Remember half a century ago

Yuri Gagarin

50 years ago, as american astronauts were getting ready to take their first flight up there around the earth and several monkeys and other animals had been sent already (successfully or not), Yuri Gagarin became the first human to ever enter orbit on april 12th 1961.
He flew in a capsule named Vostok 1 at an average height of 250 km completing a full revolution around the Earth in one hour and 48 minutes.
Since then, 520 men and women from 38 countries went into space. They were carried by russian, american and since 2003, chinese vehicles (India should launch its first manned flight in 2015).


After his, other milestones have been passed, the first woman in space, 26 years old Valentina Tereshkova, flew on the Vostok 6 mission in 1963.
Then came the first men on the moon, Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins. They landed onboard Apollo 11 and spent for 2 hours and 30 minutes on the moon over a 195 hours long mission.
The Apollo 13 mission (1970), famous for Jim Lovell's "Houston, we've had a problem". Due to this incident (explosion in the oxygen tank) they did not land on the moon, but travelled around it, 248 655 miles away from Earth, farthest distance travelled away from our planet by a human.
When will we see the first human land on Mars? Maybe by 2030. Who will be the lucky chosen one?

Edwin Aldrin photographed by Neil Armstrong