US Launches A Man In Space

Cameras record each phase of the historic flight of Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr. in the "Friendship Seven" beginning with his pre-dawn entry into the Mercury capsule at Cape Canaveral. After the successful rocket launching, Colonel Glenn gets a "Go!" from mission control. A camera within the capsule shows the astronaut as he travels in space and his reactions are heard as he orbits the earth 3 times. He returns within a few miles of the pre-determined area and is picked up by helicopter and taken to the aircraft carrier Randolph - completing a mission that makes him the first American ever to orbit in space.

The photon microgravity research capsule still shows the marks of its two weeks flight in space. It was bought by an unidentified bidder for 72,000 Euros (100,000 dollars).

In a preview to human space flights, Air Force scientists launch Albert the Monkey and two white mice into upper pace on a 2,000 m.p.h rocket ride, an historic first. Films show the space travellers under zero gravity in this test of reaction to space flight, and their safe return to earth.

Moscow earns the scientific glory for mankind's first stride into outer space. Animated films graphically show how a mighty three-stage rocket placed an artificial moon into an orbit around the earth - a feat that occasions Western re-appraisal of Red missile progress.

News from Reuters

EADS Astrium, a satellite subsidiary of the European aerospace giant, is planning to launch a service to take tourists into space by 2012-2013. The program, which will be launched in 2008, will offer passengers a 90-minute plane ride including three minutes of weightlessness at 100 kilometers above Earth. Images of the and soundbites from a company executive.

Launched from Cape Canaveral, a giant Atlans ICBM soars aloft. It is the largest satellite yet evolved, with its 800 lb. bulk more than double the mass of Russia's Sputnik III, and the first one ever self-guided into orbit. Using its revolutionary new space communications system which enables it to receive messages from earth and rebroadcast them, it sends President Eisenhower's goodwill greeting to the world.

The rocket lifted off from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Kazakh steppe as planned, at 05:22 p.m. Moscow time (1322 GMT). The crew is scheduled to dock to the $100-billion ISS on Friday.

The Malaysian, an orthopaedic surgeon and university lecturer from Kuala Lumpur, will leave the space outpost on Oct. 21 together with the station's current commander, Russian Fyodor Yurchikhin and Russian Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov.

The third member of the outgoing crew, U.S. Flight Engineer Clay Anderson, will remain onboard with Expedition-16 and return to Earth in November aboard the U.S. Space Shuttle Discovery.

The U.S. space shuttle Discovery blasted off on a pillar of fire on Tuesday (April 23), soaring above Florida marshlands toward a rendezvous in two days with the International Space Station. Discovery's 14-day mission kicks off a two-month refurbishment of the $100 billion outpost that prepares the way for Europe's first permanent laboratory in orbit.