Although there is some debate as to the first man made object in space, Sputnik 1 on 4th October 1957 was the first man made object to be intentionally put into space 50 years ago today (GMT). This kick started the space age which produced many firsts (unsurprisingly) such as the first earthling in space Laika the dog, the first human in space Yuri Gagarin, the first space walk by Alexei Leonov and someone i believe to be the most famous of them all, Neil Armstrong the first man on the moon. A complete list of our space exploration achievements up until 2001 can be found here.
One of our many other achievements over the last 50 years has been to take pictures of other worlds....
The Russian spacecraft Venera 13 landed on the surface of Venus in 1981, it managed to send back the top image which has been latter cleaned up (bottom).
In 1976, the American Viking 1 and 2 landers took man's first pictures of the red planet from a 'Mans eye view'. The two pictures were not the first to be taken but are just 2 of the 1400 pictures in total. The first image is the original, the second is the cleaned up version. In the bottom image you can see the two peaks from the first image (top, centre, right) close up.
On the moon.....
and from the moon.
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Perhaps even more impressive though, has been the images from the hubble space telescope......
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So as a mini celebration for the last 50 years, i thought it would be a nice idea for people to post their favourite space related picture, and to get us started heres mine......
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