But this was a project that needed a cartographer’s scientific skillset, as the National Geo Spatial–Intelligence Agency (the ACIC’s descendant) points out in a post about their work on the mission. Scientists and photographers had drawn and photographed the moon, dating back to the 17th century. Air Force compiled the above lunar photo mosaic map in November 1962, using remote sensing imagery. To that end, the Aeronautical Chart and Information Center of the U.S. Early on, the mission needed a detailed map of the moon, to see where this proposed flight might land. That speech set off one of the most ambitious American scientific projects of the 20th century. would put astronauts on the moon by the end of the decade, he said. Kennedy went before a joint session of Congress a month later, laying out an astonishing goal: The U.S. So galling was Gagarin’s success that President John F.
Nowhere outside of the Soviet Union did his name resonate more than in the United States, where space flight was in its infancy. He instantly became a Soviet hero and an international celebrity. But he managed to eject from the capsule, as planned, at about 23,000 feet, still in his space suit, and land safely in a field in the Saratov Oblast, near the Volga River. Gagarin’s capsule spun wildly, the result of coming in too fast, nearly causing him to black out. The flames were just burning plasma, though. He could seem flames licking the outside of his ship. He thought he was going to burn to death during reentry. His single orbit took just under two hours. Then the rockets kicked in on Vostok 1, his ship, sending him just beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. His pulse rate was just 64 a few minutes before liftoff. Somehow, Gagarin was preternaturally calm on April 12, the morning of his launch. A launch pad explosion in 1960 had killed dozens of people, perhaps more than 1o0. Nearly half of Soviet rocket launches had failed. They continued to develop their space program and, in April 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth. The Soviet Union demonstrated its early lead in the Cold War space race with the United States with the launch of the satellite Sputnik 1 in 1957. The Sea of Tranquility, where the Apollo 11 mission landed, is the large dark area at center right, Geography and Map Division.Ĭynthia Smith, a reference specialist in the Geography and Map Division, wrote a short piece about this lunar map for the Library of Congress Magazine.
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