1961 - Exploration, Colonization

Exploration, Colonization

President Kennedy delivers his first State of the Union Address to Congress January 30 and says, "I now invite all nations—including the Soviet Union—to join with us in developing a weather prediction program, in a new communications satellite program (see communications, 1962), and in preparation for probing the distant planets of Mars and Venus, probes which may someday unlock the secrets of the universe."

The first manned space ship circles the earth April 12 in 89.1 minutes at an altitude of 187.7 miles. Soviet astronaut Yuri Aleskeyevich Gagarin, 27, makes the orbit in the space vehicle Vostok I, and astronaut (or cosmonaut) Gherman Titov, orbits the earth 17 times less than 4 months later (see Glenn, 1962).

Navy test pilot Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr., 37, makes the first U.S. manned space expedition May 5, reaching an altitude of 116.5 miles in a 15-minute suborbital flight aboard the Freedom 7 capsule. President Kennedy vows in an address to Congress May 25 that the United States will put a man on the moon and return him to earth by the end of the decade (see 1969).

The 1-year-old National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launches Ranger I from Cape Canaveral August 23 (see 1958); the first in a series of nine unmanned spacecraft to investigate the moon, it fails to leave Earth's orbit (see 1962).