As­tro­nauts facts

Apollo I. Apollo 1 was scheduled to be the first manned mission to the Moon. On January 27, 1967, a cabin fire during a launch pad test at Cape Canaveral killed all three crew members (pictured). The ignition source was never identified, but many lethal design and construction flaws were identified after the accident. The manned phase of the project was delayed for 20 months while those problems were corrected.

Window. The Early prototype Mercury spacecraft had only two portholes, but the Mercury astronauts demanded a larger window to be installed, not only for the view but also for the orientation. The latter proved invaluable on their last mission, when instrument failure required visual orientation.

Saturn V sent astronauts to the Moon. Fully fueled it had a total mass of 6.5 million pounds (3,000 metric tons) and a payload capacity of 260,000 pounds (120,000 kg). Its engines were heard from 50 miles away.

Alexey Arkhipovich Leonov was a Soviet astronaut, general major pilot and two-time Hero of the Soviet Union. On 18 March 1965, he became the first human to conduct extra-vehicular activity, exiting the capsule during the Voskhod 2 mission for a 12-minute spacewalk.

Valeri Polyakov. Valeri Vladimirovich Polyakov was a Russian cosmonaut. He stayed aboard the Mir space station for more than 14 months (437 days 18 hours) during a single mission.

Valentina Tereshkova. The first woman in space, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, flew in 1963. Space flight programs were slow to employ women, and only began to include them from the 1980s. Most women in space have been United States citizens, with missions on the Space Shuttle and on the International Space Station.

Afghanistan. Abdul Ahad Mohmand is a former Afghan Air Force aviator who became the first Afghan citizen and fourth Muslim to visit outer space. He became one of Soyuz TM-6 crew members and spent nine days aboard the Mir space station in 1988 as an Intercosmos Research Cosmonaut.