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There is some reading to start then loads of pictures, clickable links to wiki for more detailed info and videos.
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A brief history of rocketry
Today's rockets are remarkable collections of human ingenuity that have their roots in the science and technology of the past. They are natural outgrowths of literally thousands of years of experimentation and research on rockets and rocket propulsion.
One of the first devices to successfully employ the principles essential to rocket flight was a wooden bird. The writings of Aulus Gellius, a Roman, tell a story of a Greek named Archytas who lived in the city of Tarentum, now a part of southern Italy. Somewhere around the year 400 B.C., Archytas mystified and amused the citizens of Tarentum by flying a pigeon made of wood. Escaping steam propelled the bird suspended on wires. The pigeon used the action-reaction principle, which was not stated as a scientific law until the 17th century.
About three hundred years after the pigeon, another Greek, Hero of Alexandria, invented a similar rocket-like device called an aeolipile. It, too, used steam as a propulsive gas.
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Hero mounted a sphere on top of a water kettle. A fire below the kettle turned the water into steam, and the gas traveled through pipes to the sphere. Two L-shaped tubes on opposite sides of the sphere allowed the gas to escape, and in doing so gave a thrust to the sphere that caused it to rotate.
Just when the first true rockets appeared is unclear. Stories of early rocket like devices appear sporadically through the historical records of various cultures. Perhaps the first true rockets were accidents. In the first century A.D., the Chinese reportedly had a simple form of gunpowder made from saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal dust. To create explosions during religous festivals, they filled bamboo tubes with a mixture and tossed them into fires. Perhaps some of those tubes failed to explode and instead skittered out of the fires, propelled by the gases and sparks produced by the burning gunpowder.
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The Chinese began experimenting with the gunpowder-filled tubes. At some point, they attached bamboo tubes to arrows and launched them with bows. Soon they discovered that these gunpowder tubes could launch themselves just by the power produced from the escaping gas. The true rocket was born.
The date reporting the first use of true rockets was in 1232. At this time, the Chinese and the Mongols were at war with each other. During the battle of Kai-Keng, the Chinese repelled the Mongol invaders by a barrage of "arrows of flying fire." These fire-arrows were a simple form of a solid-propellant rocket. A tube, capped at one end, contained gunpowder. The other end was left open and the tube was attached to a long stick. When the powder was ignited, the rapid burning of the powder produced fire, smoke, and gas that escaped out the open end and produced a thrust. The stick acted as a simple guidance system that kept the rocket headed in one general direction as it flew through the air. It is not clear how effective these arrows of flying fire were as weapons of destruction, but their psychological effects on the Mongols must have been formidable.
Following the battle of Kai-Keng, the Mongols produced rockets of their own and may have been responsible for the spread of rockets to Europe. All through the 13th to the 15th centuries there were reports of many rocket experiments. In England, a monk named Roger Bacon worked on improved forms of gunpowder that greatly increased the range of rockets. In France, Jean Froissart found that more accurate flights could be achieved by launching rockets through tubes. Froissart's idea was the forerunner of the modern bazooka. Joanes de Fontana of Italy designed a surface-running rocket-powered torpedo for setting enemy ships on fire.
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By the 16th century rockets fell into a time of disuse as weapons of war, though they were still used for fireworks displays, and a German fireworks maker, Johann Schmidlap, invented the "step rocket," a multi-staged vehicle for lifting fireworks to higher altitudes. A large sky rocket (first stage) carried a smaller sky rocket (second stage). When the large rocket burned out, the smaller
one continued to a higher altitude before showering the sky with glowing cinders. Schmidlap's idea is basic to all rockets today that go into outer space.
Nearly all uses of rockets up to this time were for warfare or fireworks, but there is an interesting old Chinese legend that reported the use of rockets as a means of transportation. With the help of many assistants, a lesser-known Chinese official named Wan-Hu assembled a rocket- powered flying chair. Attached to the chair were two large kites, and fixed to the kites were forty- seven fire-arrow rockets.
On the day of the flight, Wan-Hu sat himself on the chair and gave the command to light the rockets. Forty-seven rocket assistants, each armed with torches, rushed forward to light the fuses. In a moment, there was a tremendous roar accompanied by billowing clouds of smoke. When the smoke cleared, Wan-Hu and his flying chair were gone. No one knows for sure what happened to Wan-Hu, but it is probable that if the event really did take place, Wan-Hu and his chair were blown to pieces. Fire-arrows were as apt to explode as to fly.
Rocketry Becomes a Science
During the latter part of the 17th century, the scientific foundations for modern rocketry were laid by the great English scientist Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727). Newton organized his understanding of physical motion into three scientific laws. The laws explain how rockets work and why they are able to work in the vacuum of outer space. Newton's laws soon began to have a practical impact on the design of rockets. About 1720, a Dutch professor, Willem Gravesande, built model cars propelled by jets of steam. Rocket experimenters in Germany and Russia
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began working with rockets with a mass of more than 45 kilograms. Some of these rockets were so powerful that their escaping exhaust flames bored deep holes in the ground even before lift-off.
During the end of the 18th century and early into the 19th, rockets experienced a brief revival as a weapon of war. The success of Indian rocket barrages against the British in 1792 and again in 1799 caught the interest of an artillery expert, Colonel William Congreve. Congreve set out to design rockets for use by the British military.
The Congreve rockets were highly successful in battle. Used by British ships to pound Fort McHenry in the War of 1812, they inspired Francis Scott Key to write "the rockets' red glare," words in his poem that later became The Star- Spangled Banner.
Even with Congreve's work, the accuracy of rockets still had not improved much from the early days. The devastating nature of war rockets was not their accuracy or power, but their numbers. During a typical siege, thousands of them might be fired at the enemy. All over the world, rocket researchers experimented with ways to improve accuracy. An Englishman, William Hale, developed a technique called spin stabilization. In this method, the escaping exhaust gases struck small vanes at the bottom of the rocket, causing it to spin much as a bullet does in flight. Variations of the principle are still used today.
Rockets continued to be used with success in battles all over the European continent. However, in a war with Prussia, the Austrian rocket brigades met their match against newly designed artillery pieces. Breech-loading cannon with rifled barrels and exploding warheads were far more effective weapons of war than the best rockets. Once again, rockets were relegated to peacetime uses.
Modern Rocketry Begins
In 1898, a Russian schoolteacher, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), proposed the idea of space exploration by rocket. In a report he published in 1903, Tsiolkovsky suggested the use of liquid propellants for rockets in order to achieve greater range. Tsiolkovsky stated that the speed and range of a rocket were limited only by the exhaust velocity of escaping gases. For his ideas, careful research, and great vision, Tsiolkovsky has been called the father of modern astronautics.
Early in the 20th century, an American, Robert H. Goddard (1882-1945), conducted practical experiments in rocketry. He had become interested in a way of achieving higher altitudes than were possible for lighter-than-air balloons. He published a pamphlet in 1919 entitled A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes. It was a mathematical analysis of what is today called the meteorological sounding rocket.
Goddard's earliest experiments were with solid-propellant rockets. In 1915, he began to try various types of solid fuels and to measure the exhaust velocities of the burning gases. While working on solid-propellant rockets, Goddard became convinced that a rocket could be propelled better by liquid fuel. No one had ever built a successful liquid-propellant rocket before. It was a much more difficult task than building solid- propellant rockets. Fuel and oxygen tanks, turbines, and combustion chambers would be needed. In spite of the difficulties, Goddard achieved the first successful flight with a liquid- propellant rocket on March 16, 1926. Fueled by liquid oxygen and gasoline, the rocket flew for only two and a half seconds, climbed 12.5 meters, and landed 56 meters away in a cabbage patch. By today's standards, the flight was unimpressive, but like the first powered airplane flight by the Wright brothers in 1903, Goddard's gasoline rocket was the forerunner of a whole new era in rocket flight.
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Goddard's experiments in liquid-propellant rockets continued for many years. His rockets became bigger and flew higher. He developed a gyroscope system for flight control and a payload compartment for scientific instruments. Parachute recovery systems were employed to return rockets and instruments safely. Goddard, for his achievements, has been called the father of modern rocketry.
A third great space pioneer, Hermann Oberth (1894-1989) born on June 25, 1894 in Hermannstadt (Transylvania), and died on December 28, 1989 in Nuremberg, Germany, published a book in 1923 about rocket travel into outer space. His writings were important. Because of them, many small rocket societies sprang up around the world. In Germany, the formation of one such society, the Verein fur Raumschiffahrt (Society for Space Travel), led to the development of the V-2 rocket, which was used against London during World War II. In 1937, German engineers and scientists, including Oberth, assembled in Peenemunde on the shores of the Baltic Sea. There the most advanced rocket of its time would be built and flown under the directorship of Wernher von Braun.
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The V-2 rocket (in Germany called the A-4) was small by comparison to today's rockets. It achieved its great thrust by burning a mixture of liquid oxygen and alcohol at a rate of about one ton every seven seconds. Once launched, the V-2 was a formidable weapon that could devastate whole city blocks.
Fortunately for London and the Allied forces, the V-2 came too late in the war to change its outcome. Nevertheless, by war's end, German rocket scientists and engineers had already laid plans for advanced missiles capable of spanning the Atlantic Ocean and landing in the United States. These missiles would have had winged upper stages but very small payload capacities.
With the fall of Germany, many unused V-2 rockets and components were captured by the Allies. Many German rocket scientists came to the United States. Others went to the Soviet Union. The German scientists, including Wernher von Braun, were amazed at the progress Goddard had made.
Both the United States and the Soviet Union realized the potential of rocketry as a military weapon and began a variety of experimental programs. At first, the United States began a program with high-altitude atmospheric sounding rockets, one of Goddard's early ideas. Later, a variety of medium- and long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles were developed. These became the starting point of the U.S. space program. Missiles such as the Redstone, Atlas, and Titan would eventually launch astronauts into space.
On October 4, 1957, the world was stunned by the
news of an Earth-orbiting artificial satellite launched by the Soviet Union. Called Sputnik I, the satellite was the first successful entry in a race for space between the two superpower nations. Less than a month later, the Soviets followed with the launch of a satellite carrying a dog named Laika on board. Laika survived in space for seven days before being put to sleep before the oxygen supply ran out.
A few months after the first Sputnik, the United States followed the Soviet Union with a satellite of its own. Explorer I was launched by the U.S. Army on January 31, 1958. In October of that year, the United States formally organized its space program by creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA became a civilian agency with the goal of peaceful exploration of space for the benefit of all humankind.
Soon, many people and machines were being launched into space. Astronauts orbited Earth and landed on the Moon. Robot spacecraft traveled to the planets. Space was suddenly opened up to exploration and commercial exploitation. Satellites enabled scientists to investigate our world, forecast the weather, and to communicate instantaneously around the globe. As the demand for more and larger payloads increased, a wide array of powerful and versatile rockets had to be built.
Since the earliest days of discovery and experimentation, rockets have evolved from simple gunpowder devices into giant vehicles capable of traveling into outer space. Rockets have opened the universe to direct exploration by humankind.
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When i was 3 1/2 i watched through a TV shop window with my Dad when Neil Armstrong stepped on to the Moon..........
by the last Apollo misson in 1972 i was 6 and we had our own telly. So...some of my earliest recollections is of space travel.
August 21, 1957 First intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)R-7 Semyorka
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October 4, 1957 First artificial satellite
First signals from space Sputnik 1
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November 3, 1957 First animal in orbit (dog Laika)Sputnik 2
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January 31, 1958 First US satellite, detection of Van Allen radiation beltsExplorer 1-ABMA
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March 17, 1958 First solar powered satelliteVanguard 1-NRL
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December 18, 1958 First communications satelliteProject SCORE-ABMA
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January 2, 1959 First rocket engine restart in Earth orbit
First lunar spacecraft
First detection of solar windLuna 1
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January 4, 1959 First human-made object in heliocentric orbitLuna 1
February 17, 1959 First weather satelliteVanguard 2-NASA (NRL)1
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February 28, 1959 First satellite in a polar orbitDiscoverer 1-USAF/ARPA
June 25, 1959 First spy satellite to carry a camera (failed to achieve orbit)Discoverer 4-USAF/ARPA
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August 7, 1959 First photograph of Earth from orbitExplorer 6-NASA
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September 14, 1959 First impact into another celestial body (Moon)Luna 2
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October 7, 1959 First photos of far side of the MoonLuna 3
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April 1, 1960 First Imaging weather satelliteTIROS-1-NASA
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July 5, 1960 First successful US spy satellite (returned intelligence data)GRAB-1-NRL
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August 11, 1960 First satellite recovered intact from orbitDiscoverer 13-USAF/ARPA
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August 12, 1960 First passive communications satelliteEcho 1A-NASA
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August 18, 1960 First successful recovery of film from an orbiting satellite
First aerial recovery of an object returning from Earth orbitDiscoverer 14-USAF/ARPA
August 19, 1960 First animals and plants returned alive from spaceSputnik 5
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1961–1969
February 12, 1961 First launch from Earth orbit of upper stage into a heliocentric orbit
First mid-course corrections
First spin-stabilisationVenera 1
April 12, 1961 First human spaceflight (Yuri Gagarin)
First orbital flight of a manned vehicleVostok 1
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May 5, 1961 First pilot-controlled space flight (Alan Shepard)Freedom 7
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May 19, 1961 First planetary flyby (Venus)Venera 1 pic above
March 7, 1962 First orbital solar observatoryOSO-1-NASA
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July 10, 1962 First active communications satelliteTelstar-AT&T
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August 12, 1962 First ship-to-ship radio contactVostok 3 / Vostok 4
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September 29, 1962 First artificial satellite constructed by a non-superpower
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December 14, 1962 First planetary flyby by a US mission (Venus)Mariner 2-NASA
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June 16, 1963 First woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova)
First civilian in spaceVostok 6
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June 19, 1963 Five-day human spaceflight recordVostok 5
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July 19, 1963 First reusable piloted spacecraft (X-15, suborbital)X-15 Flight 90-NASA
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July 26, 1963 First geosynchronous satelliteSyncom 2-NASA
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December 5, 1963 First satellite navigation systemNAVSAT-USN
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August 19, 1964 First geostationary satelliteSyncom 3-NASA
October 12, 1964 First multi-person crew (3)Voskhod 1
March 18, 1965 First extra-vehicular activity ("space walk")Voskhod 2
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March 23, 1965 First piloted spacecraft orbit changeGemini 3-NASA
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July 14, 1965 First Mars flybyMariner 4-NASA
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August 29, 1965 Eight-day human spaceflight recordGemini 5-NASA
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December 15, 1965 First orbital rendezvous (station-keeping, no docking)2Gemini 6A / Gemini 7-NASA
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December 18, 1965 14-day human spaceflight recordGemini 7-NASA
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February 3, 1966 First soft landing on another celestial body (Moon)
First photos from another celestial bodyLuna 9
March 1, 1966 First impact into another planet (Venus)Venera 3
March 16, 1966 First spacecraft dockingGemini 8 / ATV-NASA
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Gemini 8 and target vehicle AGENA
April 3, 1966 First artificial satellite to orbit another celestial body: the MoonLuna 10
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September 12, 1966 First direct-ascent rendezvous on first orbit
Record highest apogee, 1,374 kilometers (854 mi), for piloted Earth orbitGemini 11/ATV-NASA
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November 12–14, 1966 First 5.5 hr extra-vehicular activity
First demonstration of practical work capabilityGemini 12-NASA
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October 30, 1967 First docking of two remote-controlled spacecraftCosmos 186/ Cosmos 188
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December 7, 1968 First orbital ultraviolet observatoryOAO-2-NASA
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December 21, 1968 First human-crewed spaceflight to, and orbit of, another celestial object: the MoonApollo 8-NASA
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January 16, 1969 First crew exchange in spaceSoyuz 4 /
Soyuz 5
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July 20, 1969 First humans on the Moon
First space launch from another celestial bodyApollo 11-NASA
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http://www.space.com/26563-apollo-1...eo.html#ooid=htb2V5cDqu14grEXjbLsYx8Ge5OWFQGz
November 19, 1969 First precisely targeted piloted landing on the Moon (Surveyor 3 site)
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First man to dance on the Moon (Pete Conrad)
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The Soviet Union had attempted an earlier rendezvous on August 12, 1962. However, Vostok 3 and Vostok 4 only came within five kilometers of one another, and operated in different orbital planes. Pravda did not mention this information, but indicated that a rendezvous had taken place.
1970–1975
September 24, 1970 First robotic automatic sample return from another celestial body: the MoonLuna 16
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November 23, 1970 First remote-controlled mobile vehicle on another celestial body: the MoonLunokhod 1
December 12, 1970 First X-ray orbital observatoryUhuru (satellite)-NASA
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December 15, 1970 First soft landing on another planet (Venus)
First signals from another planetVenera 7
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April 23, 1971 First human-crewed space station launchedSalyut 1 departing from Soyuz 11
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June 29, 1971 First human-crewed orbital observatory (Orion 1)
23-day manned space recordSoyuz 11 / Salyut 1
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July 31, 1971 First mobile vehicle lunar rover driven by humans on the MoonApollo 15-NASA
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November 14, 1971 First spacecraft to orbit another planet: MarsMariner 9-NASA
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November 27, 1971 First impact into MarsMars 2
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December 2, 1971 First soft Mars landing
First signals from Mars surfaceMars 3 MARS 3 was identical to MARS 2 as pictured above.
March 3, 1972 First human-made object sent on escape trajectory away from the SunPioneer 10-NASA
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July 15, 1972 First mission to enter the asteroid belt and leave inner solar systemPioneer 10-NASA
November 9, 1972 First commercially operated domestic satellite in geostationary orbit
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November 15, 1972 First orbital gamma ray observatorySAS-2-NASA
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May 25, 1973 28-day human-crewed space recordSkylab 1-NASA
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July 28, 1973 56-day human-crewed space recordSkylab 2-NASA
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November 16, 1974 84-day human-crewed space recordSkylab 3-NASA
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December 3, 1974 First Jupiter flybyPioneer 10-NASA
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February 5, 1974 First planetary gravitational assist (Venus flyby)Mariner 10-NASA
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March 29, 1974 First Mercury flybyMariner 10-NASA
July 15, 1975 First multinational human-crewed mission9Soyuz 19Apollo–Soyuz Test Project
pic is Apollo
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