) He was the first astronaut on the moon, chosen because of his small size and intrepid nature.

* In Apogee of Fear, filmed in October 2008 and billed as " the first science-fiction movie made in space ", NASA astronaut Michael Fincke refers to the need to " fashion weapons out of a rudimentary lathe.

However, as Schmitt re-entered the module first, Cernan became the last astronaut to walk on and depart the moon.

* 2012 – China successfully launches its Shenzhou 9 spacecraft, carrying three astronauts – including the first female Chinese astronaut, Liu Yang – to the Tiangong-1 orbital module.

* 1995 – Space Exploration: Astronaut Norman Thagard becomes the first American astronaut to ride to space on board a Russian launch vehicle.

Neil Alden Armstrong ( August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012 ) was an American astronaut and the first person to walk on the Moon.

He made his first space flight, as command pilot of Gemini 8, in 1966, becoming NASA's first civilian astronaut to fly in space.

* 1984 – Aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a space walk.

South Korea is currently selecting its first astronaut, scheduled to board a Soyuz flight to the International Space Station in April 2008.

* 2008 – CNSA astronaut Zhai Zhigang becomes the first Chinese person to perform a spacewalk while flying on Shenzhou 7.

The first flight of Columbia ( STS-1 ) was commanded by John Young, a Gemini and Apollo veteran who was the ninth person to walk on the Moon in 1972, and piloted by Robert Crippen, a rookie astronaut originally selected to fly on the military's Manned Orbital Laboratory ( MOL ) spacecraft, but transferred to NASA after its cancellation, and served as a support crew member for the Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz missions.

In 1983, Columbia, under the command of John Young for his sixth spaceflight, undertook its second operational mission ( STS-9 ), in which the Spacelab science laboratory and a six-person crew was carried, including the first non-American astronaut on a space shuttle, Ulf Merbold.

The first African-American woman astronaut, Mae Jemison, was brought into space on the mission STS-47 on September 12, 1992.

The STS-118 mission, the first for Endeavour following a lengthy refit, included astronaut Barbara Morgan, formerly assigned to the Educator Astronaut program, but now a full member of the Astronaut Corps, as part of the crew.

His first sale was an assortment of astronaut cartoons which the editors arranged into a themed article.

* October 11 – Aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a space walk.

* June 11 – The first monkey astronaut, Albert I, is launched into space from White Sands, New Mexico.

* January 12 – STS-61-C: Space Shuttle Columbia is launched with the first Hispanic-American astronaut, Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz.

* November 18 – Alan Shepard, first American astronaut ( d. 1998 )

* August 5 – Neil Armstrong, American astronaut, first human to set foot on the Moon, Commander of Apollo 11 ( d. 2012 )

* October 31 – Michael Collins, astronaut, second person to fly around the Moon solo, Command Module pilot on Apollo 11, the first human lunar landing

This mission made him the first NASA astronaut to fly into space twice.

Chief astronaut Deke Slayton wrote that he wanted one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts to be the first on the moon and, " Had Gus been alive, as a Mercury astronaut he would have taken the step ... My first choice would have been Gus, which both Chris Kraft and Bob Gilruth seconded.

If you drive greater distances than that, you'll just be skimming the surface and will never discover the enchantment, fascination and beauty which lured you in the first place to explore the hinterlands.

She was one of the first women to explore fully the realm of erotic writing, and certainly the first prominent woman in the modern West to write erotica.

Christopher Columbus, on his first voyage to the Americas, sailed south from what is now the Bahamas to explore the northeast coast of Cuba and the northern coast of Hispaniola.

He was the first European known to sight and enter the Congo River and to explore the West African coast between Cape St. Catherine and Cape Cross, almost from the equator to Walvis Bay in Namibia.

Lieutenant Zebulon Pike was the first official United States representative to explore the Upper Mississippi River which runs through the newly acquired land and present-day Davenport.

He was one of the first to explore the relations between language studies and anthropology.

These trapping brigades in Northern California faced serious risks, and were often the first to explore relatively uncharted territory.

In 2008, the Authority received two new applications for authorization to explore for polymetallic nodules, coming for the first time from private firms in developing island nations of the Pacific.

Dawn, the first NASA operational ( i. e., non-technology demonstration ) mission to use an ion drive for its primary propulsion, is currently on track to explore and orbit the large main-belt asteroids 1 Ceres and 4 Vesta.

* 1405 – Ming admiral Zheng He sets sail to explore the world for the first time.

In the aftermath of a war that had for the first time properly engaged Sartre in political matters, he set forth a body of work which " reflected on virtually every important theme of his early thought and began to explore alternative solutions to the problems posed there " ( Aronson 1980: 121 ).

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to explore the region of current-day Kenya, Vasco da Gama having visited Mombasa in 1498.

On January 19, 2006, the first spacecraft mission to explore the Kuiper belt, New Horizons, was launched.

The first documented European visit to Kansas City was Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont, who was also the first European to explore the lower Missouri River.

He is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature, along with Tawfiq el-Hakim, to explore themes of existentialism.

It is one of Dick's first works to explore religious themes.

In 1501, Rodrigo de Bastidas was the first European to explore the Isthmus of Panama sailing along the eastern coast.

He decided that Río de Solís might provide easier passage to the Pacific, and, eager to win the riches of Peru, he became the first European to explore that estuary.

They first travel to the Puppeteer home world, where they learn that the expedition's goal is to explore a ringworld: an artificial ring about one million miles wide and approximately the diameter of Earth's orbit ( which makes it about 600 million miles in circumference ), encircling a Sol-type star.

Only one scenario is available on the first play-through ; after finishing it and obtaining one of three possible endings, players can explore six others.

The Star Trek Maps by New Eye Photography Editors, also published in 1979, listed this ship as a Fusion drive probe that was Earth's first attempt to explore another star system.

By the mid 20th century, humans had achieved a mastery of technology sufficient to leave the atmosphere of the Earth for the first time and space exploration | explore space.