Lending star power alongside Dobbs on the board were Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride, the first American woman astronaut.

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So was the second African American astronaut.

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The Russian vehicle essentially took a shortcut that required precisely timed steering over the course of four orbits, putting three crew members (including one American astronaut) on the space station at 10:28pm ET -- just five hours and 45 minutes after takeoff from Kazakhstan.

ENGADGET

From 220 miles above Earth on the International Space Station, American astronaut Ron Garan certainly has a unique perspective of our home planet.

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American astronaut visitations to the Russian MIR space station extended this spirit of cooperation and diplomacy.

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This weekend marks the first time that a child of an American astronaut is going to blast off into space, and he's paying his own way after making a fortune in the videogame industry.

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Last night, American astronaut Sunita Williams of NASA, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko left the International Space Station which has been their home for the past 4 months.

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American astronaut Alan Shepard made a suborbital flight later that year, and John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth in 1962.

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