Soyuz-11 - I Wanna Cromch The Moon

happy birthday to the first man in space - yuri gagarin, who was born on this day in 1934! 🌠🚀❤

February 4, 1970 – At Cape Canaveral, Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell trains for a moonwalk he’ll never make.

The image of the stickney crater, the largest crater on the Martian moon Phobos,is named for mathematician Chole Angeline Stickney. Over 9 km across, it is nearly half the diameter of Phobos itself.

Yuri Gagarin reading and replying to fanmail (1961?)

The first space station in history, Salyut 1, seen from either Soyuz 10 or, more likely, Soyuz 11.

Two crews visited Salyut 1 between April and June of 1971.  Soyuz 10 launched 23 April to visit the space station, but couldn’t achieve hard dock with Salyut and was forced to abort the mission.  On 6 June, the ill-fated Soyuz 11 made it’s way to Salyut 1, and successfully docked the following day.  The crew spent 23 days aboard the space station before being forced to return to Earth because of problems related to the station, including an electrical fire.  Unfortunately, a faulty pressure relief valve caused the Soyuz reentry capsule to depressurize and the entire crew was killed.  At the time, Soyuz crews were not required to wear pressure suits during reentry, and this was quickly changed following the disaster.

Georgy Dobrovolsky, Victor Patsayev, and Vladislav Volkov remain the only human beings to die in space.

Martian origami. The little Sojourner Mars Rover sits on the left petal of the Mars Pathfinder lander, Oct 1996. Sojourner weighed just 23 pounds (10.6kg) & became the 1st rover to operate beyond the moon when it landed in 1997. Pathfinder was the 1st successful lander on Mars by NASA since the 2 Viking missions in 1976. Sojourner was expected to operate between 1-4 weeks yet it served for 3 months, gathering important data on Mars for scientists back home.