La Giornata dell'Uomo nello Spazio

International Day of Human Space Flight

The International Day of Human Space Flight is celebrated every year on April 12th, to commemorate the first orbital flight by Yuri Gagarin over 60 years ago. This day was established by the United Nations in 2011 to celebrate this extraordinary achievement and all the space milestones that followed.

Yuri Gagarin: The First Man in Space

Yuri Gagarin was the first human to travel into space. Born in Russia in 1934, he was a Soviet aviator, cosmonaut, and politician. After rigorous training, he was chosen for a historic space mission. On April 12, 1961, aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft, he took off, becoming the first human to see the Earth from space. His experience paved the way for space exploration.

What happened next?

After Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering flight on April 12, 1961, many things changed in space.

  • On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin becoming the first men to walk on the lunar surface.
  • In 1963, the USSR sent the first woman into space, Valentina Tereshkova, proving that women can also travel into space.
  • In 1961: Alan Shepard became the first American astronaut to fly into space aboard the Mercury-Redstone 3 mission. Ten years later, in 1971, he walked on the Moon during the Apollo 14 mission, demonstrating further progress in the space race.

Today, at the International Space Station, astronauts from different nations work together, noting that from their perspective, the Earth has no clear borders. There are ambitious plans to return to the Moon with NASA’s Artemis program, which also involves the ESA, and to explore Mars with remotely piloted missions by NASA to study the planet more thoroughly.

 

 

Let’s build a space rocket with very simple toilet paper rolls

 

1. Take your finished toilet paper roll.

  1. Cut out a circle of colored cardstock with a diameter of about 20 cm and roll it into a cone shape. You have now made the nose cone of the rocket.
  2. Glue the cone you made onto the top of the tube.

3. At this point, have fun coloring it however you like. You can also create fins to attach to the sides to make it look even more like a space rocket.

 

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