![]() ![]() In that year, the president Dwight D Eisenhower's press secretary James Hagerty announced America's intention to launch a science satellite and this spurred the Soviets into action, according to NASA History Division (opens in new tab) - the USSR's Sputnik 1 satellite was sent into space just two years later, according to (opens in new tab). Since 1955, the United States and the Soviet Union had been engaged in a space race. It was the second time he had applied, having been inspired by his friend, Gemini and Apollo astronaut Ed White, Aldrin stated in a tweet (opens in new tab) in March 2020. Shortly after graduating four years later, having written a 311-page thesis called Line-of-Sight Guidance Techniques for Manned Orbital Rendezvous, according to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (opens in new tab), he was selected by NASA to become an astronaut. ![]() He was intrigued by science fiction - Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon in particular - but he didn't look towards the night sky with a great desire to explore, Aldrin said in an interview in 1988 (opens in new tab). ![]() During his childhood, however, he didn't display any great interest in space. He was actually named Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr., after his father (the US Army aviator and officer Edwin Eugene Aldrin Sr) but when one of the youngster's two elder sisters, Fay Ann, began mispronouncing "brother" as "buzzer" the nickname, shortened to Buzz, soon stuck according to (opens in new tab).Īll of his family including mother Marion and eldest sister Madeleine called him Buzz and he liked it so much he used it himself, finally making it his legal first name in 1988, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica (opens in new tab). But it failed to send back any radio signal and Prof Pillinger's team was forced to admit that the mission, costing millions, had failed.ĭespite the calamity, plans are afoot for a Beagle 3 mission.Buzz Aldrin was born in the United States on Januin Montclair, New Jersey, according to Johnson Space Center (JSC), NASA (opens in new tab). On Christmas Day 2003 the Beagle 2 probe, containing the hopes of dozens of British scientists led by the Open University's Colin Pillinger, crash landed on Mars. Sixty-seven minutes later, we saw the first pictures.īut some expeditions do not end so happily. Two years later Cassini was launched and just over seven years later it deposited the Huygens probe successfully on to Titan, one of Saturn's many moons. In 1995 Nasa's Galileo craft landed on Jupiter and sent back crucial data about our solar system's biggest planet. The European Space Agency achieved one of its greatest successes in 1986 when Giotto came within a few hundred kilometres of Halley's comet. Mars has always held a special place in the heart of astronomers and in 1976 the Viking probe touched down on the red planet after years of trying. In 1969, the US sent Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon, while probes explored further and further into the final frontier. It confirmed that Venus did not have a magnetic field. Mariner 2 became the first space probe to reach another planet when in 1962 it made close-up observations of Venus. The Americans hit back in the early 1960s with the Ranger probes, the first craft to send back photographs of the lunar surface. Luna III, which followed, orbited the moon and took the first photographs of the "dark side of the moon". In 1959 the Soviet Union stole the show again when, after several attempts, it became the first nation to land a man-made object on the moon, Luna II. They spawned dozens of artificial satellites which went into orbit, eventually providing communications facilities and the ability to observe aspects of life on Earth, including the weather and the state of the ozone layer.īut it was not long before mission planners became more ambitious. ![]()
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