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rom the time antiquity, humans have tried to fly like birds! There are well-known examples wherein human
have tried to make wings of various sizes, designs, and weights that will let them cherish this dream. Kites, hot air balloons, and paper planes made us inquisitive to explore more and more on how human can fly independent-
ly or with the help of a device or an instrument that can take us to space. Wright brothers are credited with inventing, building and flying world’s first motor driven airplane in the early 20th century.
Majority of the development in the field of modern science and technology took place during World War I and II. In the race of dominating each other, many countries in Europe and America started experiments in weaponry, rock- etry, communication and intelligence, medicine etc. Some of these advance- ments can be looked in the perspective of the space race as well. During the mid-20th-century cold war between Soviet Union and United States the exploration of space started taking shape. The first successful space flight was made by Soviet Union when they launched Sputnik-1 on 4 October 1957. However, on 31 January 1958 (within the gap of three months) United State launched their first artificial satellite, Explorer-1. Majority of the space ex- plorations were limited to Soviet Union and United States and for a long time!
If we look at the history of first human to be in the space, the story becomes even more interesting. Soviet Union secretly executed a program
named Vostok-1 on 12 April 1961 from Baikonur cosmodrome, southern Ka- zakhstan to enjoy the credit of send- ing the first human in the space. Yuri Gagarin became the first astronaut to fly in space and come back successfully. Vostok-1 took a single orbit around the Earth which flew to the upper atmos- phere at 169 kilometres at its lowest point. The flight took 108 minutes
from launch to landing. Yuri Gagarin was inside a capsule, which landed on the ground through open parachute at an altitude of 7 km. However, United States launched its first human space flight named Mercury-Redstone 3 on
5 May 1961 (within a gap of a month!) with first American astronaut Alen Shepard to fly 187 km at its lowest point. The 15-minute flight took off from Cape Canaveral, and after success- ful orbit, landed into the North Atlantic Ocean with the help of a parachute. The
Arvind C Ranade
only difference in Vostok-1 and Mercu- ry-Redstone 3 was that the earlier was almost an automatic mission controlled from ground while the second one was manual wherein Alen Shepard himself controlled the altitude.
Soviet Union also holds the third record of putting first women in the space, Valentina Tereshkova, through Vastok-6 mission on 16 June 1963. The second woman in space was Svetlana Savitskaya of Soviet Union who flew
Valentina Tereshkova
Human Space Flight–from idea to reality
Yuri Gagarin and Vostok 1 (Credit: Universetoday)
April 2021
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