How you yourself could be convinced not only by everything, but few could clearly explain what happened on this date, and those few who were able to, were surely called the first person in space Nile Armstrong. Based on such sad statistics, I am taking out an equally sad fact that RT has already been formulated for me: “On the eve of the 55th anniversary of the first flight of a person into space, RT interviewed Europeans and Americans to find out how much they know the personality of Yuri Gagarin. It is hard to call the results encouraging ".
It is well known that the Soviet Union was the first to launch a satellite (1957) into space (1957), the first higher living organisms in space that survived the flight and successfully landing to the Earth, were the dogs of gypsies and deses, sent to the USSR on July 22, 1951 on the R-1B rocket and, of course, a person of man. During the space race, the USSR, as far as possible, sought to overtake and overtake America. To this, a complex and winding path was both a lot of great achievements and a number of regrettable failures that sometimes carried away human lives.
However, if not everyone knows about Yuri Gagarin, then what can we say about other discoverers. I suggest you remember about them today or find out.
The first flying around the moon
The Luna-1 satellite launched on January 2, 1959 was the first spacecraft that successfully reached the moon. The 360-kilogram spacecraft, which carried the Soviet coat of arms on itself, was supposed to reach the surface of the moon and demonstrate the superiority of Soviet science. Nevertheless, the satellite missed, passing 6,000 kilometers from the lunar surface. The probe released a cloud of sodium vapor, which for some time glowed so brightly that it allowed to track the movement of the satellite.
“Luna-1” was at least the fifth attempt of the Soviet Union to make a landing on the moon, secret information about previous unsuccessful attempts is stored in the “Top Secret” folders.
Compared to modern cosmic probes, Luna-1 was extremely primitive. He did not have his own engine, and the power supply was limited to the use of primitive batteries. The probe also did not have cameras. The signals from the probe stopped arriving three days after the launch.
The first spacecraft that photographed the reverse side of the moon
Launched on October 4, 1959, the Luna-3 satellite was the third spacecraft, successfully launched to the moon. Unlike the two previous probes, the Luna-3 was equipped with a camera for photographing. The task that was set before the scientists was to take a photo of the back side of the moon with the help of the probe, which at that time had never been photographed yet.
The camera was primitive and complex. The spacecraft could only take 40 photos that were to be shot, shown and dried on a spaceship. Then the on-board electron beam was supposed to scan the manifested images and transfer data to Earth. The radio transmitter was so weak that the first attempts to transmit images failed. When the probe, having turned around the moon, approached the ground, 17 photos of not very high quality were obtained.
Nevertheless, scientists were excited that they found in the image. Unlike the visible side of the moon, which was flat, there were mountains and unknown dark areas on the reverse side.
The first circuit of another planet
Launched on February 12, 1961, the Soviet space probe Venus-1 was supposed to make a rigid landing on Venus. This was the second attempt by the USSR to launch a probe to Venus. The descent capsule "Venus-1" also had to deliver the Soviet coat of arms to the planet. Although most of the probe, as expected, was supposed to burn at the entrance to the atmosphere, the Soviet Union hoped that the descent capsule would reach the surface, which would automatically make the USSR the first country to reach the surface of another planet.
The launch and the first communication sessions with the probe were successful, the first three sessions testified to the normal operation of the probe, but the fourth took place with a five -day delay and showed a malfunction in one of the systems. In the end, the contact was lost when the probe was about 2 million kilometers from the ground. The spacecraft drifted in space at a distance of 100,000 kilometers from Venus and was not able to get data to adjust the course.
The world’s first woman-cosmonaut
In March 1963, there were five candidates for this honorary role. Tereshkova preferred for several reasons. The political moment played an important role: Tereshkova was from a simple working family, while, for example, Solovyov and Ponomarev could not “boast” a proletarian origin. Tereshkova’s father gave his life for his homeland, fighting in the Soviet-Finnish war. The first request that sounded from Tereshkova’s lips after returning to Earth was to provide data on the place of death of her father.
For the first time, the Soviet cosmonaut woman flew into space on June 16, 1963. The duration of the flight was about three days. The Vostok-6 ship started from the Baikonur cosmodrome, and not from the "Gagarin" flesh, but with a duplicate. Tereshkova herself did not tell her relatives that she was flying into space, and explained her absence with the competitions of paratroopers. The family learned about the flight already from the news.
From the TASS message:
““ On June 16, 1963, at 12 o’clock 30 minutes in the Moscow Union, the Vostok-6 spacecraft was brought into the Earth’s satellite, which was first piloted by a woman, a citizen of the Soviet Union by Cosmonaut, Comrade Tereshkova Valentina Vladimirovna. In this flight, the study of various factors of space flight on the human body will continue, including a comparative analysis of the effects of these factors on the organisms of a man and a woman, a new amount of biological studies and further development and improvement of piloted spaceships in the context of a joint flight will be carried out. In accordance with the tasks set, the launch of the Vostok-6 ship was carried out during the orbit of the Vostok-5 spacecraft launched in the Soviet Union on June 14, 1963. Currently, in the space space in the flight there are simultaneously two Soviet spacecraft “Vostok-5” and “Vostok-6”, piloted by citizens of the Soviet Union by comrades Bykovsky Valery Fedorovich and Tereshkova Valentina Vladimirovna. Messages about the joint flight will be transmitted by all radio stations of the Soviet Union ".
The first successful landing on another planet
On August 17, 1970, the Venus-7 spacecraft https://nongamstop-casinos.uk/review/magic-win/ started, one of the two Soviet twin spacecraft ships. After a soft landing on the surface of Venus, the probe was supposed to deploy a transmitter for transferring data to Earth, setting a record as the first successful landing on another planet and to survive in the atmosphere of Venus, the descent device was cooled to -8 degrees Celsius. Soviet scientists also wanted the descent device to remain in a calm state as long as possible. Therefore, it was decided that the capsule during the entrance to the atmosphere of Venus would be joined with the carrier until the resistance of the atmosphere would force them to separate.
Venus-7 entered the atmosphere, as planned, but 29 minutes before touching the surface of the brake parachute could not stand it and broke. Initially, they considered that the descent device could not withstand the blow, but later the analysis of the recorded signals showed that the probe transmitted the temperature from the surface of the planet within 23 minutes after landing, as the engineers who designed the spacecraft calculated.
The first artificial object on the surface of Mars
Mars-2 and Mars-3, twin spaceships, were launched with a difference of one day from each other in May 1971. Rotating in orbit around Mars, they had to make a map of its surface. In addition, it was planned to launch the descended devices from these spaceships. Soviet scientists hoped that these landing capsules would be the first objects made by a person on the surface of Mars.
However, the Americans were ahead of the USSR, the first to reach the orbit of Mars. Mariner-9, which also started in May 1971, reached Mars two weeks earlier and became the first spacecraft in Mars orbit. Arriving at the place, both American and Soviet probes found that Mars was covered with a general planetary dust curtain, which interfered with data collection.
Although the descent device “Mars-2” crashed, the descent device “Mars-3” successfully landed and began transferring data. But after 20 seconds, the transmission stopped, only photos with low -cost details and low illumination were transmitted. The failure probably occurred due to a large sandstone on Mars, which did not allow the Soviet apparatus to take the first clear pictures of the Martian surface.
The first returned automated system to deliver samples
NASA had stones from the lunar surface delivered by astronauts with "Apollo". The Soviet Union, not being the first to plant people on the moon, was determined to overtake the Americans using an automated space probe to collect lunar soil and deliver it to Earth. The first Soviet Luna-15 probe crashed during landing. The next five attempts failed near the Earth due to problems with the launch vehicle. However, the sixth Soviet Luna-16 probe was successfully launched.
Having landed near the sea of abundance, the Soviet station took the samples of the lunar soil and placed them in the returned apparatus, which started and returned with samples to Earth. When a sealed container was open, Soviet scientists received only 101 grams of lunar soil, against 22 kilograms delivered to the Apollo-11. Soviet samples were carefully investigated, it was found that the structure of the soil in its qualities is close to wet sand, but this was the first successful return of the automatic descent apparatus.
The first spacecraft for three people
Launched on October 12, 1964, Voskhod 1 was the first spacecraft that could deliver more than one person to the cosmos. Although Sunrise was declared by the Soviet Union the new spacecraft, in fact, it was a modernized version of the same apparatus that Yuri Gagarin delivered to space. Nevertheless, for Americans, who at that time had no devices even for crews of two people, it sounded impressive.
Soviet designers considered the "sunrise" unsafe. They continued to object to its use until the government bribed them with a proposal to send one of the designers to the orbit as an astronaut. However, in terms of security, the design of the spacecraft had a number of serious complaints.
Firstly, It was impossible to emergency catapulting of the astronauts with an unsuccessful start, since it was not possible to construct the hatch for each astronaut.
Secondly, Capsule in the capsule was so closely that they could not wear spacesuits. As a result, in case of depressurization, they would have died.
Third, The new landing system, consisting of two parachutes and brake engine, was tested before flight only once.
And finally, the astronauts had to observe a diet before the flight so that the total weight of astronauts and capsules was small enough to launch the rocket.
Taking into account all these serious difficulties, it was just amazing that the flight was flawless.
The first person of African origin in space
On September 18, 1980, Soyuz-38 flew to the Salyut-6 orbital space station. On board were the Soviet astronaut and Kubinsky pilot Arnaldo Tamayo Mendes, who became the first man of African origin to go into space. His flight was part of the Soviet program "Interpx", which allowed other countries to participate in Soviet space flights.
Mendes remained on board the “Salyut-6” only for a week, but he conducted more than 24 experiments in the field of chemistry and biology. Its metabolism, the structure of the electrical activity of the brain, and a change in the shape of the bones of the legs in conditions of zero gravity were studied. Upon returning to Earth, Mendes was awarded the title of “Hero of the Soviet Union” – the highest award of the USSR.
Since Mendes was not an American, America did not consider this an achievement, therefore, for the United States, the first Afro-American in space in 1983 was Gayon Stewart Clefort, a member of the Challenger shuttle crew.
The first docking with dead space object
On February 11, 1985, the Soviet Space Station Salyut-7 was silent. There was a cascade of short circuits at the station, turning off all its electric systems and immersed Salyut-7 into a dead frozen state.
In an attempt to save Salyut-7, the USSR sent two veterans to repair the station. The automated docking system did not work, so the astronauts should have come close enough to try to do the docking in manual mode. Fortunately, the station was motionless and the astronauts were able to dock, for the first time demonstrating that one could dock with any object in space, even if it was dead and uncontrollable.
The crew said that inside the station is covered with mold, the walls overgrown with icicles, and the temperature was -10 degrees Celsius. The restoration of the space station took place within a few days, the crew had to check hundreds of cables to determine the source of the malfunction in the electric circuit, but they succeeded.
The first plant grown in space
On January 17, 2016, Astronaut Scott Kelly from the ISS told the Twitter page that the first in history of the Orange Tsinniy was raised at the station. The growing of the flower took place in the Veggie portable greenhouse brought to the station of the portable greenhouse.
Everything would be fine if the Soviet astronauts did not do the same in 1982.
From May 13 to December 10, 1982, Colonel Anatoly Nikolayevich Berezova as a crew commander, along with the sorcerer Valentin Vitalievich Lebedev, made a flight into space at the Soyuz T-5 orbital research complex-Salyut-7.
During the 211-day space flight, the crew performed about three hundred experiments and studies, among which were biomedical, geological, geo and astrophysical, technical and other.
One of the experiments was to cultivate arabidopsis in zero gravity. For the experiment, a special hermetic camera "Fiton-3" was designed. It had five cuvettes and its own light source. In the cuvettes there was a substrate of agar, containing up to 98% of water. As the plants grow, the cueters could move away from the light source.
Arriving in orbit, the astronauts settled the seeds of arabidopsis with a seeder-gun. At first, plants grew slowly, but on August 2, 1982 a large number of buds and the first flowers appeared. By August 19, pods containing seeds appeared on plants. When the astronaut Svetlana Savitskaya arrived at the station, she was awarded a bouquet of the first cosmic flowers.
Already on Earth, when examining pods, about 200 seeds were discovered in them. Thus, experience refuted the opinion of the impossibility of planting in zero gravity of all stages of development – from seed to seed.
The development of crop production in space Soviet cosmonautics continued until 1992. However, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the post -perestroika chaos that followed it interrupted this important direction.
You can read more about this in one of the magazine issues "Youth Technique" By link
I will give an excerpt from an interview with astronauts:
“At first, much did not go well,” says Cosmonaut George Grechko. – Water did not enter where it was necessary, then huge drops began to break, and they had to chase with napkins. But in general, the experiment was a success, adult, twenty -three -day plants were obtained. True, there were no flowers, but the film with slow shooting the dynamics of plant growth managed to make. It was Grechko who was one of the first testified to the psychological support that astronauts received from plants. He himself, especially by the end of the flight, tried to swim to the greenhouse for every convenient occasion to look at green friends once again. Sometimes he caught himself doing it unconsciously.
In the summer and autumn of 1978, during the flight of astronauts in, Kovalenok and a. Ivanchenkov grown onions in two ways: scientific and, “like in the village of Belaya”, from where the ship commander was from. When the astronauts returned to the station after entering open space, they cautiously hinted: “They worked well well. Maybe now we will be allowed to eat as a reward and onion. ". But it was too early to harvest. “The onion grows in two vessels, one according to your method, and the other in my peasant,” reported. Kovalenok. – If it does not cut it from above, then it begins to rot, and if you cut, it grows well, does not rot. – Well, good. If you want, a few shooters can now eat. – We have already done this, out of fourteen we ate six. And in the report on television, the commander joked: “Agricultural machinery works better, we checked this as a result of social media. Our ray is growing faster than scientific!»But alas, by one or another method, a obstinate plant could not be brought to flowering.
Well, you can’t finally not mention the significant flight of Yuri Gagarin.
On the 55th anniversary of the first flight of a person into space, Yandex released an excellent reconstruction of historical launch
On the main page of Yandex, click on the portrait of Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin and watch.