vostok

The Vostok programme was the first ever programme to send humans into space and had 6 total missions starting with Vostok-1 in 1961 and carried 6 people to space

Vostok-1

The Apollo Program brought the first people to the Moon in 1969 by the USA

Apollo 1

Apollo 1 was a test of the apollo spacecraft that was supposed to stay in orbit for 2 weeks unfortunatly the capsule was set on fire killing Ed White, Gus Grissom and Edward H White this event almost led to the apollo program being cancelled the capsule burned up on 27/01/1967

Apollo 4 (Apollo 2 and 3 were skipped)

Apollo 4 was a test of the Saturn V rocket it was uncrewed and launched on 09/11/1967 it tested the heat shield and structural integrity the mission was succseful

Apollo 5

Apollo 5 was the first test of the lunar module in space it was uncrewed and succsesful and launched on 22/01/1968

Apollo 6

Apollo 6 was the final test flight of the Saturn V rocket it was launched on 04/04/1968

Apollo 7

Apollo 7 was the first crewed test flight of the lunar module it was launched on 11/10/1968 and splashdowned on 22/10/1968

Apollo 8

Apollo 8 was the first apollo mission to go to the Moon, they orbited the moon before returning

History of Apollo 8

Launch: 21/12/1968
Splashdown: 27/12/1968

Apollo 9

Apollo 9 was the first full test of the Lunar Module in Earth orbit

History of Apollo 9

Launch: 03/03/1969
Splashdown: 13/03/1969

Apollo 10

Apollo 10 was a full dress rehearsal of apollo 11 it was to test all the systems and components of the Lunar and command module it descended to 15 km above the Moons surface and reached the fastest speed ever by a crewed veichle (39,897km/h)

History of apollo 10

Launch: 18/05/1969
Moon encounter: 21/05/1969
Splashdown: 26/05/1969

Apollo 11

Apollo 11 conducted the first Moon landing by Neil Armstron and Buzz Aldrin and Micheal Collins was in Lunar orbit they spent 21 hours and 36 minutes on the Moon they conducted experiments and took samples

History of apollo 11

Launch: 16/07/1969
Landing on the Moon: 20/07/1969
Moonwalk start: 21/07/1969 02:56 UTC
Moonwalk end: 21/07/1969 05:24 UTC
Lunar takeoff: 21/07/1969 17:54 UTC
Lunar Module-Command Module docking: 21/07/1969 21:35 UTC
Splashdown:24/07/1969

Apollo 12

Apollo 12 was the second Moon landing and during the launch lighting striked the rocket twice once 36 seconds in and another time 52 seconds after launch the strikes knocked out telemenetary guidance systems temporarily and commander Pete Conrad landed just 163 meters away from Surveyor 3 which was an unmanned spacecraft

History of Apollo 13

Launch: 14/11/1969
Moon landing: 19/11/1969 06:54 UCT
Moonwalk 1: 19/11/1969 11:32 UCT
Moonwalk 1: end: 19/11/1969 15:28 UCT
Moonwalk 2: 20/11/1969 03:54 UCT
Moonwalk 2 end: 20/11/1969 07:43
Lunar liftoff: 20/11/1969
Lunar Module-Command Module docking: 20/11/1969 17:58 UCT
Splashdown: 24/11/1969 20:58 UCT

Apollo 13

Apollo 13 was suppose to be the 13th Moon landing but an oxygen tank exploded so they had to swing around the Moon and splashdown and Ken Mattingly was schedules to fly on apollo 13 but he gor rubella and he was replaced by Jack Swigart

History of Apollo 13

Launch: 11/04/1970
Oxygen tank explosion: 14/04/1970 03:07 UTC
Moon flyby: 15/04/1970
Splashdown: 17/04/1970

Apollo 14

Apollo 14 was the 3rd Moon landing and when they were still in Earth orbit the Lunar Module couldnt dock to the command module it took over an hour and over 6 tries simply to dock the 2 spacecraft and when they were on the Moon Alan Shepard famously played golf on the Moon he snuck in a 6 inch club and 2 2 gold balls his first attempt wasnt good but his second attempt sent the ball hundreds of yards away and on the second moonwalk they had to walk 1.5km to reach cone creator this was the first time the MET cart was used but they unknowingly stopped 30 meters away from the crater

history of Apollo 14

Launch: 31/01/1971
Moon landing: 05/02/1971
Moonwalk 1: 05/02/1971 14:41 UTC
Moonwalk 1 end: 05/02/1971 19:29 UTC
Moonwalk 2: 06/02/1971 08:11 UTC
Moonwalk 2 end: 06/02/1971 12:46 UTC
Lunar takeoff: 06/02/1971
Lunar Module-Command Module docking 21:35 UTC
Splashdown: 09/02/1971

Apollo 15

Apollo 15 was the 4th Moon landing and the first to use a lunar roving veichle (LRO) and brought back the genesis rock its a lunar anorthosite that is believed to be 4.4 Billion years old and it resembles the Moons early crust and also brought 3 new Moon technologies with it: The handheld lunar soil sampler and the Universal Sample Return Tool which was made to help astronauts identify Moon rocks and also apollo 15 conducted the first overnight stay on the Moon and the lunar roving veichle which was to help the astronauts have more mobility on the Moon

History of Apollo 15

Launch: 26/07/1971
Lunar landing: 30/07/1971
Moonwalk 1: 31/07/1971 18:24 UTC
Moonwalk 1 end: 31/07/1971 23:24 UTC
Moonwalk 2: 01/08/1971 18:07 UTC
Moonwalk 2 end: 01/08/1971 23:04 UTC
Moonwalk 3: 02/08/1971 17:00 UTC
Moonwalk 3 end: 02/08/1971 21:47 UTC
Lunar takeoff: 02/08/1971 18:47
Lunar module-Command module docking: 02/08/1971 20:55
Splashdown: 07/08/1971

Apollo 16

Apollo 16 was the 5th Moon landing and the first to land in the Lunar highlands which is a more rugged area of the Moon and it collected multiple samples which were thought to be volcanic but turned out to be impact related and it also brought back the "big mulley" rock sample which is an important breccia from the north ray crater

History of apollo 16

Launch: 16/04/1972
Landing: 21/04/1972
Moonwalk 1: 21/04/1972 03:56 UTC
Moonwalk 1 end: 21/04/1972 11:07 UTC
Moonwalk 2: 22/04/1972 13:38 UTC
Moonwalk 2 end: 22/04/1972 21:01 UTC
Moonwalk 3: 23/04/1972 14:35 UTC
Moonwalk 3 end: 23/04/1972 20:15 UTC
Lunar takeoff: 24/04/1972
Lunar module-Command Module docking: 24/04/1972 03:35 UTC
Splashdown: 27/04/1972

Apollo 17

Apollo 17 was the last crewed Moon landing in history brought the first geologist to the Moon, took the "blue marble" image and discovered orange soil on the Moon which turned out to be volcanic activity

History of Apollo 17

Launch: 07/12/1972
Landing: 11/12/1972
Moonwalk 1: 11/12/1972 11:55 UCT
Moonwalk 1 end: 18:23 UTC
Moonwalk 2: 12/12/1972 11:47 UCT
Moonwalk 2 end: 12/12/1972 18:54 UCT
Moonwalk 3: 13/12/1972 11:28 UCT
Moonwalks 3 end: 13/12/1972 18:56 UCT
Lunar takeoff: 14/12/1972
Lunar Module-Command Module docking: 14/12/1972 19:40 UCT
Splashdown: 19/12/1972

The venera program was a series of soviet missions to land landers on Venus there were 17 missions one of which failed to escpae Earth's orbit

Venera 1

Venera 1 was the first of the venera missions but it failed to enter Venus and was lost somewhear in space but likely flew close to Venus

History of Venera 1

Launch: 12/02/1961
Transmittion lost: 19/02/1961
Venus encounter: 19/05/1961

Venera 2

Venera 2 was the second mission and flew 75% percent closer than venera 1 at 25,000km above the surface it carried cameras, Infared spectrometers, Ultaviolet spectrometers, Magnetometers, Cosmic ray detectors, solar plasma detectors, micromeateorite detectors and a geiger counter but it died during the flyby so no data was transmitted

History of Venera 2

Launch: 12/11/1965
Venus flyby: 27/02/1966
Death: 27/02/1966

Venera 3

Venera 3 was the first of the Venera missions and the first in history to ever hit the surface of Venus it carried magnetometers, geiger counters, Cosmic Ray Detector, Solar Plasma Detectors and a minicromeateorite detector

The Gemini Programme was NASA's first all orbital space programme, it ha some changes from the Mercury spacecraft but the main ones were: it could hold 2 people, it had the LES(Launch Escape System) tower removed in exchange for ejector seats and the doors can open whilst in space there were 12 missions, 2 uncrewed and 10 crewed

Gemini 1

Gemini 1 was the first uncrewed test flight of the Gemini capsule it spent 4 days 3 hours 59 minutes and 59 seconds in orbit but the actual test flightl lasted 4 hours 50 minutes. There were holes delibritly drilled through the heat shield to ensure the spacecraft wouldnt survive atmospheric re-entry. Its apogee was 320km and its perigee was 155km, this was done so that the spacecraft would be pulled down by atmospheric drag in less than a week. During the launch there was a 3 second radio blackout caused by charged ions from the seperation and ignition of the second stage also the rocket exerted an extra 7 meters per second of Delta V which raised the apogee from the planned 299km to 320km which increased the lifetime of the spacecraft from 3 days and a half to 4 and the Gemini 1 mission was considered a succsess tho the Gemini capsule wasnt crew rated until the Gemini 2 mission

History

Launch 08/04/1964 16:00:01 UTC
Re-entry 12/04/1964 21:00:00 UTC

Gemini 2

Gemini 2 was the second test flight of the Gemini programme and instead of doing an orbital test flight like Gemini 1 it went onto a suborbital trajectory to test the heat shield for the Gemini capsule, it was recovered 18 minutes and 14 seconds after launch, the launch was slated originally for the 9th of december of 1964 with the countdown reaching zero and the engines igniting succsefully but the MDS(Malfunction Detection System) detected a failure and shut off the engines and the Gemini 2 has a succesful launch on the 19th of January 1965 but the Gemini 2 capsule was used for crew training whilst it was still on the ground, the capsule reached a maximum height of 171.1km

Gemini 3

Gemini 3 was the third spaceflight and the first crewed spaceflight of the Gemini programme carrying John Young and Virgil Gus Grissom and lasted 4 hours, 52 minutes and 31 seconds, it went to space on the 23rd of March 1965 14:24:00 UTC and landed on the 23rd of March 1965 at 19:16:31 UTC. The callsign of the Gemini-3 veichle was Molly Brown after(Due to not wanting to relive the flight of Liberty Bell 7 which sank after re-entry) the unsinkable Molly Brown who survived 3 ship accidents and NASA told commander Gus Grissom to change it then he suggested giving it the call sign "Titanic" and NASA allowed Gus Grissom to name the spacecraft Molly Brown but didnt allow commanders to name their spacecraft until Apollo era. Gemini 3's primary goal was to test the manuevering of the Gemini spacecraft and broke the record for the first orbital manuever conducted by a crewed spacecraft where they did a 1 minute and 14 second burn by the OAMS(Orbit Attitude and Manuevering System) over Texas to change the orbit from 161.2 by 224.2km to a orbit of 158 by 169km orbit and was also the first US spaceflight to carry more than 1 person to space and around 18 minutes into the flight the crew noticed a continuos yawing left initially thought to be a thruster leak the issue was later linked to a venting water boiler, also during Gemini 3 astronaut John Young smuggled a corn beef sandwhich where the 2 crew members ate it before Young wrapped it back into its tin foil but the crumbs generated by the 2 crew eating the sandwhich caused some concerns for the spacecraft. during the landing phase of the mission the spacecraft very suddenly the spacecraft tipped 90 degrees from a vertical to a horizontal attitude and Gus Grissom cracked his faceplate, also during the landing phase the Gemini spacecraft's lift was higher than anticipated which resulted in the spacecraft landing 84km away from the intended landing zone and when the craft finally landed the crew decided to not open the hatches until the recovery ships arrived so the craft wouldnt sink like it did on Gus Grissom's first spaceflight. The spacecraft currently is at the Grissom memorial of Spring Mill State Park 2 miles east of grissoms hometown of Mitchell, Indiana

Gemini 4

Gemini 4 was the fourth spaceflight of the Gemini programme but only 2nd crewed one carrying Ed White and James McDivitt to space, It conducted the first EVA(Spacewalk) of the Gemini programme and the second EVA ever and it also conducted the firt ever US multi-day flight spending 4 days 1 hour 56 minutes and 12 seconds in space it launched on the third of June 1965 at 15:15:59 UTC and ended on the seventh of June 1965 at 17:12:11 UTC, they also tried to rendevous with the second stage that lifted them into orbit but it was unsucceful for a number of reasons such as: NASA not figuring out all of orbital dynamics(When you burn towards a target it increases your apogee(the highest point of your orbit) and it will actually take you away from your target instead you should burn retrograde relative to the target), a lack of a Radar to determine the distance and relative speed(And theres no atmosphear to provide a perception of depth so it was harder to estimate the distance and speed), and the stage was dumping its remaining propellant meaning that the distance and speed were constantly changing(Adding to making it harder to estimate). The first EVA performed by americans was performed by Ed White where he spent 23 minutes outside the Gemini Spacecraft which was nearly 10 more than was planned, at the start of the EVA the hatch was hard to open but commander McDivitt recognizing the issue from training managed to help to open the hatch and being confident that he could close it he let White step outside but after the EVA the crew couldnt close the hatch but was eventually able to close it, another task for Gemini 3 was to open the hatch to ditch the EVA equiptment but the crew refused to open the door again from them struggling to close it. Also during the EVA Houston told White to get back into the spacecraft because they were 5 minutes away from orbital night but White tried to use taking pictures as an excuse to stay outside but mission control wanted White to get in whilst he could still see, he later stated that "it was the saddest moment of my life", the EVA was supposed to happen on orbit 2 but the crew were in favor of postponing it until orbit 3 because of the stress gained from the failed rendevous. Gemini 4 carried 11 experiments into space including: 5 dosimeters to detect radiation inside the spacecraft, a phonocardiogram to measure the crews heart rates especcially during Launch, EVA and re-entry, a bungee to let the crew excersize but the crew reported it got harder as time went on likely to a lack of sleep, they also used 70mm film rolls to photograph the weather and terrain below them, a tri-axis magnetometer, an instrument to measure electrostatic charge inside the spacecraft, use of a sextant to the spacecraft position using the stars, a proton-electron spectrometer, and the last one was to photograph the Red-Blue Earth limb. On orbit 48 the IBM computer started to fail and when McDivitt attempted to update it for re-entry the computer would not turn off and eventually just stopped working, unfortunatly IBM was running a advertisment related to NASA using IBM computers. The recovery of the spacecraft involved 10,249 personell, 134 aircraft and 26 ships, the main recovery ship was the USS Wasp. The spacecraft currently sits at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia