The Space pioneers

Alan Sheppard was born in 1923 in East Derry, New Hampshire. He was one of the ‘group of 7’, all military pilots, brought together by the NASA in April 1959 for the Mercury programme. On 5 May 1961 he made his first suborbital flight (lasting 15'22'') when a Redstone missile propelled his Mercury Freedom 7 capsule on a ballistic trajectory that culminated at 187 km, before falling back into the Atlantic, less than 500 km from Cape Canaveral, from where he’d been launched. Shepard was subjected to an acceleration of 6 g at lift-off and a deceleration of 12 g on his return. In 1971 he commanded the Apollo 14 moon mission.

Gagarin was born in 1934 near Smolensk and was a military pilot before becoming the first Soviet cosmonaut. He was selected in 1960 to be part of the first team of cosmonauts, and became the first man in Space on 12 April 1961, with a Russian Vostok spacecraft (Vostok meaning ‘Orient’ in Russian). During the 108-minute flight, he travelled once around the Earth. For a long time Soviet sources concealed the facts about how Gagarin was recovered, suggesting that he had landed with his capsule and avoiding any mention of the fact that he had been ejected during the flight. This was perhaps because they feared that this would be interpreted as the consequence of some fault, preventing the Vostok 1 mission from being ratified internationally as the first manned space flight. It wasn’t until 1978 that Gagarin’s ejection from the Vostok capsule was first mentioned in a book.

Yuri Gagarin died on 27 March 1968 in an accident involving a military training aircraft.

Did you know?
A strange tradition!
Gagarin, the first man in Space, took off from Baikonur. Ever since, men about to leave the Earth from the Russian cosmodrome follow certain little rituals in memory of the Soviet hero. For example, a few minutes before climbing into the launcher, they stop off for a quick pee, just as Gagarin did before his historic flight!

In 1961, President Kennedy decided that America should send men to the Moon through the Apollo programme. The objective was to set astronauts down on the Moon before 1970.

At the outset this was chiefly a political challenge intended to re-affirm American technological supremacy, which had been seriously undermined by the first Soviet Space flights, in the eyes of the world. However, it became a fantastic industrial and technological adventure costing 25 billion dollars, in which 20,000 companies and 350,000 people participated in one way or another. The Apollo programme was completed in 1972.

At the Space Museum you can witness a reconstitution of a historic moment: the first steps of Man on the Moon. (The animation lasts 15 min.)

Opposite the Lunorama you will find the different fairings that Ariane has carried into space, and discover what each contained.
The fairing is the leading part of a launcher and its role is to protect the payload (satellite, etc.) and the equipment bay during launch preparations (against humidity, wind, dust and so on) and while travelling through the atmosphere. It is jettisoned during the ascension.
An Ariane fairing is composed of two carbon-fibre half-shells. It is designed to avoid any pollution of the payload.
For double launches, the SPELDA adaptor is used as it can place two payloads in separate orbits. The SYLDA is another, different adaptor.

The Ariane 5 fairing is either 12.7 m or 17 m tall depending on the configuration. It has a diameter of 5.4 m, an internal volume of 200 m3 and a mass of 1,750 kg.