On March 27th, 1968, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, the first human in space, died in a plane crash during what would be otherwise a very routine training flight. This in an of itself would be, and is, a tragedy in the history of humanities achievements in space, but the events surrounding this crash, and Gagarin’s life […]
Tag: Soviet Space
59 Years Ago, Sputnik 2 And A Dog In Space
One month shy of the launch of Sputnik 1, another R-7 missile was readied on the pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome, carrying another special payload destined for Earth orbit. This time the payload wasn’t just a simple metal sphere with a radio transmitter – instead, the payload was a dog named Laika. Laika was a stray […]