Sputnik 1
The Soviet Union (AKA Russia) sent the first artificial satellite named Sputnik 1. They launched it in a low earth orbit in 1957. It was visible to all of earth and the radio pulses coming off of it were detectable. The satellite traveled about 29,00 km per hour and took about 96 minutes to make an orbit around the earth. The signals coming off of Sputnik 1 continued for 22 days before the transmitter batteries ran out. Sputnik 1 burned up on January 4, 1958 after it had spent about 3 months in the earths orbit.
Laika
Russia also send a dog named Laika into space. They didn’t know much about the impact on life in spaceflight and the technology for de-orbiting was not yet invented, so they didn’t expect Laika to survive. Some scientists believed that life would not survive the impact in spaceflight in the launch or outer space. Laika went up in Sputnik 2 but before she went, she had to go through training against two other dogs and was chosen. Before she was chosen she was a stray dog and her original name was Kudryavka which in Russian is Кудрявка and it means little curly. Sputnik 2 was launched into outer space on November 3, 1957, Laika died after six days of being space after her oxygen ran out. They did not report the actual time and cause of her death until 2002. Russia claimed that she was killed from oxygen depletion and that the experiment was to prove that a living passenger could be sent into space.
Yuri Gagarin
When Yuri was seven years old the Nazi’s invaded Russia and the Gagarin family were sent out of their home and his two sisters were sent to Germany to work as forced laborers . When he went to school Yuri found out that he loved mathematics and physics. He continued onto trade school to be a metalworker and then later into industrial school. During industrial school he joined a flying club and made his first solo flight in 1955. After he found his love for flying, he joined the Soviet Air Force which led him to the Orenberg Aviation School where he learned to fly MiG planes and graduated from Orenburg with top honors. While Yuri was applying to be a cosmonaut there were 3,000 applicants, but only 20 were chosen. After the 20 were chosen, they cut the number down to 2. Yuri who was one of the 2 was the one going into space, but they had a backup just in case Yuri couldn't make the trip. The backup person was Gherman Titov. On April 12, 1961, Yuri boarded the Vostok 1. After his flight he was ejected out of the spacecraft and parachuted down to earth.
In 2011
In 2011 a Proton-M booster rocket was launched and failed to place two communications satellites into targeting orbits. After following several other failing launches, Medvedev said that the failure could have been “traditional sloppiness”. Russia has suffered humiliating failures due to manufacturing flaws and engineering mistakes in the rockets. They had a robotic probe for the study of a moon from mars that was launched in November but came crashing down in January.
Resources
http://www.google.com/search?q=Russian+proton+m+booster&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=fflb#hl=en&safe=active&client=firefox-a&hs=UuK&tbo=d&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&channel=fflb&sclient=psy-ab&q=russian+rocket&oq=russian+rocket&gs_l=serp.3..0l4.17491.25255.0.25619.25.11.11.3.4.0.173.1218.5j6.11.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.n6yLKNURgp0&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&bvm=bv.41642243,d.aWM&fp=bc63f939d713789e&biw=1480&bih=1088
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laika
http://history1900s.about.com/od/1960s/a/yurigagarin.htm
www.fotopedia.com
www.flickr.com
www.flickr.com
http://www.google.com/search?q=Russian+proton+m+booster&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=fflb#hl=en&safe=active&client=firefox-a&hs=UuK&tbo=d&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&channel=fflb&sclient=psy-ab&q=russian+rocket&oq=russian+rocket&gs_l=serp.3..0l4.17491.25255.0.25619.25.11.11.3.4.0.173.1218.5j6.11.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.n6yLKNURgp0&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&bvm=bv.41642243,d.aWM&fp=bc63f939d713789e&biw=1480&bih=1088
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laika
http://history1900s.about.com/od/1960s/a/yurigagarin.htm
www.fotopedia.com
www.flickr.com
www.flickr.com