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Venera 3
The first spacecraft to reach another planet's surface struck Venus. Venera 3 sent back no measurements from the planet, but the impact marked the first time a human-made object had reached the ground of another planet.
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Gemini 6A
Gemini 6A met Gemini 7 in the first rendezvous between crewed spacecraft. Flying close together on purpose, with each crew still in its own vehicle, was the skill to master before the spacecraft could join up.
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Luna 9
A soft landing let Luna 9 send back pictures from the ground. For the first time, a spacecraft had touched down on the Moon gently enough to keep working.
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Gemini 8
Neil Armstrong and David Scott made the first docking in orbit, joining their capsule to an uncrewed Agena. A stuck thruster then forced them to end the flight early. The two events showed both that docking worked and how quickly a separate failure could undo a successful maneuver.
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Luna 10
The next lunar first came above the surface. Luna 10 became the first spacecraft to orbit the Moon, establishing a way to study it over repeated passes.
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Surveyor 1
The first U.S. soft landing on the Moon provided a practical demonstration before Apollo. Surveyor 1 also sent back the first American images taken from the lunar surface.
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Lunar Orbiter 1
Photographing possible Apollo landing sites was the job of the first U.S. spacecraft to orbit the Moon. It also turned its camera outward and sent back the first picture of Earth taken from lunar distance.
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Gemini 12
Buzz Aldrin's work outside the capsule showed how astronauts could keep themselves steady while doing a job. After earlier Gemini spacewalks made simple tasks look exhausting, handholds and foot restraints helped him work without constantly fighting to stay in place.
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Apollo 1
A cabin fire killed Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee during a ground test. Apollo 1 never flew, but the loss changed the spacecraft, including the design of the hatch the crew had been unable to open.
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Soyuz 1
The first crewed Soyuz flight exposed problems in orbit and ended with the death of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov when the parachute system failed. The spacecraft returned from orbit, but getting a crew safely through the last part of descent proved just as critical.
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Venera 4
Venera 4 sent measurements as it descended through the atmosphere of Venus. It opened up a way to investigate the planet from inside its clouds, where a flyby could only look in from outside.
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Apollo 4
The first full flight test of Saturn V carried an uncrewed Apollo spacecraft. It tested the rocket as a complete vehicle and sent the command module back into the atmosphere at a speed like that of a return from the Moon.
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Zond 5
Two tortoises traveled around the Moon and survived splashdown in the Indian Ocean. Their return demonstrated a piece of the Soviet lunar plan that an Earth-orbit flight could not: bringing living passengers back from a loop around the Moon.
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Apollo 7
The first crewed Apollo flight tested a redesigned command module in Earth orbit. An outward-opening hatch and fewer flammable materials addressed some of the lessons of the Apollo 1 fire.
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Apollo 8
Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders became the first people to orbit the Moon. The flight demonstrated the voyage to lunar orbit while leaving the work of bringing a lander down to later crews.
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Soyuz 4
Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 made the first docking of two crewed spacecraft. Two cosmonauts came over from Soyuz 5 by spacewalking between the joined vehicles, turning a link between spacecraft into a way to transfer crew.
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N1 (rocket)
First N1 test flight, 1969
The Soviet heavy-lift rocket assigned to the lunar effort failed on its first flight. Its payload was supposed to go into orbit around the Moon, but the booster never got it there. The failure is part of why the contest for a crewed landing ended so differently from the race to Earth orbit.
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Apollo 9
The crew flew the Apollo lunar module for the first time and practiced separating it from the command module and docking again. Earth orbit was close enough to answer a question the Moon flight depended on: could the lander meet the other spacecraft on its own?
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Apollo 10
The lunar module rehearsed the descent and returned to the command module in lunar orbit. Apollo 10 put the sequence to the test around the Moon before Apollo 11 took the final step and touched down.
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Luna 15
Launched days before Apollo 11, Luna 15 attempted to scoop up lunar material and send it back without a crew. The probe reached lunar orbit but crashed during descent. In the same week that people reached the surface, the Soviet program was trying a different way to bring the Moon home.
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Apollo 11
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made the first crewed Moon landing while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit. The division of work is worth noticing: the crew on the surface still had to lift off and meet the spacecraft that would take them home.
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