#first orbit

[marie-advanz]

[for-all-mankind]

The age of human spaceflight began 56 years ago when Yuri Gagarin launched into space aboard Vostok 1. The 27-year-old Gagarin’s flight lasted 108 minutes during which he completed one revolution of the Earth. Upon his return to Earth, Gagarin toured the world as a beloved Hero of the Soviet Union and praised the world over for his historic accomplishment. Roughly every six weeks or so the ground track of the International Space Station matches up with that of Vostok 1′s at the same time of day that the historic mission flew. This allows astronauts on board the ISS to see the world almost exactly as Gagarin saw it. 

In 2011, ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli filmed the Earth during one of these orbits as part of a film called First Orbit, created by filmmaker Christopher Riley. Audio of Gagarin’s flight and his conversations with ground control are included in real time to simulate the cosmonaut’s historic journey.

[crescent-drift]

Orbit 1

I was playing hopscotch on stars across the universe, while you were tracing rivers on my arm. I carved lines on your back, like the hours on your canvas.

Under the canopy of this little rainforest, blanketed in the red glow of the moon, I've never missed so much skin.

And so I leave traces of me on you, in between thunders across the night.

We are strangers still, yet intertwined with darkness.

[breezingby]

SpaceX launches first private space crew into orbit | USA TODAY

[krjpalmer]

Although keeping up with the fiftieth anniversary of the flight of Apollo 13, seeing a reminder Vostok 1 had been launched nine years before that perilous mission yet during the same week on the calendar turned my thoughts towards a film I’d been aware of for a while without ever quite managing to watch. Enclosed protectively (although not sealed up airtight) in the capsule of my own dwelling during a long weekend, I made the effort at last to track down the online video of First Orbit, recorded by astronauts on the space station along an orbit recapturing both the path and the lighting of Yuri Gagarin’s flight...

[pasapacasa]

[feverfuckery]

First Orbit

[talonserena]

Later tonight, in honor of it being April 12th (we've officially had 54 years of space travel for humankind!) I'm going to watch First Orbit. It's a documentary wherein the folks aboard the International Space Station recorded the view as they tracked along Yuri Gagarin's original route around the Earth, and the soundtrack is a mix of spaceflight-inspired music by Philip Sheppard and recordings of Yuri himself talking. So you get to see what the first human in space saw all those years ago (more or less) and hear his amazement at it all. I've never seen it and the creators put it up for freebies on YouTube in HD. We'll see what this is like. :)

Ahhhh an evening of nerdy fun. High on the list of things I never really need an excuse for. =P