Historical Figures

The First Man on The Moon Neil Armstrong was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio, on August 5, 1930. After serving in the Korean War and then finishing college, he joined the organization that would become NASA. He joined the astronaut program in 1962 and was command pilot for his first mission, Gemini VIII, in 1966. He… Read more »

The First Man in Space In April 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s spacecraft Vostok I was launched at 9:07, orbited Earth once and landed at 10:55 in the Soviet Union. His spaceflight brought him immediate worldwide fame. Gagarin was awarded the Order of Lenin and given the titles Hero of the Soviet Union and Pilot Cosmonaut of… Read more »

The Rocket Man Wernher von Braun was one of the most important German weapons specialists to work on rocketry and jet propulsion in the U.S. after WWII. He disapproved of military use of the rocket and surrendered willingly to American troops in 1945, eventually becoming technical director of the U.S. Army Ordnance Guided Missile Project… Read more »

Second Man on The Moon Buzz Aldrin was born on January 20, 1930, in Montclair, New Jersey. His father, a colonel in the U.S. Air Force, encouraged his interest in flight. Aldrin became a fighter pilot and flew in the Korean War. In 1963, he was selected by NASA for the next Gemini mission. In… Read more »

The First Woman in Space After the flight of Yuri Gagarin in 1961, Sergey Korolyov, the chief Soviet rocket engineer, came up with the idea of putting a woman in space. On 16 February 1962, Valentina Tereshkova was selected to join the female cosmonaut corps. Out of more than four hundred applicants, five were selected:… Read more »

An American Pioneer Alan Shepard was born on November 18, 1923, in New Hampshire. In 1959, Shepard became one of the original seven Mercury program astronauts. In May 1961, 23 days after Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit Earth, Shepard made a 15-minute suborbital flight that reached an altitude of 115 miles. He… Read more »

An American Hero John Glenn Jr. was born on July 18, 1921 in Cambridge, Ohio. A Marine pilot, he was selected in 1959 for Project Mercury astronaut training. He became a backup pilot for Alan B. Shepard Jr. and Virgil “Gus” Grissom, who made the first two U.S. suborbital flights into space. Glenn was selected… Read more »