Paris (AFP)
From Sputnik to Philae, via the first orbital flight of Yuri Gagarin 60 years ago, here are ten major dates in the conquest of space.
- 1957: Sputnik -
On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik-1.
The small aluminum sphere takes 98 minutes to circle the Earth and send the first message received from space, a simple "beep beep".
On November 3, Sputnik-2 takes the first living being, the dog Laïka, into space for a one-way trip.
- 1961: Gagarin in orbit -
On April 12, 1961, the Soviet Yuri Gagarin, aboard Vostok-1, was the first man in space.
It circles the Earth once during a flight of 1h48.
Twenty-three days later, American Alan Shepard performs a 15-minute "chip jump" in space - not an orbit.
On June 16, 1963, the Soviet Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman to go into space.
China will become in 2003 the third country to send a man into space on its own, the taikonaut Yang Liwei in his Shenzhou V spacecraft.
- 1969: Armstrong on the Moon -
On July 21, 1969 (July 20, Houston time), the American Neil Armstrong walked on lunar soil for the first time, during the Apollo 11 mission. He was followed on the moon by Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin.
Between 1969 and 1972, ten other astronauts, all Americans, will walk on the Moon.
- 1971: space station -
On April 19, 1971, the Soviets launched Salyut 1, the first orbital space station.
Construction of the current International Space Station (ISS) will begin in 1998. The largest human-made structure in space, it circles the Earth 16 times every day.
The ISS, in which 16 countries participate, took over from the Russian Mir orbital station, which was deliberately destroyed in 2001 after 15 years of activity.
- 1976: a probe on Mars -
On July 20, 1976, the American probe Viking-1 was the first spacecraft to transmit a picture from the soil of Mars.
Several American rovers have explored the red planet.
After Curiosity, which landed in 2012 and is still in operation, Perseverance was the fifth American rover to make the trip a success, on February 18, 2021.
In total, around 40 missions have been launched to Mars by various nations, and more than half have failed.
- 1981: space shuttle -
On April 12, 1981, the American shuttle Columbia, the first reusable space vehicle, was put into service.
Five American shuttles (Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavor) followed one another until the end of the program in 2011. Until 2020 and the resumption of flights with the private company SpaceX, the United States will depend on the Russia to transport astronauts to the ISS.
Two shuttles were destroyed in flight, causing the death of 14 astronauts: Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003.
- 1990: Hubble -
On April 25, 1990, the first space telescope was put into orbit 547 km from Earth.
With a length of 13 meters, Hubble revolutionized astronomy and upset our view of the Universe, accumulating images of the solar system, the Milky Way and galaxies far away.
- 2001: space tourist -
On April 28, 2001, Dennis Tito, a 60-year-old American businessman, became the first "tourist" in space.
He paid Russia $ 20 million to stay on the ISS for eight days.
A total of seven candidates will benefit from Russian flights to the International Space Station until 2009.
The American company SpaceX plans to launch its first space tourism mission by the end of 2021.
- 2008: SpaceX -
On September 28, 2008, SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket became the first launcher developed by a private company to reach Earth orbit.
In May 2012, the Californian company was the first to send a supply vessel - its unmanned Dragon capsule - to the ISS, on behalf of NASA.
SpaceX has since conquered the satellite launch market with its Falcon 9 rocket.
After its first manned flights in 2020 to the ISS, SpaceX has planned two other launches for NASA in 2021, including one that will take off on April 22 from Florida with on board the French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, the Americans Megan Mc Arthur and Shane. Kimbrough, and the Japanese Akihiko Hoshide.
- 2014: Philae -
On November 12, 2014, the European Space Agency (ESA) managed to land Philae, a small robot, on comet Tchourioumov-Guérassimenko, more than 500 million km from Earth.
Launched in 1977, Voyager-1 is the most distant human-made craft.
The American probe entered interstellar space in 2012.
© 2021 AFP