Encyclopedia Astronautica
The Moon looks bright white in the night sky, but its surface is actually about as dark as worn asphalt, reflecting only around 12 percent of the sunlight that hits it, and it only seems dazzling because it hangs against the total blackness of space
ExplorationBefore Yuri Gagarin flew in 1961, the Soviet Union sent a life-size mannequin into orbit with a sign under his visor reading “dummy”, and so radio listeners wouldn’t mistake him for a real cosmonaut, he played a recording of a choir and a recipe for beetroot soupExplorationOn 24 October 1946 a camera mounted on a captured German V-2 rocket took the first photograph of Earth from space, from about 105 km over New MexicoA 35mm camera on V-2 No. 13, launched from White Sands on 24 October 1946, returned the first photographs of Earth from space at about 105 km.
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The Encyclopedia · Start here
Every rocket, spacecraft and crew, in one archive
79,433 pages and 13,741 images compiled since 1994, the reference NASA's own history office has pointed researchers to.
- Space history chronologyDay by day, through 2018
- Launch vehiclesRockets and their families
- Crewed spacecraftFlown, planned and unflown
- Engines and propellantsWhat made them fly
- Families and collectionsSpacecraft, rockets and missiles by type
- Launch sitesPads, ranges and cosmodromes
- Space activity by countryNational programs
- Russian and Soviet historyIncluding the Mishin Diaries