National Aeronautics & Space Administration

Pioneers

in

Space

Vocabulary

astronaut

hero

NASA

(National Aeronautics & Space Administration)

events

university

training

specialist

mission

space shuttles: Discovery, Columbia, Endeavor

launch

orbit

Ham the Chimp

Ham, also known as “Ham the Chimp” and “Ham the Astrochimp”, was a chimpanzee that was born in Africa in 1957. He was launched into space in 1961 as part of America’s space program. Ham died in 1983 in Asheboro, North Carolina.

Laika the Dog

Laika was a dog from Russia that became one of the first animals in space, and in 1957 was the first animal to orbit Earth during the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 2 mission.

Laika was a female husky rescued from the streets of Moscow, a city in Russia. Scientists thought she would be tough enough to handle space travel. She trained for it by staying in a small cage and learning to eat a nutritious gel that would be her food in space.

John Glenn

John Glenn was born in 1921 in Ohio. He was chosen to be one of the first seven astronauts in the U.S. Space Program. In 1962, he was launched into space inside a capsule called Friendship 7 and orbited Earth three times.

In 1998 Glenn returned to space aboard the space shuttle Discovery. He was the oldest person ever to travel in space.

John Glenn’s skills and bravery have made him a hero to many Americans.

Neil Armstrong

Neil Armstrong was born on August 5, 1930 in Ohio. He was very interested in airplanes when he was a boy. After high school, Neil became a pilot in the U.S. Navy. He also studied flight engineering at two universities.

In 1962, Armstrong became an astronaut at NASA. In 1969, he and two other astronauts left for the moon in the Apollo 11 spacecraft. Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon’s surface. For more than two hours, he and two other astronauts (Aldrin and Collins) collected samples of moon soil and took photographs before returning to Earth.

Neil Armstrong died in 2012 in Ohio.

Kalpana Chawla

Kalpana Chawla was born in India. She was the first Indian-American astronaut and the first Indian woman in space. She first flew on Space Shuttle Columbia 1997 as a mission specialist and robotic arm operator.

She died in 2003 in Texas.

Mae Jemison

Mae Jemison was born in 1952, in Alabama. She was interested in science, did very well in school and graduated from high school when she was 16 yeas old.

First, Mae was a chemical engineer. Then in 1981 she worked as a doctor in California and later in Africa.

Mae entered NASA’s astronaut program in 1987. In 1992, Jemison flew aboard the space shuttle Endeavor as a science mission specialist. She was the first African-American woman to travel in space.

After retiring from NASA Jemison started her own company and created an international science camp for teenagers.

Yuri Gagarin

Yuri Gagarin was a Russian-Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He was born in Russia in 1934. He was the first human to travel to outer space in 1961. On this mission his spacecraft, Vostok 1, was the first to orbit Earth.

Sally Ride

Sally Ride was an American scientist and astronaut. She was born in Los Angeles, California in 1951. She worked very hard in school and earned four different degrees from Stanford University.

Sally joined NASA in 1978, and in 1983 became the first American woman to travel in space on the space shuttle Challenger. She travelled in space for six days. She took a second trip on Challenger in 1984.

Sally Ride died in California in 2012.

Valentina Tereshkova

Valentina was a Soviet cosmonaut and the first woman to travel through space in 1963. She was the pilot aboard the Vostok 6 spacecraft. She was born in 1937 in Russia.