With the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and with East and West Germany pursuing unification, the Iron Curtain between the West and Soviet-controlled regions came down. Then came Expedition 16, when Whitson took her historic command of the space station. In April 2019, NASA announced that Expedition 59 astronaut Christina Koch's mission at the International Space Station would be extended to last 328 days. NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir went outside the International Space Station on an unplanned repair spacewalk to fix a fault battery component. A0;NASA astronauts Christina Koch (left) and Jessica Meir test their spacesuits for their historic Oct. 18, 2019 spacewalk. Lord, Bob; Lord, Penny (2019). Saint Dominic Savio. But over the years, people have notched many other records as our species has extended its toehold in the cold depths of space. For almost 20 years, the Americans and the Soviets were the only nations with astronauts. The first nation outside of those two countries to fly an astronaut was the former Czechoslovakia, which saw Vladimir Remek fly on the Soviet Soyuz 28 mission in 1978. Since then, dozens of nations from all over the world have seen their citizens fly in space on American, Soviet or Russian spacecraft.

Gagarin was the first person to fly in space, and the first American followed only a few weeks later. British food chemist and private citizen Helen Sharman became the first British person to fly in space when she visited the Mir space station aboard the Soyuz TM-12 in May 1991. During this flight, she also became the first woman to visit the Mir space station. E9; became the first and only French woman to travel to space when she flew to the Russian space station Mir in 1996. In 2001, she became the first European woman to visit the International Space Station. Since Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space in 1963, women have gone on to set many records for spacewalks and long-duration spaceflight on the International Space Station. In 1996, Whitson was selected to become a NASA astronaut and first launched to the International Space Station as part of the Expedition 5 crew in 2002. She spent 185 days in space on that flight, valentinaof4.com and also served as NASA's first official Science Officer on the station. Here’s a look at some of these marks, from the oldest person in space to the most consecutive days spent away from terra firma.

NASA astronaut Sunita Williams became the first person to run a marathon in space during the Expedition 15 mission in 2007. She officially registered for the Boston Marathon and ran 26 miles in 4 miles and 26 minutes on the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT) in the Tranquility node of the International Space Station. So Gagarin set the original record – first person in space. The first female in space was Valentina Tereshkova (opens in new tab), a Russian cosmonaut, who flew in space in June 1963. There were several other female cosmonauts selected with her, but none of the others flew. 14. Is Valentina Zenere on TikTok? Born in the village of Maslennikovo northeast of Moscow, Tereshkova volunteered for the Soviet cosmonaut program after Yuri Gagarin made history as the first man to fly in space on April 12, 1961. She was not a pilot, Www.tiktok.Com but had extensive parachuting experience, with 126 jumps under her belt.

On April 12, 1961, humanity became a spacefaring species when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin blasted into orbit on a 108-minute flight high above Earth. 12, 1992 as part of the seven-person STS-47 crew. The next woman in space, Svetlana Savitskaya, didn’t fly until 1982. The first American woman in space was Sally Ride (opens in new tab), who reached space on June 18, 1983 as part of space shuttle mission STS-7. The American program had been delayed in part because Eisenhower insisted that the space program should be a non-military operation, and that it should not reconfigure defense missiles for space exploration. In this early period, whilst Israel’s aid represented only a small percentage of total aid to Africa, its program was effective in creating goodwill throughout the continent; however, following the 1967 war relations soured. Whitson retired from NASA in June 2018. She has spent a total of 665 days in space. A0;Koch set a new record for the longest single spaceflight, having spent 328 consecutive days on board the orbiting laboratory. Mukai flew on the space shuttle Columbia during mission STS-65 in July 1994. At the time, she set the record for the longest flight to date by a female astronaut.