The Saturn V (pronounced "Saturn Five") was a multistage liquid-fuel expendablerocket used by NASA for Apollo and Skylab missions between 1967 and 1972. In total NASA launched twelve Saturn V rockets, plus one derived Saturn INT-21, with no loss of payload. It remains the largest and most powerful launch vehicle ever brought to operational status, in terms of height, mass and payload capacity. The Soviet Energia, which flew two test missions in the late 1980s before being cancelled, had slightly more takeoff thrust.
Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin (9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968) was a Soviet cosmonaut and the first human to orbit the earth. Yuri Gagarin joined the Soviet Air Force in 1955 and graduated with honors from the Soviet Air Force Academy in 1957. Soon afterward, he became a military fighter pilot. By 1959, he had been selected for cosmonaut training as part of the first group of USSR cosmonauts. Yuri Gagarin flew only one space mission. On April 12, 1961 he became the first human to orbit Earth. Gagarin's spacecraft, Vostok 1, circled Earth at a speed of 27,400 kilometers per hour. The flight lasted 108 minutes. At its highest point, Gagarin was about 200 miles (327 kilometers) above Earth. Once in orbit, Yuri Gagarin had no control over his spacecraft. Vostok's reentry was controlled by a computer program sending radio commands to the space capsule. Although the controls were locked, a key had been placed in a sealed envelope in case an emergency situation made it necessary for Gagarin to take control. As was planned, Cosmonaut Gagarin ejected after reentry into Earth's atmosphere at an altitude of 20,000 feet and landed by parachute. As pilot of the spaceship Vostok 1, he proved that man could endure the rigors of lift-off, re-entry, and weightlessness. As a result of his historic flight he became an international hero and legend. Colonel Gagarin died on March 27, 1968 when the MiG-15 airplane he was piloting crashed near Moscow. He was given a hero's funeral, his ashes interred in the Kremlin Wall. He is popularly known as “The Columbus of the Cosmos”.
This is a composite of images taken of Pluto and Charon during the fly-by of New Horizons on July 14, 2015. The image has been compiled so their relative positions and sizes are correct. Both images were taken by the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) on the Ralph telescope experiment. The image of Pluto was taken from a distance of 150,000 miles (240,000km).
... that Blue Origin NS-31 recently became the first all-female spaceflight in 62 years?
Neil Armstrong on the Moon
…that the original videos of the Apollo 11 astronauts walking on the Moon (pictured) were lost after the mission, and were reported to have been found in June 2009?
…that when investigating the Challenger accident, Richard Feynman threatened to remove his name from the report unless it included his personal observations on the reliability of the shuttle?
…that astronauts can't burp in space? A burp would need gravity to separate the liquid from the gas in their stomach.
