First Flights

Space flight was the act of traveling in or through space. These flights occur through the use of the spacecraft on board which may be people. Many of these devices can operate independently without the intervention of experts. Flying in space is mainly used for space research, but also can be implemented in commercial activities, such as tourism and the development of satellite telecommunications systems. Space flight usually begins with a rocket launch, which provides the initial thrust to overcome gravity and pushing a spacecraft from Earth’s surface. Space travel became possible in engineering terms due to the work of Robert Godard after its publication in 1919. The most commonly used definition of outer space is everything beyond the Karman line, which is 100 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. The first rocket that reached space and rises to heights of over 100 km from the surface of the Earth is the German V-2 was the first suborbital space flight, according to modern terminology. This happened in June 1944. Thirteen years later – on October 4, 1957, the USSR launches Sputnik-1, which became the first artificial satellite of Earth. The first manned space flight of Vostok 1, made on April 12, 1961 by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who made a complete tour of the Earth.