Sputnik 1, launched on October 4, 1957, by the USSR, weighed a mere 184 pounds. The beachball- size sphere was the first artificial satellite, and its launch triggered the space race. (All photos courtesy NASA unless otherwise indicated)
On November 3, 1957, a month after Sputnik 1 went up, the first living being to orbit the Earth was launched into space aboard Sputnik 2. Laika died within hours from overheating and stress.
in The V-2 rocket developed by Wernher von Braun’s team at Peenemünde was the first longrange guided ballistic missile. (Author's Collection)
The V-2 was capable of inflicting horrific damage—this photo shows the results of the last one to hit London, on March 27, 1945. (Author’s collection)
Von Braun (center, with cast) surrendered to the U.S. Army on May 2, 1945. At left is Charles Stewart, CIC agent; Magnus von Braun is at right in leather jacket. The others are members of von Braun’s rocket team.
When von Braun and his rocketeers were brought into the U.S. as part of Operation Paperclip (above, with von Braun in the first row, seventh from the right), they spent years assembling and launching V-2s, built from parts shipped from Germany, and improving their rocket expertise. The Redstone and Jupiter missiles were essentially larger V-2s with extra stages.
On January 31, 1958, von Braun’s Redstone launched the first American satellite, Explorer 1. At a celebratory press conference, von Braun (right) raises a model of the rocket with Jet Propulsion Laboratory director William Pickering (left) and scientist James Van Allen.
Bob Gilruth (right), an inspiring manager as well as a brilliant aeronautical engineer, was picked to head the fledgling Space Task Group; Chris Kraft (left), who did more than anyone to create the space-age Mission Control Center, was among its first members.
The idiosyncratic designer Max Faget, seen here in his navy whites during World War II, when he served as executive officer on a submarine. (Courtesy Carol Faget)
The Mercury Seven, the test pilots chosen to battle the Red Menace (from left to right): Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton.
Once the astronauts began staying at the Cape’s Starlite Motel, with its spacethemed lounge, it quickly became a Cocoa Beach hot spot. (Author’s collection)
Nurse Dee O’Hara, seen here with John Glenn, was hired to attend to the Mercury Seven’s medical needs. She stayed with the manned spaceflight program through the early seventies.
Sergei Korolev (left), shown here in 1956 with academician Mstislav Keldysh, was the lead rocket engineer and spacecraft designer for the Soviet space program until his untimely death in January 1966. Keldysh would later play a part in the Apollo 8 mission. (Alamy)
The diminutive (five-two) Yuri Gagarin (left), shown here with Korolev, was the first human in space and, on April 12, 1961, in Vostok 1, the first to orbit the Earth. (Author’s collection)
Headlines like this one blared from every newspaper in the U.S. the next morning. (Author’s collection)
Ham was one of several chimps who flew into space before their astronaut counterparts. His January 31, 1961, flight on a Mercury-Redstone assured NASA officials that it would be safe for a human to fly.
On May 5, 1961—twenty-five days after Gagarin’s flight—Alan Shepard became the first American in space. His Mercury craft Freedom 7 was boosted into space by one of von Braun’s Redstone rockets. Shepard reached an altitude of 101 miles in a flight that lasted fifteen minutes.
Three days later, President John F. Kennedy presented Shepard with NASA’s Distinguished Service Medal in a Rose Garden ceremony at the White House. NASA administrator Jim Webb, at Kennedy’s left shoulder, looks on.
On May 25, 1961, three weeks after Shepard’s successful mission, President Kennedy stood before Congress and threw down a massive challenge: “This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”
Suit technician Joe Schmitt (left) prepares Gus Grissom for his July 21, 1961, Liberty Bell 7 mission, a virtual repeat of Shepard’s fifteen-minute flight.
Mercury Control Center at Cape Canaveral, here seen during John Glenn’s February 20, 1962, flight, was a relatively simple setup. The mission’s three orbits are plotted on the screen.
Scott Carpenter’s May 24, 1962, mission was essentially the same as Glenn’s, but Carpenter ran afoul of Chris Kraft, who vowed he would never fly again. Carpenter never did.
Wally Schirra, seen here with pad leader Guenter Wendt, “Der Pad Führer,” flew his Sigma 7, a textbook engineering flight, on October 3, 1962
Only Cooper’s superb piloting allowed Faith 7 to splash down safely on May 16, 1963, after urine short-circuited several systems.
Valentina Tereshkova, a former textile-factory worker and amateur skydiver, was chosen from five “cosmonettes” to be the first woman in space on Vostok 6, launched June 16, 1963. Before the flight, she was inducted as a lieutenant into the Soviet air force and later promoted to the rank of major (as shown here, in 1969). (Courtesy RIA Novosti)
“Missile Row” in 1964 on the Cape’s Merritt Island, looking north. NASA shared Cape Canaveral with the air force, and the first few (lower) sites visible were air force nuclear launchpads, followed by Mercury and Gemini sites, with midconstruction Apollo complexes in the far distance.
John Young (left) and Gus Grissom in the Gemini simulator.
Grissom and Young crewed the first manned Gemini flight on March 23, 1965. During three revolutions around the Earth, they demonstrated that, with its more powerful thruster jets, the new spacecraft could change orbit.
Voskhod 1, launched October 13, 1964, was the first spacecraft to carry more than one crewman. The cosmonauts are shown here after their twenty-four-hour mission (left to right): Vladimir Komarov, Boris Yegorov, and Konstantin Feoktistov. The craft was a Vostok cabin with two extra seats added and the ejection seat thrown out; there was so little room that the cosmonauts did not wear spacesuits.
Alexei Leonov, during the flight of Voskhod 2, became the first human to conduct an EVA (extravehicular activity) on March 18, 1965. After the twelve-minute space walk, his suit became overinflated and he couldn’t fit through the tight air lock; he had to bleed off some air to get in. (Courtesy Fédération Aéronautique International)
On June 3, 1965, just seven weeks after Leonov’s EVA, Ed White spent twenty minutes outside his Gemini 5 spacecraft, maneuvering with a gas-jet gun. He enjoyed it so much that he had to be coaxed back in.
On December 15, 1965, Gemini 7 and Gemini 6 (shown here in a photograph taken from the window of Gemini 7) performed the first space rendezvous of two spacecraft, another important step needed before NASA could land a man on the moon.
With the objective of studying the effects of long-duration spaceflight on humans, Gemini 7 orbited the Earth for fourteen days. When they splashed down safely on December 18, 1965, crewmen Jim Lovell (left) and Frank Borman were no worse for the wear save for some initial weakness after two weeks of inactivity.
Neil Armstrong, commander of the Gemini 8, had also flown the experimental X-15 (shown here) seven times.
Gemini 8, crewed by Armstrong and Dave Scott, performed the first hard docking in space with this Agena target vehicle (shown here forty-five feet away) on March 16, 1966. Thirty minutes later, they went into a wild corkscrew spin from which they barely escaped.
Armstrong (inside capsule, on right) and Scott had to make an emergency landing in the Pacific. With the hatches open, the crew and three air force pararescuemen await the recovery ship.
Michael Collins found his July 20, 1966, EVA during Gemini 10 more difficult than he’d expected.
John Houbolt, an engineer at NASA’s Langley Research Center, was the leading proponent of the lunar-orbit rendezvous mode of landing on the moon when almost everyone else doubted it could work. His tireless evangelizing for LOR eventually won over even his harshest critics.
Gemini 12, launched November 15, 1966, was the final mission of the program. Buzz Aldrin used the experience of previous EVAs, his underwater training in neutral buoyancy (shown here), and many hand- and footholds and rails to perform three successful EVAs for a total of five and a half hours.
Gus Grissom (right) would once again command the first voyage of a new spacecraft. He and his crewmates, Ed White (center) and Roger Chaffee—shown here in the Apollo command module—knew their ship had problems but soldiered on.
All three astronauts died in a cabin fire during a plugs-out rehearsal on the launchpad on January 27, 1967, just three weeks before the mission’s official launch date (spacecraft interior shown at left). The tragedy almost scuttled the Apollo program.
At the Senate committee hearings on the fire, several top NASA officials testified (left to right): Deputy administrator Dr. Robert Seamans; administrator Jim Webb; associate administrator for Manned Space Flight Dr. George Mueller; and Apollo program director Major General Samuel Phillips.
Three months after the Apollo 1 fire, the Soviet program endured its own tragedy. Vladimir Komarov was selected to crew the first manned test flight of the new Soyuz spacecraft, launched on April 23, 1967. He was killed during reentry when his parachutes and retro-rockets failed and the capsule crashed. Fellow Soviet officers viewed his remains at an open-casket funeral. (Courtesy RIA Novosti)
Von Braun with the four massive F-1 engines of a Saturn V first-stage test vehicle, which would generate 7.6 million pounds of thrust.
The Apollo 7 crew named to replace Grissom, White, and Chaffee on the first manned flight of the redesigned Apollo spacecraft: Walt Cunningham, Donn Eisele, and Commander Wally Schirra. Their successful October 1968 mission proved the overhauled Apollo command-service module was spaceworthy.
This U.S. Air Force September 19, 1968, spy-plane photo of the Baikonur cosmodrome confirmed the existence of the massive N-1 booster designed to take a cosmonaut to the moon.
The decision to send the next flight around the moon was a daring one. The iconic “Earthrise,” as this photo of Earth rising over the lunar surface came to be called, was taken by Apollo 8’s Bill Anders on December 24, 1968.
Apollo 9, launched March 3, 1969, was an Earth-orbit mission whose primary objective was to test the lunar module in space. This photo taken from the LM shows the command-service module just prior to docking.
Apollo 10, launched May 18, 1969, was essentially a dress rehearsal for Apollo 11— everything except for the lunar landing. This photo taken from the command module shows the LM dropping down to orbit the moon just eight miles above its surface.
On May 6, 1968, Armstrong narrowly escaped death when the LLRV trainer he was piloting malfunctioned and pitched sideways two hundred feet above the ground. Armstrong’s ejection seat blasted him away (bottom left) before the LLRV crashed and exploded.
Armstrong and Aldrin in the LM simulator at Cape Kennedy on July 11, 1969.
The LM simulator in Houston, with technicians at left.
The “Great Train Wreck”: the Apollo command-module simulator at the Cape.
The traditional steak-and-eggs breakfast on the morning of the launch of Apollo 11 (left to right): Bill Anders, Armstrong, Collins, Aldrin, and Deke Slayton.
Armstrong (foreground) and Collins, followed by a technician, cross the access walkway to the command module.
Apollo 11 launches at 9:32 a.m. EDT on July 16, 1969, from pad A, launch complex 39.
Thousands of reporters watched from the press site three miles away as Apollo 11 launched.
The launch team rise to watch as Apollo 11 clears the tower. Deke Slayton is in the second row in the dark pullover shirt.
At a July 18 pool party at the Armstrong house, (left to right) Jan Armstrong, Pat Collins, and Joan Aldrin meet the press on the front lawn. (AP)
Mission Control during the Apollo 11 landing.
The flight dynamics staff-support room during Apollo 11. Jack Garman, wearing a dark jacket, sits second from left in the front row.
Garman (shown here on the right receiving an award from Chris Kraft after Apollo 8) was a computer whiz kid, only twenty-four during Apollo 11.
Though it had the equivalent of only 72 kilobytes of memory, the rope-wired Apollo guidance computer was extremely reliable.
Jack Garman’s cheat sheet, which he consulted to make sure the 1201 and 1202 alarms would not impede the landing. (Courtesy of Jenny Arkinson and Mary Garman)
Flight controller Steve Bales would be on the hot seat when alarms began going off during the Apollo 11 LM descent.
(left to right) CapCom Charlie Duke and backup crew members Jim Lovell and Fred Haise during the lunar landing on July 20, 1969.
The Apollo 11 landing site on the Sea of Tranquility, moments before the LM landing, in a photo taken from an LM window. The landing site is just this side of the edge of darkness, about a third of the way from the right side of the photo
Aldrin takes the first step onto the moon’s surface.
Armstrong during the lunar surface EVA, standing near the LM.
Gene Kranz (left) behind flight directors Glynn Lunney (center) and Cliff Charlesworth during the Apollo 11 EVA.
Aldrin took this photo of a tired but happy Armstrong in the LM after their moonwalk.
The LM ascent stage rises from the lunar surface to dock with the command-service module, with the Earth in the background.
After the Apollo 11’s successful splashdown at 11:49 a.m. CDT on July 24, the Mission Control staff celebrated. In the back row are (from left) Max Faget and NASA officials George Trimble, George Low, Chris Kraft, Julian Scheer, Bob Gilruth, and Charles Matthews.
President Richard Nixon greets the three Apollo 11 astronauts on the USS Hornet, the prime recovery ship. The crew is in the Mobile Quarantine Facility to avoid the potential spread of moon germs.
New Yorkers welcomed the Apollo 11 crew in a record-tonnage ticker-tape parade on August 13, 1969.
Forty-three years later, in 2012, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this photo of the Apollo 11 landing site from fifteen miles above the surface. The LM descent stage is clearly visible, and the dark lines are the tracks made by the astronauts as they walked around the area setting up experiments and visiting a crater fifty yards to the east. (NASA/GSFC/ Arizona State)