Jordan Primus May 15, 1998 Mr. McCarthy Accelerated World History The Russian Space Program First came Sputnik, the first artificial satellite of Earth. Sputnik was followed by Laika, the first animal in space. Then came Gagarin, first man in space. Valentina Tereshkova, first woman in space, not long afterward. All of these are examples of things that the Soviet Union accomplished before the United States in the ÒSpace RaceÓ. True, the United States may have been the first to land a man on the moon, but a Russian spacecraft was the first object from Earth to land on the moon. For several decades, the Russians held a definite advantage over the United StatesÕ space program.
October 4, 1957: Sputnik I (English ÒtravelerÓ or Òfellow travelerÓ) is launched. All around the world people could tune their radios and hear the distinctive Òbeep...beepÓ transmitted by the orbiting sphere. People in the United States were terrified that the Soviets had a ÒDoomsday DeviceÓ, while in fact, the 187 lb. sphere was simply proof that the Soviets could achieve what was thought to be, at the beginning of the century, impossible. (http://www.batnet.com/mfwright/mfwright/ sputnik.html)
Sputnik I was far from the climax of Soviet space endeavors. The next satellite the Soviets sent up, Sputnik II, carried Laika, perhaps the most famed dog of the Soviet state. Laika has the honor of being the first animal to be carried into orbit, but also carries the darker reverence of being the first animal to perish in space. Laika was soon followed by Chernuska, Belka and Strelka, as well as other animals such as mice, frogs, and rabbits. (Osman 51) But all of this testing was simply leading up to what might be the crowning achievment of the Soviet space program. They were going to put a man into space.
April 12, 1961: Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man to leave EarthÕs atmosphere. Gagarin was awarded the Hero of Russia medal, as well as dozens of other military and civilian commendations. From this point forward, the cosmonauts would become possibly the primary focus of the Russian people. Statues of the first cosmonauts were erected in a plaza outside of Star City, the Soviet Space Training facility. Unfortunately, in 1968, Yuri Gagarin was killed in a MiG-15 training jet crash. Other tragedies plagued the Soviets. Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov will go down in the annals of history as the first man to die in a space program. Komarov was the pilot of the first of a new generation of spacecraft, the Soyuz series. Soyuz 1 was aloft for just over 30 hours, and when it returned to earth, the drag parachutes became tangled and Komarov died on impact. (http://solar.rtd.utk.edu/~mwade/spaceflt.htm) But another ÒfirstÓ accomplished by the Soviets was to launch the first woman into space. Valentina Tereshkova was one of the first women to enter into the cosmonaut program, and on June 16, 1963, became the first of those women to enter space. Alexei Leonov became the first man to exit his spacecraft and go on a ÒspacewalkÓ, in 1965. (Riasanovsky 639)
Some of the greatest accomplishments of the Soviet space program came from their use of dozens of unmanned probes. The Russians launched the first moon rocket, Lunik 1, on January 2, 1959, and in the same year, were the first to take photographs of the dark side of the moon. (Riasanovsky 639). The Russians were also the first to land a probe, Venera 8, on the sunward side of Venus, although it lasted less than an hour. Zond 5, launched in 1968, was the first spacecraft to travel around the moon autonomous from ground control. Also, while the Viking probes were the first probes from the United States to reach the surface of Mars, they were not the first spacecrafts from Earth to land on the Martian surface. The Mars 3 probe, launched in 1971, was the first craft to make a soft landing on Martian soil and transmit video back to Earth.
Possibly the main focus of the Russians in Star City was to create a permanant space station.