History

Valentina Tereshkova grew up in Maslennikovo, Russia, USSR. After she left school, Valentina had jobs in a tyre factory and in a textile mill. In her spare time she loved parachuting and skydiving at her local club. 

Helen Sharman grew up in Sheffield, UK. She graduated from university with a degree in chemistry, and went on to study for a PhD. After university, she worked as an engineer and as a chemist. One of her jobs involved working on the science of chocolate flavours!

Yuri Gagarin grew up on a farm near Gzhatsk, Russia, USSR. Gzhatsk has since been named Gagarin in his honour. His father was a carpenter. Yuri graduated from trade school as a moulder (someone who makes wooden moulds for objects cast from metal). He then went to industrial college and learned to fly a plane. 

Neil Armstrong grew up in Ohio, USA. He flew a plane for first time when he was 6 years old which sparked his love of flying. Aged 16, he received his pilot's licence. Neil joined the US Navy and served as a naval aviator in the Korean War. The navy paid his college fees and Neil completed a Bachelor's degree in Aeronautical Engineering.

Buzz grew up in New Jersey, USA. After school, Buzz went to a Military Academy where he got a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering. He then joined the US Air Force and flew as a fighter pilot during the Korean War. After the war, he completed a PhD in Astronautics at MIT. 

First animals in space

In 1947 the first living things went to space. They were two fruit flies! The United States launched the flies on a V2 rocket. In the 1950s, the USA and USSR sent lots of animals to space. These included mice, monkeys, rabbits, cats, and dogs. Scientists were testing if the creatures could survive the journey. Some test animals survived, but sadly not all. 

Stars

What we know about stars has changed over thousands of years. Early astronomers recorded the positions and numbers of stars. They did not think that stars could change. The first catalogue of stars was made by Chinese astronomers Gan De and Shi Shenfu around 400 BCE. Astronomers soon realised that 'new stars' could appear in the sky. We know these now as supernovae. The final explosion of a massive star's life.

In 1781, William Herschel became the first person in thousands of years to discover a planet. He used a telescope he had built himself and found the 7th planet, Uranus. A few years' later in 1845, Neptune was found by both British and French astronomers. Both groups had watched the orbit of Uranus and used their data to predict there was an 8th planet. They worked out where it would be and when they looked, there it was!

Newton's work seemed to work most of the time, but not always. For example, he could not explain the orbit of the planet Mercury. So Einstein came up with a new theory called 'general relativity' in 1915. This linked space and time to gravity. In 1919 Eddington took observations during a solar eclipse to test Einstein's theory. His results showed that light from stars was bent by the Sun on its way to Earth. This supported Einstein's work.

Hans Lipperhey (also spelt Lippershey) was the first person to write down a design for a telescope. He made spectacles for a living, and in 1608 he applied for a patent for his new tool. He said it was "for seeing things far away as if they were nearby". Hans did not get the patent because other people were making similar tools. But, Hans was paid for his design. The first telescopes, known as Dutch Telescopes, contained both a convex and a concave lens.