Topic: - 6-Part Round-up
As our angkasawan goes through the last rounds of preparation for the Oct 10 blast-off, The Star reviews the space age. In this first of a six-part series, we go back 50 years when man first ventured beyond the stratosphere.
ON Oct 4, 1957, an aluminium ball 60cm in diameter called Sputnik-1 stunned the world by shooting up through the skies to orbit the earth in the utter silence of outer space, marking the beginning of mankind’s space age.
In November of the same year, a dog named Laika was taken aboard Sputnik-2 and shot into space to become the first living being to venture into space and orbit the planet, thus paving the way for manned space flight that was to follow.
The success of the Sputnik missions also marked the beginning of the Space Race – the United States and the Soviet Union carried their political rivalry beyond the earth's horizons in a technological race to be pioneers in space exploration.
The Sputnik programme whipped the Americans into a frenzy of competition and they responded immediately by launching Explorer-1 in early 1958 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. This venture made an immense contribution to science as Explorer-1 carried a Geiger counter that detected belts of intense radiation around the earth.
A people's hero to this day, the then 27-year-old Gagarin orbited the planet on Vostok-1 on April 12, 1961, for a total of 108 minutes. (Gagarin died, aged 34, in a fighter-plane training accident.)
Meanwhile, the American response came in May 1958 when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (Nasa) Mercury programme sent its first astronaut, Alan Shepard (1923-1998), 186km from the earth's surface aboard Freedom 7 to travel 487km in 15 minutes before returning to earth.
Although Shepard's was not a full orbit, he did manage to control the spacecraft and manoeuvre the Mercury capsule himself, whereas Gagarin's capsule was under ground control throughout his trip.
Mercury's seven astronauts in training were feted as national heroes, and they included Shepard, Gus Grissom (1926-1967) and John Glenn (1921-), all of whom were instrumental in the success of the Gemini programme that was to come.
Not to be outdone, the Soviets launched Vostok-2 in August of the same year to carry Gherman Titov (1935-2000) through 17 orbits and a full 24 hours in space. Later in the month, Vostok-3 and Vostok-4 were launched within 24 hours of each other and passed within 5km of each other in orbit in what is recognised as the first space rendezvous.
Thanks to the Gemini 12 programme that followed, beginning in 1965, Nasa was able to assess the feasibility of sending multi-crewed spacecraft into space and practice space flight techniques that would ultimately be used to send man to the moon.
The competition between the two nations was so fierce that the Russians decided to accelerate their own multi-crew test missions and thrust three men into space aboard Voskhod-1 without spacesuits in October 1964! Luckily, they returned safely back to earth.
The second Voskhod mission in March 1965 achieved another first when cosmonaut Alexei Leonov (1934-) stepped out of his orbiting spacecraft and performed the world's first space walk, floating in space for 10 minutes while tethered to his craft.
Leonov was also slated to perform the first moonwalk, and as he practised on simulated lunar surfaces in the Soviet Union, American astronaut Neil Armstrong (1930-) was doing the same in the United States. Armstrong would, of course, go on to win this race.
Before this, the Gemini missions, specifically Gemini-8 up until Gemini-12, successfully saw the first dockings and the first space walks for Nasa, and basically tested the spacecraft and astronauts to their limits in preparation for the Apollo programme that would finally take Armstrong to the moon.
On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 shuttled Armstrong, Michael Collins (1930-) and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (1930-) to the moon, where Armstrong and Aldrin become the first men to walk on its surface. The rest, as they say, is history. There have been four more voyages to the moon since (Apollo 14-17) with the last taking place in 1972.
The Apollo 13 mission in 1970, of course, was the one that famously avoid disaster narrowly thanks to Nasa's engineers; the incident was the subject of the eponymous 1995 Ron Howard movie that starred Tom Hanks.
With the United States having conquered the moon, the Soviet Union switched its attention to the building and maintenance of space stations – orbiting laboratories in which long-term research can be carried out not only on the various possibilities of human life in space but also on how space technology could benefit humankind.
Early Soviet space stations, including Salyut and Mir, made this possible in the 1970s and 1980s. The Americans, of course, joined that battle, too, launching Skylab in 1973.
Currently, the International Space Station (ISS) is the most ambitious project, a joint venture between 16 nations.
The ISS, which represents the cutting edge of space technology, is serviced today by none other than the Soviet Soyuz programme, which began in 1967.
It's still going strong, having been modified and updated several times. For instance, the Soyuz TM was developed to transport crew to the Mir space station, and currently the Soyuz TMA services the ISS.
It is to the ISS that one of our two angkasawan, Dr Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor Al Masrie and Kapt Dr Faiz Khaleed, will be heading.
Dr Sheikh Muszaphar says the Malaysian angkasawan's role on the station will be crucial because "There are so many scientific experiments to conduct". In the future, he thinks, space station experiments could find the cure for cancer, for osteoporosis and for other diseases, all for the benefit of humankind.
For Dr Faiz, it is the teamwork that captures his imagination: "The ISS is a joint venture between so many countries, with all their people working together in one place. Space stations are testament to the fact that unity is key to achieving dreams".
Man's space age has come full circle: born of the fierce competition between two nations, it is now, arguably, the best example of cooperation between the planet's nations.
Source: The Star Online