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The first African-American astronaut, selected for the Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory program, was killed when his F-104 Starfighter jet crashed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, while practicing a series of high speed, quick descent landings with Major Harvey Royer as pilot in command. Both crewmen ejected; Royer survived with ...
United States V-2 [4] [5] 20 February 1947 First animals in space (fruit flies). United States V-2 [4] [6] 24 February 1949: First two-stage liquid-fueled rocket, that sets a record altitude of 244 miles (393 km) (WAC Corporal missile mounted onto a V-2 rocket). United States Bumper-5: 14 June 1949: First mammal in space (Albert II, a rhesus ...
Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963. Its goal was to put a person into Earth orbit and return them safely, ideally before the Soviet Union. John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth on February 20, 1962, aboard the Mercury-Atlas 6. [57]
The United States defines spaceflight as any flight reaching an altitude of 50 miles, while the FAI definition requires an altitude of 100 kilometers. During the 1960s, 13 crewed flights of the U.S. North American X-15 rocket plane met the U.S. criteria, of which only two met the FAI's. This article's primary list includes only the latter two ...
The United States has developed many space programs since the beginning of the spaceflight era in the mid-20th century. The government runs space programs by three primary agencies: NASA for civil space; the United States Space Force for military space; and the National Reconnaissance Office for intelligence space. These entities have invested ...
The Space Shuttle program occupied over 654 facilities, used over 1.2 million line items of equipment, and employed over 5,000 people. The total value of equipment was over $12 billion. Shuttle-related facilities represented over a quarter of NASA's inventory. There were over 1,200 active suppliers to the program throughout the United States.
The United States' national security space organization actually regressed, with United States Space Command being inactivated in 2002, subsumed into United States Strategic Command. The Allard Commission report, unveiled in the wake of the 2007 Chinese anti-satellite missile test , called for a reorganization of national security space ...
The first space rendezvous was accomplished by Gemini 6A and Gemini 7 in 1965.. Records and firsts in spaceflight are broadly divided into crewed and uncrewed categories. Records involving animal spaceflight have also been noted in earlier experimental flights, typically to establish the feasibility of sending humans to outer space.