- The lost cosmonauts – There are claims that the Soviet Union launched a manned spaceflight before Yuri Gagarin’s historic flight in 1961, but the cosmonauts aboard the spacecraft died, and the mission was covered up. Although these claims remain unverified, they continue to fascinate space enthusiasts.
2. The Apollo 11 Quarantine – After returning from the moon, the Apollo 11 astronauts were put into quarantine to prevent the spread of any potential lunar diseases. The quarantine lasted for 21 days and was conducted in a specially-designed facility called the Lunar Receiving Laboratory.
3. The Venera program – The Soviet Union’s Venera program sent a series of unmanned probes to Venus in the 1960s and 1970s, making it the first successful mission to another planet. The probes took photos and collected data, but they also faced extreme temperatures and pressures that caused them to fail relatively quickly.
4. The Skylab mutiny – In 1973, the crew of the Skylab space station staged a mutiny in response to their workload and living conditions. The incident led to changes in astronaut training and the management of future missions.
5. The Cassini-Huygens mission – In 2005, the Cassini spacecraft dropped a lander named Huygens onto the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan. Huygens transmitted data for about 90 minutes, giving scientists the first-ever glimpse of the moon’s surface.
6. The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project – In 1975, the United States and Soviet Union conducted a joint space mission called the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. The mission was seen as a symbol of détente during the Cold War and paved the way for future international cooperation in space.
7. The space chimp – Before humans went into space, animals were sent to test the safety of space travel. In 1961, a chimpanzee named Ham became the first non-human primate to survive a trip to space.
8. The Soviet Mars probes – The Soviet Union attempted to send several spacecraft to Mars in the 1970s, but all of them failed. The most famous of these missions was the Mars 3 probe, which became the first spacecraft to land on Mars, but only transmitted data for 20 seconds before going silent.
9. The Galileo probe – In 1995, the Galileo spacecraft dropped a probe into Jupiter’s atmosphere, making it the first spacecraft to enter the atmosphere of a gas giant planet. The probe collected data for about an hour before being destroyed by the intense heat and pressure.
10. The “space pen” – Despite popular belief, NASA did not spend millions of dollars developing a pen that could write in space. Instead, the Fisher Space Pen was independently developed by Paul Fisher in the 1960s and was later used by NASA because it could write in zero gravity and in extreme temperatures.