April 12 - Cosmonautics Day

Russia celebrates the first space flight of the first soviet astronaut Yuri Gagarin who completed an orbit of the Earth on Vostok spacecraft on April 12, 1961.

Since 1968 Cosmonautics Day is celebrated worldwide.

Yuri Gagarin Yuri Gagarin was born in the village of

Klushino, near Gzhatsk (renamed Gagarin in 1968 after his death), on 9 March 1934.

After graduating from the technical school in 1955, the Soviet Army drafted Gagarin. On a recommendation, Gagarin was sent to the First Chkalov Air Force Pilot's School in Orenburg, and soloed in a MiG-15 in 1957.

Post-graduation, he was assigned to the Luostari airbase in Murmansk Oblast, close to the Norwegian border, where terrible weather made flying risky. He became a Lieutenant in the Soviet Air Forces on 5 November 1957; on 6 November 1959 he received the rank of Senior Lieutenant.

Yuri Gagarin In 1960, after much searching and a selection process, Yuri

Gagarin was chosen with 19 other pilots for the Soviet space program.

Gagarin was further selected for an elite training group known as the Sochi Six, from which the first cosmonauts of the Vostok programme would be chosen. Gagarin and other prospective candidates were subjected to experiments designed to test physical and psychological endurance; he also underwent training for the upcoming flight.

Out of the twenty selected, the eventual choices for the first launch were Gagarin and Gherman Titov due to their performance during training sessions as well as their physical characteristics — space was limited in the small Vostok cockpit, and both men were rather short. Gagarin was 1.57 metres tall.

Yuri Gagarin On 12 April 1961, aboard the

Vostok 3KA-3, Gagarin became both the first human to travel into space, and the first to obrit the Earth. His call sign was Kedr.

In his post-flight report, Gagarin recalled his experience of spaceflight, having been the first human in space:

The feeling of weightlessness was somewhat unfamiliar compared with Earth conditions. Here, you feel as if you were hanging in a horizontal position in straps. You feel as if you are suspended.

Vostok I capsule

Konstantin TsiolkovskyKonstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky (17 September 1857 – 19 September 1935) was a Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astrinautic theory. Along with his followers, the German Hermann Oberth and the American Robert H. Goddard, he is considered to be one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics. His works later inspired leading Soviet rocket engineers such as Sergey Korolev and Valentin Glushko and contributed to the success of the Soviet space program.

Konstantin Tsiolkovskiy Tsiolkovsky developed the first aerodynamics laboratory in Russia in his

apartment. In 1897, he built the first Russian wind tunnel with an open test section and developed a method of experimentation using it.

In 1900, with a grant from the Academy of Sciences, he made a survey using models of the simplest shapes and determined the drag coefficients of the sphere, flat plates, cylinders, cones, and other bodies.

Tsiolkovsky's work in the field of aerodynamics was a source of ideas for Russian scientist Nikolay Zhukovsky, the father of modern aerodynamics and hydrodynamics. Tsiolkovsky described the airflow around bodies of different geometric shapes, but because the RPCS did not provide any financial support for this project, he was forced to pay for it largely out of his own pocket.

Sergei Korolev

Sergei Pavlovich Korolev (12 January 1907 in Zhytomyr - 14 January 1966 in Moscow) was the lead Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer in the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the 1950s and 1960s. He is considered by many as the father of practical astronautics.

Sergei Korolev Although Korolev was trained as an aircraft designer, his greatest

strengths proved to be in design integration, organization and strategic planning. Arrested for alleged mismanagement of funds (he spent the money on unsuccessful experiments with rocket devices), he was imprisoned in 1938 for almost six years, including some months in a Kolyma labour camp. Following his release, he became a recognized rocket designer and a key figure in the development of the Soviet ICBM program. He was then appointed to lead the Soviet space program, made Member of Soviet Academy of Sciences, overseeing the early successes of the Sputnik and Vostok projects. By the time he died unexpectedly in 1966, his plans to compete with the United States to be the first nation to land a man on the Moon had begun to be implemented.

Before his death he was often referred to only as "Chief Designer", because his name and his pivotal role in the Soviet space program had been held to be a state secret by the Politburo. Only many years later was he publicly acknowledged as the lead man behind Soviet success in space.

Sergei Korolev Korolev's planning for the piloted mission

had begun back in 1958, when design studies were made on the future Vostok spacecraft. It was to hold a single passenger in a space suit, and be fully automated. The capsule had an escape mechanism for problems prior to launch, and a soft-landing and ejection system during the recovery.

On 15 May 1960 an unpiloted prototype performed 64 orbits of the Earth, but failed to return. Four tests were then sent into orbit carrying dogs, of which the last two were fully successful. After gaining approval from the government, a modified version of the R-7 was used to launch Yuri Gagarin into orbit on 12 April 1961, the first human in Earth orbit. He returned to Earth via a parachute after ejecting at an altitude of 7 kilometres.

Neil ArmstrongNeil Alden Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012) was an American astronaur and the first person to walk on the Moon. He was also an aerospace engineer, naval aviator, test pilot, and university professor. Before becoming an astronaut, Armstrong was an officer in the U.S.Navy and served in the Korean War. After the war, he earned his bachelor's degree at Purdue University and served as a test pilot at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics High-Speed Flight Station, now known as the Dryden Flight Research Center, where he logged over 900 flights. He later completed graduate studies at the University of Southern California.

Neil ArmstrongArmstrong's second and last spaceflight was as mission commander of the Apollo 11 moon landing, in July 1969. On this mission, Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface and spent two and a half hours exploring, while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the Command Module.

Armstrong announced shortly after the Apollo 11 flight that he did not plan to fly in space again.

After that he was teaching for eight years in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the Univercity of Cincinnati and worked for NASA as a spaceflight accident expert.

Space todayPresently humanity achieved great success in space assimilation.

So there’s working and making high definition photos of Mars from the rover Curiosity, it has already found tracks of ancient rivers.

Also we’re observing international space station working over the Earth orbit. The results of work at this station allow to get huge amount of information on our planet.

Cosmobrain contestCosmobrain contest is dedicated to Cosmonautics Day.

It is a quiz about history of Cosmonautics, space exploration and creation of spacecrafts.

The team of the 7thA form school 757 clamed the first place in Cosmobrain contest in Babushkinskiy district of Moscow and the forth place in the city contest, which took place in Moscow Planetarium.

The Winners of Cosmobrain contest

Conclusion

During the last half of the century mankind reached impressive achievements.

I’m sure that soon astronauts will get on Mars and other planets.

This presentation was created by Vitaliy Volodin under supervision of Konyushkevich E. D.