Wikipedia:WikiProject Space Missions/Sandbox

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Vostok 1

Vostok 1 was the first manned space mission. Launched on April 12, 1961, Vostok 1 took Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space, the first time anyone had ever journeyed beyond the Earth's atmosphere and the first time anyone went into orbit.

Gagarin orbited the Earth one time in 108 minutes and returned unharmed, ejecting from the Vostok capsule 7 km above the ground and parachuting separately to the ground (the capsule's parachute landing was too rough for cosmonauts to risk it at the time).

The re-entry capsule is now on display at the RKK Energia Museum in Kaluga.

Vostok is Russian for East.

Apollo 16

Apollo 16 was the tenth manned mission in the Apollo program and the fifth mission to land on the moon.

The crew members: John W. Young, commander; Ken Mattingly, command module pilot; and Charles Duke, lunar module pilot. It was a J-class mission, featuring Lunar Rover. It brought back 94.7 kg of lunar samples. It included three lunar EVA: 7.2 hours, 7.4 hours, 5.7 hours and one trans-earth EVA of 1.4. This was the only the second trans-earth EVA ever and was used to bring in film from exterior cameras and open an experiment on microbial survival.

Soyuz TMA-2

Soyuz TMA-2 (Russian &#1057;&#1086;&#1102;&#1079; &#1058;&#1052;&#1040;-2, Alliance TMA-2) is a Russian spaceflight mission to the International Space Station, the second flight for the TMA modification of the Soyuz spacecraft, and the 6th Soyuz to fly to the ISS.

The commander is Yuri Ivanovich Malenchenko (Russia), and flight engineer Edward Tsang Lu (USA), and after docking with the ISS they exchanged with the resident crew on ISS and became the seventh station crew, called "ISS Expedition Seven". As backup crew Alexander Kaleri and Michael Foale stood by.

Originally the Soyuz missions to the ISS were all planned to be only taxi mission to deliver a new Soyuz spacecraft as the station's lifeboat every six month with a visiting crew, but not for crew exchange. Until the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster the same was planned for Soyuz TMA-2, a visiting crew consisting of commander Gennadi Padalka and ESA-astronaut Pedro Duque were to spend about one week at the station and then return with the previous Soyuz TMA-1 spacecraft. The third seat might have gone to the Chilean Klaus von Storch as a space tourist, but even before the Columbia disaster it looked like his flight would not happen, and the seat would go to the Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov or to deliver freight to the station.

During his stay on the station, Malenchenko became the first person to get married in space. His bride was in Texas where long distance marriages are legal.

The spacecraft returned to Earth on October 28, with both the "Expedition 7" crew as well as Pedro Duque on board. Duque was launched with Soyuz TMA-3 and spend only one week on board of the ISS.