• → European Space Agency

      • Space for Europe
      • Space News
      • Space in Images
      • Space in Videos
    • About Us

      • Welcome to ESA
      • DG's News and Views
      • For Member State Delegations
      • Business with ESA
      • ESA Exhibitions
      • ESA Publications
      • Careers at ESA
    • Our Activities

      • Space News
      • Observing the Earth
      • Human Spaceflight
      • Launchers
      • Navigation
      • Space Science
      • Space Engineering
      • Operations
      • Technology
      • Telecommunications & Integrated Applications
    • For Public

    • For Media

    • For Educators

    • For Kids

    • ESA

    • 50 years of humans in space

    • ESA History

    • Human Spaceflight and Exploration

    • Background info
    • Yuri Gagarin
    • The flight of Vostok 1
    • Timeline of early spaceflights
    • Gagarin's traditions
    • Sergei Korolev: Father of the Soviet Union’s success in space
    • Articles
    • “I see Earth! It is so beautiful!"
    • What is Gagarin’s legacy?
    • Fifty years on
    • On the trail of Gagarin
    • ‘I met Yuri Gagarin in space’
    • Tributes from European space explorers
    • Vladimír Remek
    • Dr Helen Sharman
    • Ulf Merbold
    • Michel Tognini
    • Claude Nicollier
    • Dumitru Dorin Prunariu
    • Reinhold Ewald
    • Pedro Duque
    • Frank De Winne
    • Christer Fuglesang
    • Events in Europe

      • Austria
      • Belgium
      • Czech Republic
      • Denmark
      • Finland
      • France
      • Germany
      • Italy
      • Luxembourg
      • The Netherlands
      • Norway
      • Portugal
      • Spain
      • Sweden
      • United Kingdom

    ESA > About Us > Welcome to ESA > ESA history > 50 years of humans in space

    Timeline of early spaceflights

    Gagarin met with astronauts Ed White and James McDivitt at the Paris Air Show in 1965.

    Vostok (Russian for 'East') was a Soviet human spaceflight project that developed the Vostok spacecraft which was used to place the first human in space.

    The first manned US spacecraft was Mercury, which was first launched in suborbital flights on Redstone rockets and then in orbital missions on Atlas launchers.

    The one-seat Vostok craft were replaced by Voskhod (in the Soviet Union), and two-seat Gemini replaced Mercury in the US.


    12 April 1961
    Vostok 1, Yuri Gagarin (Flight duration: 1h 48 min)

    5 May 1961
    Mercury-Redstone 3, Alan Shepard (suborbital, 15 min 28 sec)

    21 July 1961
    Mercury-Redstone 4, Virgil Grissom (suborbital, 15 min 37 sec)

    6 August 1961
    Vostok 2, Gherman Titov (1d 1h 18 min)

    20 February 1962
    Merculy-Atlas 6, John Glenn (4h 55 min 23 sec)

    24 May 1962
    Mercury-Atlas 7, M. Scott Carpenter (4h 56 min 15 sec)

    11 August 1962
    Vostok 3, Andrian Nikolayev (3d 22h 22 min)

    12 August 1962
    Vostok 4, Pavel Popovich (2d 22h 56 min)

    3 October 1962
    Mercury-Atlas 8, Walter Schirra (9h 13 min 11 sec)

    15 May 1963
    Mercury-Atlas 9, L. Gordon Cooper (1d 10h 19 min 49 sec)

    14 June 1963
    Vostok 5, Valeri Bykovsky (4d 23h 7 min)

    16 June 1963
    Vostok 6, Valentina Tereshkova (2d 22h 50 min)

    Rate this

    Views

    Share

    • Currently 0 out of 5 Stars.
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5
    Rating: 0/5 (0 votes cast)

    Thank you for rating!

    You have already rated this page, you can only rate it once!

    Your rating has been changed, thanks for rating!

    18
    facebook
    twitter
    reddit
    google plus
    digg
    tumbler
    digg
    blogger
    myspace
    • Gagarin minisite logo picture
      Gagarin minisite logo picture
      50 years of humans in space
    • Mission patch gallery
    • History of Europe in space
    • Space history on the web
    • Related links
    • Yuri's Night
    • yurigagarin50.org
    • Further reading
    • English
    • Français
    • Deutsch
    • Gagarin videos
    • Roscosmos tribute to Yuri Gagarin
    • "First orbit"
    • 50 years of humans in space (video)
    • Euronews:First man in space

    Connect with us

    • RSS
    • Youtube
    • Twitter
    • Flickr
    • Google Buzz
    • Subscribe
    • App Store
    • LATEST ARTICLES
    • · CryoSat hits land
    • · Ariane 5 completes seven launches …
    • · Measuring skull pressure without t…
    • · Malargüe station inauguration
    • · The solar wind is swirly
    • FAQ

    • Jobs at ESA

    • Site Map

    • Contacts

    • Terms and conditions