Facts about the Space Race
- 12
Gus Grissom's Mercury-Redstone 3 suborbital flight on May 5, 1961, lasted only 15 minutes and 28 seconds, yet made him the second American in space just three weeks before the Soviets launched Yuri Gagarin.
- 11
Skylab, NASA's first space station launched in 1973, orbited Earth for six years and hosted three crewed missions before uncontrollably reentering the atmosphere on July 11, 1979, scattering debris across the Indian Ocean and Western Australia.
- 10
A Soviet N1 rocket exploded on July 3, 1969, just four days before Apollo 11's Moon landing, destroying the USSR's only viable lunar spacecraft and ending their chance to reach the Moon first.
- 09
Buzz Aldrin's moonwalk on Apollo 11 lasted 21 minutes and 36 seconds, during which he collected 47.5 pounds of lunar samples while Armstrong spent 2 hours 31 minutes total on the surface.
- 08
Yuri Gagarin completed the first human spaceflight on April 12, 1961, orbiting Earth once in 108 minutes aboard Vostok 1 before returning safely to Soviet territory.
- 07
Apollo 13's oxygen tank explosion in 1970 forced NASA to use the lunar module as a lifeboat, requiring engineers to improvise a carbon dioxide filter from command module parts to save the three astronauts during their 90,000-mile journey home.
- 06
In 1965, Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov completed the first spacewalk, floating 10 minutes outside Voskhod 2 at an altitude of 405 kilometers above Earth.
- 05
The Soviet Luna 2 spacecraft became the first human-made object to reach the Moon on September 14, 1959, crashing into its surface after a five-day journey.
- 04
Valentina Tereshkova orbited Earth 48 times in 70 hours on June 16, 1963, becoming the first woman in space during the Soviet Space Race program.
- 03
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the Moon during Apollo 11, transmitting his famous words to Earth 238,900 miles away in real time.
- 02
Wernher von Braun's Saturn V rocket stood 363 feet tall and remains the most powerful launch vehicle ever successfully operated, sending Apollo astronauts to the Moon between 1969 and 1972.
- 01
During the 1962 Mercury-Atlas 6 mission, John Glenn orbited Earth three times in five hours while NASA engineers monitored his vital signs continuously.