History Of Spacecraft

The history of spacecraft is not a log one with humans having only started to look outside the universe since the beginning of the 20th century. Spacecraft have taken astronauts hundreds of miles into orbit around the Earth and they have walked on the moon. One result of space exploration is that it has brought about communication between many powerful nations with one goal in mind – to understand the solar system and to see whether life exists on other planets.

The major achievements in spacecraft include:

Mercury: The early spaceships were made from deconstructed German rockets. Mercury capsules were attached to these new forms of rockets and launched into space. They flew in a sub-orbital path that paved the way for later spacecraft.

Gemini: The next generation of spacecraft were still simple in design, it could carry one or two astronauts. Instead of being powered by Mercury capsules, large rockets were used to launch them into space.

Apollo: The Apollo missions had the goal of landing a man on the moon. It took several years and many journeys into space to probe the moon before Apollo 11 accomplished this in July 1969.

Skylab: In order to be able to spend longer amounts of time in space, Skylab was developed in which American astronauts could live and work in space for extended periods of time.

The Space Shuttle: This was the first reusable spacecraft for carrying objects into space and carrying out various experiments.

The International Space Station: In cooperation with several countries, this space station was constructed at the cost of 100 billion dollars. Three people can live and work here in this orbital space station.

Spacecraft have been used to orbit the planets close to the sun and farther out in the solar system. They have sent back images of the planets, starts, asteroids and comets that enhance the scientific knowledge of these bodies. Voyager 1 was the spacecraft that traveled the farthest from Earth at over 9 billion miles.

The first rocket ever to reach space was the A-4(V-2) launched by Germany in 1942. John Glenn was the first man to complete an orbit of the Earth in 1967 even though the Russian Sputnik 1 did orbit the Earth previously carrying a monkey.