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Spheres from outer space land in New Zealand

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Spheres from outer space landed on New Zealand farmland in 1972, possibly from a Soviet satellite

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A transcript of a meeting at the White House reveals that politics, more than science, may have fueled America's race to the moon against the Soviets.

The transcript, released by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), records a meeting between President John F. Kennedy, NASA Administrator James Webb, Vice President Lyndon Johnson and others in the Cabinet Room of the White House on November 21, 1962.

The discussion reveals a president who felt landing men on the moon should be NASA's top priority and a NASA chief who did not.

When asked by Predsident Kennedy if he considered the moon landing to be NASA's top priority, Webb responded, "No sir, I do not. I think it is one of the top priority programs."

Kennedy then urges Webb to adjust his priorities because, "This is important for political reasons, international political reasons. This is, whether we like it or not, an intensive race."

NASA Fears Dangers of Moon Mission

The worlds of politics and science were suddenly at odds. Webb told Kennedy that NASA scientists still had grave doubts about the survivability of a moon landing. "We don't know anything about the surface of the moon," he states, going on to suggest that only through a careful, comprehensive and scientific approach to manned exploration could the U.S. gain "pre-eminence in space."

In 1962, NASA was still generally perceived as a military operation and all of the astronauts were active duty military personnel. To Commander in Chief Kennedy, himself a decorated World War II hero, the "survivability" of military missions undertaken by military personnel, was rarely the main go-no-go factor.

Stressing the importance of beating the Soviets to the moon, Kennedy tells Webb, "We hope to beat them to demonstrate that, starting behind, as we did by a couple of years, by God we passed them."

Hello, Comrades! Sputnik Calling

In the "couple of years" the U.S. had fallen behind, the Soviets had launched both the first earth-orbiting satellite, Sputnik in 1957, and the first earth-orbiting human, Yuri A. Gagarin. In 1959. Also in 1959, the Soviets claimed to have reached the moon with an unmanned probe called Luna 2.

This largely unanswered string of Soviet space successes had already left Americans with chilling visions of nuclear bombs raining down on them from orbit, maybe even the moon. Then, just a few weeks before the Nov. 1962 Kennedy-Webb meeting, a national near-death experience -- the Cuban Missile Crisis -- solidified beating the Soviets to the moon as an absolute necessity in the hearts and minds of the American people.

In his 1985 book, The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Walter A. McDougall provides a behind-the-scenes view of space race politics that took place between U.S. President Kennedy and flamboyant Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

In 1963, just two years after asking Congress to help "put a man on the moon by the end of the decade," Kennedy, in a speech before the United Nations, tempted domestic criticism by asking America's then Cold War archenemy Russia to come along for the ride. "Let us do big things together . . .," he said. After a month of silence, Khrushchev joked of Kennedy's invitation, stating, "He who cannot bear earth any longer may fly to the moon. But we are all right on earth." Khrushchev later went on to throw up a smoke screen by telling reporters that the U.S.S.R. had withdrawn from the moon race. While some foreign policy analysts feared this might mean the Soviets intended to use the money for their space program to develop orbiting platforms for launching nuclear weapons rather than for manned missions, no one knew for sure.

Of the Soviet Union and its space race political stance, McDougall concluded that "no previous government in history was so openly and energetically in favor of science, but neither had any modern government been so ideologically opposed to the free exchange of ideas, a presumed prerequisite of scientific progress."

Money Enters the Equation

As the White House conversation continues, Kennedy reminds Webb of the "fantastic" amounts of money the federal government had spent on NASA and asserts that future funding should be directed exclusively toward the moon landing. "Otherwise," declares Kennedy, "we shouldn't be spending this kind of money because I'm not that interested in space."

Speaking at the official release of the tape, Kennedy Library Archivist Maura Porter suggested that the Kennedy-Webb discussion shows the Cuban Missile Crisis may have caused President Kennedy to view the space race as more of a Cold War battlefield than a field of scientific advancement.

The Cold War Speeds the Space Racers

As nuclear tensions lessened, Kennedy eventually sided with Webb in pushing NASA to achieve broad scientific goals, according to John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. Kennedy even proposed a joint U.S.-Soviet moon landing mission in a September 1963 address to the United Nations.

Moon Rocks Come to America

Six years after the White House meeting between Kennedy and Webb, on July 20, 1969, American Neil Armstrong, on board Apollo 11, became the first human to set foot on the moon.

The Soviets had by then largely abandoned their lunar program, working instead on extended manned earth-orbital flights culminating years later in the long-lived Mir Space Station.

Historic Tidbit of Trivia: APOLLO was an acronym used by NASA for "America's Program for Orbital and Lunar Landing Operations."

Between 1969 and 1972, a total of twelve Americans walked and drove the surface of the moon on six separate missions. The sixth and final Apollo lunar landing came on Dec. 11, 1972, when Apollo 17 delivered astronauts Eugene A. Cernan and Harrison H. Schmitt to the moon. Earthlings have not visited the moon since.

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Did Politics, not Science, Fuel the US Space Race with the Soviets?

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A transcript of a meeting at the White House reveals that politics, more than science, may have fueled America's race to the moon against the Soviets. The transcript, released by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), records a meeting between President John F.

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Create beautiful documents, share them with a link, and collaborate with others in real time.

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Sometimes pure evil can, ironically, lead to good - and the space race is a prime example. The events leading to the race for space domination between the USSR and the USA can be traced back to the 1930's and Nazi Germany. Back in those days German missile technology was the most advanced in the world, and German scientists were experimenting with liquid-fueled rockets with the ultimate goal of sending rockets higher and further than ever before. Towards the end of the second world war both nations captured this advanced German rocket technology as well as staff, leading to a missile-based arms race.

This symbolic race was seen as a way to show the respective nation's technological and ideological dominance, and was even considered critical for national security. During those years there was a marked increase in education and research spending by the US government, with great importance placed on mathematics and science in schools.

The dream of reaching the stars brought about the space-race - a concerted effort to land on the moon, orbit a satellite around the Earth, and a whole lot more. These goals led to many spin-off technologies being developed along the way; today we'll be talking about the 10 most important ones.

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10 NASA Spin-off Technologies Resulting From the Space Race

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The dream of reaching the stars brought about the space-race - a concerted effort to land on the moon, orbit a satellite around the Earth, and a whole lot more. These goals led to many spin-off technologies being developed along the way; today we'll be talking about the 10 most important ones.

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CNN - From pacemakers to braces, the medical benefits of space exploration - November 2, 1998

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Sam Zaccari, 56, a volunteer at John Hopkins Diabetes Center, has also come to appreciate the medical spinoffs from space. The implantable insulin pump that has kept his diabetes under control since 1986 borrows from the mechanical robot arm on the first Mars Voyager probe.

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NASA.gov brings you the latest images, videos and news from America's space agency. Get the latest updates on NASA missions, watch NASA TV live, and learn about our quest to reveal the unknown and benefit all humankind.

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Find out more about Alan Shepard, one of the original seven Mercury program astronauts, who later commanded the Apollo 14 flight, on Biography.com.

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Apollo 11 (AS-506) | National Air and Space Museum

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Apollo 11 was the first mission to land a human on the Moon.

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Alan Shepard became the first American in space when the Freedom 7 spacecraft blasted off from Florida on May 5, 1961. Ten years later, Shepard would leave Earth's atmosphere again to become the fifth man to walk on the moon - and the first one to play golf there.

Born Nov. 18, 1923, to Renza Emerson and Alan Shepard, Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. grew up in rural New Hampshire. After graduating from high school, he attended the U.S. Naval Academy, graduating the day after D-Day. An ensign, Shepard spent the last year of World War II on a destroyer in the Pacific.

Over the next 15 years, Shepard served in the Navy in various capacities. He received a civilian pilot's license while in naval flight training, and spent several tours on aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean. He attended the U.S. Navy Test Pilot School in 1950, and then went on to participate in a number of developmental tests for various crafts, as well as trials of the first angled carrier deck. He then became an instructor in the Test Pilot School. He logged more than 8,000 hours of flight time over the course of his career. [ Photos: Freedom 7, America's 1st Human Spaceflight]

Shepard attended the Naval War College in Rhode Island. Following his 1957 graduation, he was assigned as an aircraft readiness officer on the staff of the Commander-in-Chief, Atlantic Fleet.

Upon his return home at the close of World War II, Shepard married Louise Brewer, whom he had met while attending the Naval Academy. The couple had two daughters.

The right stuff

In 1959, 110 test pilots were invited to volunteer for the space flight program headed by the new National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Although Shepard was on the list, a snafu kept him from receiving his invitation. Regardless, he was selected as one of the first seven astronauts for the organization. Known as the Mercury 7, the group included John Glenn, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Donald "Deke" Slayton, Malcolm "Scott" Carpenter, Walter "Wally" Schirra, and Gordon Cooper. From this prestigious group of highly trained fliers, Shepard was selected to man the first space flight, with Glenn acting as his backup.

The stakes were raised in the space race on April 15, 1961, when the Soviet Union launched cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space and he became the first person to orbit the Earth. Gagarin beat the Americans by less than a month. Shepard's launch was initially scheduled for May 2, but was rescheduled twice because of weather conditions. On May 5, Freedom 7 lifted off, carrying Shepard to an altitude of 116 miles for a 15-minute flight. Because of the placement of the porthole windows, the first American in space was unable to catch a glimpse of the stars, and he was strapped in too tight to experience weightlessness. Also, a filter left on the periscope window rendered the Earth below in black and white.

Although the Soviets had reached the historic milestone first, Shepard's suborbital flight made a significant worldwide impact because its launch, travel and splashdown were watched on live television by millions of people. By contrast, the details of Gagarin's landing were kept confidential for more than a decade. For his daring achievement, President John F. Kennedy awarded Shepard the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. [ Infographic: America's First Spaceship: Project Mercury]

Shepard worked on the ground for subsequent flights in the Mercury program and was slated to pilot the Mercury 10 mission. However, after successfully putting an astronaut in orbit for a full day with Mercury 9, NASA decided to close the first manned space program and move on with Gemini, the next step on the journey toward the moon.

NASA selected Shepard to be part of the first manned Gemini mission. However, he woke one morning dizzy and nauseated, and found himself falling constantly. He was subsequently diagnosed with Meniere's syndrome. Fluid in his inner ear had built up, increasing the sensitivity of the semicircular canals and motion detectors. Shepard was grounded in 1963, forbidden from solo flights in jet planes - or traveling in space.

Shepard switched gears, taking over as the Chief of the Astronaut Office for NASA. He oversaw the activities and schedules of the astronauts and their training and assisted with mission planning. In 1969, he underwent an operation that corrected the problem, allowing him to regain full flight status. Shepard, Stuart Roosa and Ed Mitchell were initially supposed to fly on Apollo 13, but they were pushed back a mission to give everyone extra training, especially Shepard. Shepard was subsequently named commander for the Apollo 14 mission to the moon.

[ Lunar Legacy: 45 Apollo moon Mission Photos]

To the moon

Shepard blasted back into space from Cape Canaveral on Jan. 31, 1971, and landed in the Fra Mauro highlands on Feb. 7. At the age of 47, he was the oldest astronaut in the space program at the time. Before leaving the lunar surface, Shepard, an avid golfer, unfolded a collapsible golf club and hit two balls. The first landed in a nearby crater, but according to Shepard, the second flew for "miles and miles."

Shepard and Mitchell spent 33 and a half hours on the moon, the longest stay time, while Roosa piloted the command module up above. Shepard and Mitchell also spent more time outside of their craft than previous astronauts had, logging 9 hours and 17 minutes. They brought home 94 pounds of lunar samples, including two rocks exceeding 10 pounds apiece.

Over the course of his two space flights, Shepard logged a total of 216 hours and 57 minutes in space.

Back on Earth

In 1974, Shepard retired from NASA as rear admiral. He worked in the private sector, and started an umbrella company for his diverse business interests, Seven Fourteen Enterprises, named for the Freedom 7 and Apollo 14 missions.

In 1984, he worked with the other surviving Mercury astronauts and the widow of Apollo 1 victim Gus Grissom to found the Mercury Seven Foundation. Later renamed the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, the organization raises money for college students studying science and engineering.

After a struggle with leukemia, Shepard passed away on July 21, 1998, at the age of 74. His wife followed him just over a month later, on Aug. 25.

- Nola Taylor Redd, SPACE.com Contributor

Further Reading:

Correction: This article was updated June 26, 2013, to correct Shepard's age at his death, the time span between his flights into space and his military service.

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Alan Shepard became the first American in space when the Freedom 7 spacecraft blasted off from Florida on May 5, 1961. Ten years later, Shepard would leave Earth's atmosphere again to become the fifth man to walk on the moon - and the first one to play golf there. Born Nov.

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http://www.thespacerace.com/timeline/

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Learn and teach important stories of United States history through the lens of the White House using the White House Historical Association's Classroom Resource Packets. Adaptable to any twenty-first century classroom, these ready-to-use materials highlight resources from the White House Historical Association's Digital Library.

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A transcript of a meeting at the White House reveals that politics, more than science, may have fueled America's race to the moon against the Soviets.

The transcript, released by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), records a meeting between President John F. Kennedy, NASA Administrator James Webb, Vice President Lyndon Johnson and others in the Cabinet Room of the White House on November 21, 1962.

The discussion reveals a president who felt landing men on the moon should be NASA's top priority and a NASA chief who did not.

When asked by Predsident Kennedy if he considered the moon landing to be NASA's top priority, Webb responded, "No sir, I do not. I think it is one of the top priority programs."

Kennedy then urges Webb to adjust his priorities because, "This is important for political reasons, international political reasons. This is, whether we like it or not, an intensive race."

NASA Fears Dangers of Moon Mission

The worlds of politics and science were suddenly at odds. Webb told Kennedy that NASA scientists still had grave doubts about the survivability of a moon landing. "We don't know anything about the surface of the moon," he states, going on to suggest that only through a careful, comprehensive and scientific approach to manned exploration could the U.S. gain "pre-eminence in space."

In 1962, NASA was still generally perceived as a military operation and all of the astronauts were active duty military personnel. To Commander in Chief Kennedy, himself a decorated World War II hero, the "survivability" of military missions undertaken by military personnel, was rarely the main go-no-go factor.

Stressing the importance of beating the Soviets to the moon, Kennedy tells Webb, "We hope to beat them to demonstrate that, starting behind, as we did by a couple of years, by God we passed them."

Hello, Comrades! Sputnik Calling

In the "couple of years" the U.S. had fallen behind, the Soviets had launched both the first earth-orbiting satellite, Sputnik in 1957, and the first earth-orbiting human, Yuri A. Gagarin. In 1959. Also in 1959, the Soviets claimed to have reached the moon with an unmanned probe called Luna 2.

This largely unanswered string of Soviet space successes had already left Americans with chilling visions of nuclear bombs raining down on them from orbit, maybe even the moon. Then, just a few weeks before the Nov. 1962 Kennedy-Webb meeting, a national near-death experience -- the Cuban Missile Crisis -- solidified beating the Soviets to the moon as an absolute necessity in the hearts and minds of the American people.

In his 1985 book, The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Walter A. McDougall provides a behind-the-scenes view of space race politics that took place between U.S. President Kennedy and flamboyant Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

In 1963, just two years after asking Congress to help "put a man on the moon by the end of the decade," Kennedy, in a speech before the United Nations, tempted domestic criticism by asking America's then Cold War archenemy Russia to come along for the ride. "Let us do big things together . . .," he said. After a month of silence, Khrushchev joked of Kennedy's invitation, stating, "He who cannot bear earth any longer may fly to the moon. But we are all right on earth." Khrushchev later went on to throw up a smoke screen by telling reporters that the U.S.S.R. had withdrawn from the moon race. While some foreign policy analysts feared this might mean the Soviets intended to use the money for their space program to develop orbiting platforms for launching nuclear weapons rather than for manned missions, no one knew for sure.

Of the Soviet Union and its space race political stance, McDougall concluded that "no previous government in history was so openly and energetically in favor of science, but neither had any modern government been so ideologically opposed to the free exchange of ideas, a presumed prerequisite of scientific progress."

Money Enters the Equation

As the White House conversation continues, Kennedy reminds Webb of the "fantastic" amounts of money the federal government had spent on NASA and asserts that future funding should be directed exclusively toward the moon landing. "Otherwise," declares Kennedy, "we shouldn't be spending this kind of money because I'm not that interested in space."

Speaking at the official release of the tape, Kennedy Library Archivist Maura Porter suggested that the Kennedy-Webb discussion shows the Cuban Missile Crisis may have caused President Kennedy to view the space race as more of a Cold War battlefield than a field of scientific advancement.

The Cold War Speeds the Space Racers

As nuclear tensions lessened, Kennedy eventually sided with Webb in pushing NASA to achieve broad scientific goals, according to John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. Kennedy even proposed a joint U.S.-Soviet moon landing mission in a September 1963 address to the United Nations.

Moon Rocks Come to America

Six years after the White House meeting between Kennedy and Webb, on July 20, 1969, American Neil Armstrong, on board Apollo 11, became the first human to set foot on the moon.

The Soviets had by then largely abandoned their lunar program, working instead on extended manned earth-orbital flights culminating years later in the long-lived Mir Space Station.

Historic Tidbit of Trivia: APOLLO was an acronym used by NASA for "America's Program for Orbital and Lunar Landing Operations."

Between 1969 and 1972, a total of twelve Americans walked and drove the surface of the moon on six separate missions. The sixth and final Apollo lunar landing came on Dec. 11, 1972, when Apollo 17 delivered astronauts Eugene A. Cernan and Harrison H. Schmitt to the moon. Earthlings have not visited the moon since.

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Did Politics, not Science, Fuel the US Space Race with the Soviets?

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A transcript of a meeting at the White House reveals that politics, more than science, may have fueled America's race to the moon against the Soviets. The transcript, released by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), records a meeting between President John F.

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Possibly political motivation for space race 

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Possibly political motivation for space race 

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Who Was Yuri Gagarin? On board Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made history on April 12, 1961 when he became both the first person in the world to enter space and the first person to orbit the Earth.

Dates: March 9, 1934 -- March 27, 1968

Also Known As: Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, Yury Gagarin, Kedr (call sign)

Childhood of Yuri Gagarin

Yuri Gagarin was born in Klushino, a small village west of Moscow in Russia (then known as the Soviet Union).

Yuri was the third of four children and spent his childhood on a collective farm where his father, Alexey Ivanovich Gagarin, worked as a carpenter and bricklayer and his mother, Anna Timofeyevna Gagarina, worked as a milkmaid.

In 1941, Yuri Gagarin was just seven years old when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. Life was difficult during the war and the Gagarins were kicked out of their home. The Nazis also sent Yuri's two sisters to Germany to work as forced laborers.

Gagarin Learns to Fly

In school, Yuri Gagarin loved both mathematics and physics. He continued on to a trade school, where he learned to be a metalworker and then went on to an industrial school. It was at the industrial school in Saratov that he joined a flying club. Gagarin learned quickly and was obviously at ease in a plane. He made his first solo flight in 1955.

Since Gagarin had discovered a love of flying, he joined the Soviet Air Force.

Gagarin's skills led him to the Orenburg Aviation School where he learned to fly MiGs. On the same day he graduated from Orenburg with top honors in November 1957, Yuri Gagarin married his sweetheart, Valentina ("Valy") Ivanovna Goryacheva. (The couple eventually had two daughters together.)

After graduating, Gagarin was sent on some missions.

However, while Gagarin enjoyed being a fighter pilot, what he really wanted to do was to go to space. Since he had been following the Soviet Union's progress in space flight, he was confident that soon they would be sending a man into space. He wanted to be that man; so he volunteered to be a cosmonaut.

Gagarin Applies to Be a Cosmonaut

Yuri Gagarin was just one of 3,000 applicants to be the first Soviet cosmonaut. Out of this large pool of applicants, just 20 were chosen in 1960 to be the Soviet Union's first cosmonauts; Gagarin was one of the 20.

During the extensive physical and psychological testing required of the chosen cosmonaut trainees, Gagarin excelled at the tests while maintaining a calm demeanor as well as his sense of humor. Later, Gagarin would be chosen to be the first man into space because of these skills. (It also helped that he was short in stature since Vostok 1's capsule was small.) Cosmonaut trainee Gherman Titov was chosen to be the backup in case Gagarin was unable to make the first space flight.

Launch of Vostok 1

On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin boarded Vostok 1 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Although he was fully trained for the mission, no one knew if it was going to be a success or a failure.

Gagarin was to be the very first human being in space, truly going where no man had gone before.

Minutes before the launch, Gagarin gave a speech, which included:

You must realize that it is hard to express my feeling now that the test for which we have been training long and passionately is at hand. I don't have to tell you what I felt when it was suggested that I should make this flight, the first in history. Was it joy? No, it was something more than that. Pride? No, it was not just pride. I felt great happiness. To be the first to enter the cosmos, to engage single handed in an unprecedented duel with nature - could anyone dream of anything greater than that? But immediately after that I thought of the tremendous responsibility I bore: to be the first to do what generations of people had dreamed of; to be the first to pave the way into space for mankind. *

, with Yuri Gagarin inside, launched on schedule at 9:07 a.m. Moscow Time. Just after lift-off, Gagarin reputedly called out, "Poyekhali!" ("Off we go!")

Gagarin was rocketed into space, using an automated system. Gagarin did not control the spacecraft during his mission; however, in case of an emergency, Gagarin could have opened an envelope left on board for the override code. He was not given the controls to the spacecraft because many scientists were worried about the psychological effects of being in space (i.e. they were worried he would go mad).

After entering space, Gagarin completed a single orbit around Earth. The Vostok 1's top speed reached 28,260 kph (about 17,600 mph). At the end of the orbit, Vostok 1 reentered the Earth's atmosphere. When Vostok 1 was still about 7 km (4.35 miles) from the ground, Gagarin ejected (as planned) from the spacecraft and used a parachute to land safely.

From launch (at 9:07 a.m.) to Vostok 1 touching down on the ground (10:55 a.m.) was 108 minutes, a number often used to describe this mission. Gagarin landed safely with his parachute about ten minutes after Vostok 1. The calculation of 108 minutes is used because the fact that Gagarin ejected from the spacecraft and parachuted to the ground was kept secret for many years. (The Soviets did this to get around a technicality about how flights were officially recognized at the time.)

Right before Gagarin landed (near the village of Uzmoriye, near the Volga River), a local farmer and her daughter spotted Gagarin floating down with his parachute.

Once on the ground, Gagarin, dressed in an orange spacesuit and wearing a large white helmet, terrified the two women. It took Gagarin a few minutes to convince them that he too was Russian and to direct him to the nearest phone.

Gagarin Returns a Hero

Nearly as soon as Gagarin's feet touched the ground back on Earth, he became an international hero. His accomplishment was known around the globe. He had accomplished what no other human being had ever done before. Yuri Gagarin's successful flight into space paved the way for all future space exploration.

Gagarin's Early Death

After his successful first flight into space, Gagarin never again was sent into space. Instead, he helped train future cosmonauts. On March 27, 1968, Gagarin was test-piloting a MiG-15 fighter jet when the plane plummeted to the ground, killing Gagarin instantly.

For decades, people speculated about how Gagarin, an experienced pilot, could safely fly to space and back but die during a routine flight. Some thought he was drunk. Others believed that Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev wanted Gagarin dead because he was jealous of the cosmonaut's fame.

However, in June 2013, fellow cosmonaut, Alexey Leonov (the first man to space walk), revealed that the accident was caused by a Sukhoi fighter jet that had been flying too low. Traveling at supersonic speed, the jet flew perilously close to Gagarin's MiG, likely overturning the MiG with its backwash and sending Gagarin's MiG into a deep spiral.

Yuri Gagarin's death at the young age of 34 deprived the world of a hero.

* Yuri Gagarin as quoted in "Excerpts from Yuri Gagarin's speech before his departure on Vostok 1," Russian Archives Online. URL: http://www.russianarchives.com/gallery/gagarin/gagarin_speech.html
Date accessed: May 5, 2010

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Who Was Yuri Gagarin? On board Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made history on April 12, 1961 when he became both the first person in the world to enter space and the first person to orbit the Earth.

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I have shared a google doc with all of you. Its a scan of all of the books and stuff. It will automatically update when i take another scan

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I have shared a google doc with all of you. Its a scan of all of the books and stuff. It will automatically update when i take another scan

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jackcraiglovesmusic@gmail.com

Thomsonar13@gmail.com

kevinmj99@gmail.com

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Neil Armstrong - First Moon Landing 1969

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this is a place to grab links for our assessment, and research for our 1.1 history assessment