The United States had sent an astronaut of its own into space for the first time in nineteen sixty-one.

VOA: special.2009.07.08

But an explosion in space cost him the chance to reach the moon -- and nearly cost the crew their lives.

VOA: special.2010.04.28

He says the agency currently has twenty-eight projects working in astrobiology, or the study of life in outer space.

VOA: special.2010.05.25

Near the space center in Houston,Texas, some amateur star-watchers were trying to see the Apollo spacecraft through telescopes.

VOA: special.2009.07.22

The Guggenheim says the aim is to celebrate the basic idea behind Wright's architecture -- the sense of freedom in interior space.

VOA: special.2009.04.06

That worries community leaders on the Space Coast -- the area around the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

VOA: special.2010.04.28

But some in Congress want to cancel plans for the next-generation replacement for the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope.

VOA: special.2011.07.18

And NASA is also being called on to develop new technologies to solve problems involved in long-term space flight for humans and robots.

VOA: special.2010.04.28

On April twelfth,nineteen sixty-one, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin flew in space for one hundred eight minutes.

VOA: special.2011.05.15

The X-15 was the first major investment by the United States in manned space flight technology.

VOA: special.2010.07.07

And in nineteen ninety-eight, at age seventy-seven, he returned to space in an historic flight.

VOA: special.2009.06.17

Astronauts in NASA's Mercury Program flew the first American space flights in the early nineteen-sixties.

VOA: special.2011.04.06

In nineteen sixty-five America's space agency,NASA, was ready to begin its second manned program.

VOA: special.2009.06.24

Historians say thirty-two shots were fired in the space of about twenty-three seconds.

VOA: special.2010.02.15

He had floated around in the emptiness of space for twenty-one minutes.

VOA: special.2009.06.24

Within three months, the man-in-space program had a name: Project Mercury.

VOA: special.2009.06.10

Today,the X-15 hangs in the Air and Space Museum in Washington,D.C.

VOA: special.2010.07.07

Indian space officials lost contact with Chandrayaan-One late in August.

VOA: special.2009.09.30

She is a chemical engineer, a medical doctor,a college professor, and in 1992, was the first African-American woman astronaut to go into space.

VOA: standard.2010.03.26