space exploration journeys to space to find out

• space exploration – journeys to space to find out what it is like • weightlessness – the condition in space when nothing has any weight • to launch – to send something into space • to come true – to happen in real life • to orbit – to travel in a circle around a much larger object such as the Earth or the sun

On 12 April 1961, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin made the first human flight into space. 12 April 2011 will be the 50 th anniversary of this event.

For thousands of years people dreamed of flying to the stars. At the beginning of the century the great Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky predicted that "mankind will not remain on Earth forever".

Half a century later Tsiolkovsky’s words came true, the dream became a reality. It happened thanks to long-term efforts of Sergey Pavlovich Korolyov – the Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer.

On October 4, 1957, the first artificial satellite, the sputnik, was launched. The Russians were the 1 st in the world to fly into outer space.

Then the most remarkable event in the history of cosmonautics took place. On April 12, 1961, at exactly 9. 07 a. m. the spaceship "Vostok-1“ lifted off for its first flight with a man on board.

The Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin orbited the Earth once, staying in space for 108 minutes. Mankind will always remember him. A new era of man's exploration of outer space began.

Many space rockets went up with our cosmonauts. Among them were German Titov, Andriyan Nikolayev, Alexey Leonov, Valentina Tereshkova, Svetlana Savitskaya, Georgy Grechko, Pyotr Klimuk and others.

Today Russia wants the exploration of space to be based on broad international cooperation. Many international crews went up in space.

«Orbiting the Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it!»