The History of Space Exploration - Part Three

We left off last with a failure by Soviet Russia, but they were still far ahead of the United States.

Part One - Part Two

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The First Spacewalk - 1965

On March 18th 1965 Alexei Leonov became the first person to do a spacewalk. The whole point of the mission was to claim this title. He was launched into space on the Voskhod-2. His goal was to open a camera on his chest, go outside and then attach a camera outside his ship. He was unable to open the shutters of the camera on his chest, but did manage to attach the camera outside his ship. He was outside for a total of twelve minutes and nine seconds.

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The First Mars Flyby, with pictures - 1965

The United States ship, Mariner 4, returned the first close-up pictures of Mars, and provided readings on the atmosphere and magnetic field. They found Mars has no magnetic field and an atmosphere that was extremely thin. They came to the conclusion that solar wind slowly blew away the planet's atmosphere.

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First Satellite Around the Moon -1966

The Soviet satellite was named Luna 10. It had many detectors to study the moon and surrounding areas. It could detect Gamma rays, X-rays, infrared, a micrometeorite analyzer, and gas discharge.

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First (Crash) Landing on Another Planet - 1966

Soviet Russia landed on Venus with the Venera 3 mission. It carried multiple types of scientific instruments and used radio to send back information.

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First Soft Landing on the Moon - 1966

On June 2nd, 1966 Soviet Russia did a soft landing on the moon with the Surveyor 1 mission. This was the first mission to test this technology, and it worked well. They also tested the the ability to keep in contact with the probe and to fire rockets

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First Probe to Map the Moon - 1966

On August 10th, 1966 the United States started mapping the Moon. The probes orbited the moon and took pictures and sent them back to Earth. Over 5 missions they mapped 99% of the Moon at detail level of one meter. They took 2180 high resolution and 882 medium resolution pictures total.

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First Automated Docking - 1967

On the 30th of December 1967, Soviet Russia docked the Soyuz 4 and the Soyuz 5 together They linked power, air and all controls. The crew from Soyuz 4 went into Soyuz 5 and landed in it. Soyuz 4 was named the first space station because of this achievement.
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The First Ultraviolet observatory. -1968

After a year of no major achievements the United States created the first Ultraviolet observatory on the 7th of December, 1968. The OSO missions were to show the benefit of having space based telescopes for scientists. Four were launched and only two made it to low Earth orbit, the first being OSO-2. They paved the way for future space telescopes, including the Hubble.

Without this program we might not have the Hubble today. What would we do without pictures like this one?

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First Humans Orbiting Another World - 1968

On December 21st, 1968 the Apollo 8 crew became the first people to orbit another world. This was a test of life support systems. They had a total of six telecasts sent to five continents, including one on Christmas eve. The flight actually went better than planned, having only to do one course-correction,as opposed to the planned three, and no unforeseen difficulties showing up.
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First Parachute in Venus’s Atmosphere - 1969

On January 1969 Venera 5 parachuted into the atmosphere of Venus. The top of the probe dropped off and successfully started parachuting, sadly, contact with the probe was lost before it landed. This probe confirmed high pressure, high temperature, and high amounts of CO2 found by Venera 4.

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First Humans on the Moon -1969

On July 20th, 1969, the United States landed on the Moon. They were able to bring back rocks, take photographs, and study the moon up close. It was estimated that 530 million people watched this event live on television, after a four and a half day trip. In the eyes of the United States this was the winning act of the space race.

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Humanity made great progress during the space race, if only we kept it up.