Season’s Greetings – Celebrating achievements in human spaceflight
[All images credit: NASA]
As 2019 draws to a close the Space Adventures’ team would like to wish you all the best for the holiday season and a prosperous year ahead.
This year marked global celebrations of the 50th anniversary of one of the world’s greatest accomplishments – the successful Apollo 11 mission that allowed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to become the first humans to walk on the Moon.
But 2019 marked its own achievement with the first all-female spacewalk – NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir became the first two women to venture outside into space together.
2020 promises to be an exciting year with both SpaceX and Boeing scheduled to fly crew to space, plus NASA is scheduled to launch a new Mars rover in the summer.
We thought we would take a moment to look back in history and share some images of other great achievements involving humans in space.
In 1965, NASA astronaut Ed White became the first American to conduct a spacewalk (first human was Russian Alexei Leonov). We chose this image because Ed was accompanied by another astronaut who took the photo – it marks the first picture taken outside in space!
A truly iconic image of NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless in 1984 when he ventured 300 feet away from the Space Shuttle in his jet-powered Manned Maneuvering Unit completing the first untethered spacewalk.
Great symbolism in this image (of Alexei Leonov and Deke Slayton) taken in 1975 during the Apollo – Soyuz Mission when three American astronauts met two Soviet cosmonauts in space during the Cold War.
Not an exciting photo, but a very important one. On November 2, 2000, the International Space Station welcomed its first long-term residents: NASA astronaut Bill Shepherd and two Russian cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev. The mission was named Expedition 1. The International Space Station is still in operation today.
And shortly after the International Space Station opened, our very own client, Dennis Tito became the first far paying private citizen to fly to space. On April 28, 2001 Dennis launched on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and spent 8 days in space.
Once again, best wishes of the season from all of us and here’s to a great 2020!