Human spaceflight missions have now been performed by USSR/Russia, USA, China, and by Scaled Composites. Several other countries and agencies, including India, have announced human spaceflight programmes. India had planned its first mission in 2014-15; however, this is likely to be delayed for some time because of a series of unsuccessful tests of the crucial GSLV

On April 12, 1961, the world was stunned by the news that cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin of the USSR had become the first human to cross the threshold of the final frontier—Space. Gagarin’s Vostok 1 spacecraft blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome, successfully completed one orbit of the Earth and returned safely in 108 minutes. Four years prior to this, the USSR had launched the first unmanned satellite Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, heralding the dawn of the space age. While a major part of the world celebrated the achievements, the other superpower, the USA, was filled with a sense of foreboding, even depression. It was during the height of the Cold War rivalry and the Cuban missile crisis was also building up behind the scenes. For the Americans, it was not a happy thought that the Soviets had done it first. However, the US did follow suit on May 5, 1961, when Freedom 7, carrying astronaut Alan Sheppard, was launched from Cape Canaveral. The suborbital flight lasted just 15 minutes 28 seconds—the shortest spaceflight till date. The American public was, however, alarmed that the USSR was surging ahead in the space race. So on May 25, 1961, the US President John F. Kennedy announced an ambitious plan to land a man on the moon by 1970. On February 20, 1962, with the launch of Friendship 7, John Glenn became the first American to go into the orbit.

The era of solo spaceflights peaked when cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky spent five days in space alone on Vostok 5, launched on June 14, 1963. It remains the longest solo spaceflight ever. In another pioneering feat, the USSR launched the world’s first woman cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova into space in Vostok 6 on June 16, 1963. This mission is likely to remain forever in the record books as the only solo spaceflight by a female. However, it was purely a propaganda stunt, because almost two decades passed before the second Soviet woman ventured into space. On March 18, 1965, cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first human to walk in space during the Voskhod 2 mission. In what was becoming a pattern—the Soviets first, followed by the Americans—the first American spacewalk was performed a few months later by astronaut Edward White during the Gemini 4 mission on June 4, 1965.

The 1960s also witnessed the initial space disasters. As the two superpowers raced to be the first to achieve various space milestones, design defects may have been ignored and some shortcuts taken. On hindsight, accidents were inevitable. On January 27, 1967, the entire three-man crew of the US Apollo 1 were killed in a fire that engulfed their cabin during a ground test. Then on April 24, 1967, cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was killed in a crash when his landing parachutes tangled after his Soyuz 1 mission was cut short by electrical and control system problems. This was the first publicly acknowledged in-flight fatality in the history of spaceflight. But several triumphs followed the twin tragedies. On December 21, 1968, the US Apollo 8 took off atop the powerful Saturn V with three astronauts aboard for a historic mission to orbit the moon. It was the first human spaceflight to leave the earth’s orbit and an impressive demonstration of the US technology. The USSR too was secretly pursuing a moon landing programme. It conducted a successful joint flight of Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 in January 1969 in order to test the vital rendezvous, docking and crew-transfer techniques that would be necessary for the moon landing. Later, the LK lunar landing craft was also tested successfully in the earth orbit. However, after four unmanned launches of the super-heavy N-1 rocket failed, the project was abandoned, scotching any hope of the Soviets landing a man on the moon.

The US meanwhile was forging ahead towards the most spectacular space feat ever. On July 20, 1969, the Lunar Module detached from its mother ship Apollo 11 and landed on the moon, thus achieving the goal set by President Kennedy. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first human beings to walk on the surface of the moon. Armstrong said to millions of awed listeners back on earth: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Working in lunar gravity, one sixth of the earth, the astronauts collected soil/rock samples and conducted scientific experiments. Five other successful moon landings followed the last in 1972. Mission Apollo 13 in April 1970 almost ended in a disaster. But before it was safely recovered, its crew reached the farthest distance of a human being from earth, approximately 3,97,848 kilometres, while on the far side of the moon. Till date, only 12 humans have set foot on the moon—all American males. Three American astronauts—James Lovell, John Young, and Eugene Cernan—made two trips each. Cernan was the last person to leave footprints on the moon on December 11, 1972, during the Apollo 17 mission.

Next began the age of international cooperation in space. From July 15 to 24, 1975, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project became the first international human spaceflight. On April 12, 1981, the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s historic first flight, astronauts Robert Crippen and John Young flew the first mission of the US space shuttle aboard Columbia. The space shuttle was to dominate the US spaceflight programme for the next three decades. However, male domination in space still rankled. The Soviet female Cosmonaut Corps had been dissolved in October 1969 and the idea of female space-farers on an equal footing with men was abandoned. Then in 1978, the US selected its first female astronaut, Sally Ride. This was probably the spur the Soviets needed to revive its female Cosmonaut Corps and cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the world’s second woman in space aboard Soyuz T-7 on August 18, 1982. Later, while on the Salyut 7 space station, on July 25, 1984, she became the first woman to perform a space walk. Sally Ride became the first American woman in space aboard space shuttle Challenger on June 18, 1983. Since then women have flown in space fairly regularly.