Yuri Gagarin from the Soviet Union was the first human in space. His vehicle, Vostok 1 circled Earth at a speed of 27,400 kilometers per hour with the flight lasting 108 minutes. Vostok's reentry was controlled by a computer. Unlike the early US human spaceflight programs, Gagarin did not land inside a capsule. Instead, he ejected from the spacecraft and landed by parachute.

What year was the first woman in space? On 16 June 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to travel into space. The launch took place at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in southern Kazakhstan the spaceport for both Sputnik 1, and Vostok 1, the first human spaceflight.  

Laika [c,1954-3 November 1957] was a Soviet space dog who was one of the first animal in space and the first to orbit the Earth. A stay mongrel from streets of Moscow, she flew aboard the Sputnik 2 spacecraft, launched into low orbit on 3 November 1957. As the technology to deorbit had not yet  been developed, Laika's survival was never excepted. She died overheating hours into flight, on the craft's fourth orbit.

 Neil Amstrong  joined NASA Astronaut Corps in the second group, which was selected in 1962. He made his first spaceflight as command pilot of Gemini 8 in March 1966, becoming NASA's first  civilian astronaut to fly in space. During this mission with pilot David Scott, he performed the first docking of two spacecraft ; the mission was aborted after Amstrong used some of his re-entry control furl to stabilize a dangerous roll caused by a stuck thruster. 

The first successful flyby of Mars was on 14-15 July 1965, by NASA's Mariner 4. On November 14, 1971, Mariner 9 became the first space probe to orbit another planet when it entered into orbit around Mars. The amount of data returned by  probes increased dramatically  as technology improved.