Here is an interesting fact for you. At the time of writing, this only 536 have ever been into space! That is not a lot at all, but someone had to start it off and these ten people you are about to read about where the very first people to have gone into space…
Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova
10 – Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova – Date of space flight: 16-19 June 1963
Wiki Info: Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova is a retired Russian cosmonaut, engineer, and politician. She is the first woman to have flown in space, having been selected from more than 400 applicants and five finalists to pilot Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963. She completed 48 orbits of the Earth in her three days in space. In order to join the Cosmonaut Corps, Tereshkova was honorarily inducted into the Soviet Air Force and thus she also became the first civilian to fly in space.
Valery Fyodorovich Bykovsky
9 – Valery Fyodorovich Bykovsky – Date of space flight: 14-19 June 1963
Wiki Info: Bykovsky was the son of Fyodor Fyodorovich Bykovsky and Klavdia Ivanova. At age 14 Valery wanted to attend naval school; however, his father was not a proponent of this idea and encouraged him to stay at his school. A few days later Valery listened to a lecture regarding the Soviet Air Force Club that inspired him to pursue his dream of becoming a pilot. Following this lecture, Valery would begin flight theory lessons when he turned 16 at the Moscow City Aviation Club.
Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr
8 – Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr. – Date of space flight: 15-16th May 1963
Wiki Info: Leroy Gordon “Gordo” Cooper Jr. was an American aerospace engineer, test pilot, United States Air Force pilot, and one of the seven original astronauts in Project Mercury, the first manned space program of the United States. Cooper piloted the longest and final Mercury spaceflight in 1963. He was the first American to sleep in space during that 34-hour mission and was the last American to be launched alone to conduct an entirely solo orbital mission. In 1965, Cooper flew as Command Pilot of Gemini 5.
Walter Marty Schirra Jr.
7 – Walter Marty Schirra Jr. – Date of space flight: 3rd October 1963
Wiki Info: Walter Marty “Wally” Schirra Jr. was an American naval officer and aviator, aeronautical engineer, test pilot, and one of the original seven astronauts chosen for Project Mercury, United States first effort to put humans in space. He flew the six-orbit, nine-hour Mercury-Atlas 8 mission on October 3, 1962. In the two-man Gemini program, he achieved the first space rendezvous, station-keeping his Gemini 6A spacecraft within 1 foot (30 cm) of the sister Gemini 7 spacecraft in December 1965.
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Pavel Romanovich Popovich
6 – Pavel Romanovich Popovich – Date of space flight: 12-15th August 1962
Wiki Info: He was born in Uzyn, Kiev Oblast of Soviet Union to Roman Porfirievich Popovich (a fireman in a sugar factory) and Theodosia Kasyanovna Semyonov. He had two sisters (one older, one younger) and two brothers. During World War II, the Germans occupied Uzyn, and burned documents including Popovich’s birth certificate. After the war, these were restored through witness testimony, and although his mother knew that he was born in 1929, two witnesses insisted that Popovich was born in 1930, and so this became his official year of birth.
Andriyan Grigoryevich Nikolayev
5 – Andriyan Grigoryevich Nikolayev – Date of space flight: 11-15th August 1962
Wiki Info: Andrian Grigoryevich Nikolayev was born on September 5, 1929 in Sorseli, a village in the Chuvash region of the Volga River valley, and spent his time growing up on a collective farm. Nikolayev loved the idea of flying even as a child. When he was young boy Nikolayev’s interest in flying manifested itself in that he climbed trees with his friends and claimed he would take flight from there. These behaviors were not encouraged by the villagers and Nikolayev did not take flight from any trees.
Malcolm Scott Carpenter
4 – Malcolm Scott Carpenter – Date of space flight: 24th May 1962
Wiki Info: Born May 1, 1925, in Boulder, Colorado, Carpenter moved to New York City with his parents Marion Scott Carpenter and Florence Kelso Carpenter for the first 3 years of his life. His father had been awarded a postdoctoral research post at Columbia University. In the summer of 1927, Scott returned to Boulder with his mother, then ill with tuberculosis. He was raised by his maternal grandparents in the family home at the corner of Aurora Avenue and Seventh Street, until his graduation from Boulder High School in 1943.
John Herschel Glenn Jr
3 – John Herschel Glenn Jr. – Date of space flight: 20th February 1962
Wiki Info: He was one of the Mercury Seven, military test pilots selected in 1959 by NASA as the United States’ first astronauts. On February 20, 1962, Glenn flew the Friendship 7 mission, becoming the first American to orbit the Earth, and the fifth person and third American in space. He received the NASA Distinguished Service Medal in 1962 and the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1990, and was the last surviving member of the Mercury Seven.
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Gherman Stepanovich Titov
2 – Gherman Stepanovich Titov – Date of space flight: 6-7th August 1961
Wiki Info: Titov’s flight finally proved that humans could live and work in space. He was the first person to orbit the Earth multiple times to spend more than a day in space, to sleep in orbit and to suffer from space sickness. In fact, he also holds the record for being the first person to vomit in space. He was the first to pilot a spaceship personally and he made the first manual photographs from orbit, thus setting a record for modern space photography. He also was the first person to film the Earth using, for ten minutes, a professional quality Konvas-Avtomat movie camera.
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin
1 – Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin – Date of space flight: 12th April 1961
Wiki Info: Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He was the first human to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961. Gagarin became an international celebrity and was awarded many medals and titles, including Hero of the Soviet Union, the nation’s highest honour. Vostok 1 marked his only spaceflight, but he served as backup crew to the Soyuz 1 mission (which ended in a fatal crash).