8 Photos That Tell The History of Humans In Space

I'm British Astronaut Tim Peake,

and I'm gonna be talking about

some of the most iconic moments

in the history of human space flight for Wired.

[Speaker] Behind each of these photos,

there's a different story about humans in space.

Missions being just seconds away from failure.

[Announcer] We're breathing again, thanks a lot.

[Speaker] Secret codes. [electronic beeping]

And taking crazy risks. Well, just because we can.

[electronic beeping]

I guess we should start at the beginning.

The first human in space, Yuri Gagarin,

strapped into his Vostok One capsule there.

[speaking foreign language]

Inside that spacecraft,

there is a code that is secret even to Yuri himself.

[Speaker] Yuri didn't have any control over the spacecraft

at all.

It was fully automated by a computer system

and mission control.

Code 1-2-5 would allow manual controls,

but only in case of an emergency.

There was so much fear in the Soviet Union about defection

that the code was hidden from the cosmonauts themselves

and they were only gonna be told about it

in the event of an emergency.

But actually several people did tell Yuri the code secretly

before he flew, so he knew what it would be.

What you may not realize is that

on the front of his helmet there,

he's got the letters CCCP to represent the Soviet Union.

It was painted on at the very last moment.

The Soviets realized this iconic moment,

there was nothing to identify him as a Soviet cosmonaut.

So one of the engineers grabbed his helmet

and painted those letters on.

That paint is still wet right there in his capsule.

[speaking foreign language]

The launch didn't actually go completely according to plan.

Yuri went into a higher orbit than was expected.

They didn't bother telling him about it.

There really wasn't much he could do about it anyway.

And he didn't land in his spacecraft either.

The Vostok ejected the cosmonauts out

and they actually parachuted back down to Earth.

[Speaker] And upon landing,

Yuri was greeted by a very shocked farmer,

who he asked to call Moscow.

[electronic beeping]

Valentina Tereshkova, first female to fly into space.

Actually, this was part of the Space Race.

The Soviets had got wind of a woman in space program

over in the United States,

trying to see if any of the physiological differences

between women and men would create an advantage

for flying female astronauts into space.

No surprise, they didn't just pass it.

They actually performed in about the top two percent

of their male counterparts.

When the Soviets got wind of this program, they thought,

Well, we're not gonna get picked at the post.

And so they went for their own selection process

and subsequently flew Valentina Tereshkova

as the first female in space.

[Speaker] And the women in space program,

it was just a study.

In fact, it was over 20 years

until the first American woman flew to space.

[electronic beeping]

We've got Ed White here,

the first American to do a spacewalk.

The United States had wanted to be the first nation,

but 10 weeks earlier,

Alexei Leonov had gone outside of his spacecraft

and done the first ever spacewalk.

[Speaker] And it wasn't without risk.

Leonov's spacesuit expanded so much in the vacuum of space,

he had to depressurize his own suit to get back in.

The United States realized that their first spacewalk

better be something a little bit more impressive

than just opening the hatch and poking your head out.

[James] It looks beautiful.

[Ed] I feel like a million dollars.

Also, you may not know that on his spacewalk,

he lost a glove with the hatch open to the capsule.

[Ed] Looks like a thermal glove, Jim.

[James] It is, Ed. Ah!

It's happened several times since.

[Speaker] Like when this $100,000 toolbox floated away

from this NASA astronaut in 2008.

[Heide] Oh, great!

[Speaker] The tool bag circled Earth over eight months

before burning into a fireball

and destroying itself over the Pacific Ocean.

The other thing both of them realized

is that there are no handrails at all

on the outside of these capsules.

They're floating around on umbilicals here, out in space.

And at one point,

Ed was wiping himself over the windshield of the capsule

and his crew mate inside was kind of saying,

Hey, get yourself off my spacecraft.

[electronic beeping]

Possibly one of the most iconic photographs

in the history of human space flight.

If you zoom in,

then you'll actually see Neil taking that photograph

reflected in the gold visor of Buzz Aldrin.

It nearly didn't happen, of course.

Neil nearly ran outta fuel coming down to the surface.

[Buzz] Five percent.

The fuel got lower than it had ever become

in any of the simulations,

in any of the training scenarios.

[Announcer] 30 seconds.

Bringing the lander module down to the surface,

it was kicking up all this lunar dust.

[Buzz] Picking up some dust.

[Tim] And he wasn't able to even see his landing site.

[Buzz] Forward drifting to the right a little.

Was the lunar landing module just gonna sink several feet

into lunar dust?

Were the astronauts gonna sink up into their knees

and not be able to actually walk anywhere at all?

Neil had the cool presence of mind to just continue on,

not worry about the fuel.

So when the landing module touched down,

the only real way they realized they're on the surface

is when the contact light came on.

[Buzz] Contact light.

[Tim] And the engines were cut.

[Buzz] Okay, engine stop.

Tranquility base here, the eagle has landed.

[Announcer] You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue,

we're breathing again, thanks a lot.

And you think, wow,

to have had such an incredible technical achievement,

but actually still to have had so many unknowns.

At some point, you have to do it. You have to be the first.

And these were the first people to have experienced that.

[electronic beeping]

This photograph actually became known just as The Poster.

It adorns many bedroom walls of teenaged kids and younger,

who would just stick it up and look at that iconic image

of a human floating out there, untethered.

The feeling of exposure and vulnerability in that suit.

The risk was palpable.

Imagine if one of those thrusters had just got stuck

in the on position as he was maneuvering around.

That would be it. Game over.

Bruce would be off, lost forever into the cosmos.

And you could arguably say,

Well, what was the point of that?

What was the higher purpose?

Perhaps there wasn't one.

This was just like the jet ski of the spacewalking world.

Just because we can do it,

let's go out there and do it and have fun.

Another thing you may not realize in this photograph

is he was shivering and freezing cold.

So although the poster looks like the most serene,

the most tranquil event ever,

for Bruce at the time, it was pretty hard work.

[electronic beeping]

Peggy Whitson, June the fifth, 2002.

This spacewalk really just shows how far we've come,

now being able to perform eight-hour,

very complex missions outside the space station.

Space went from being a very competitive race

between two nations,

to a very collaborative period in low Earth orbit.

And so having been working apart during the Space Race,

let's build a space station together,

called the International Space Station, as we know it today.

[electronic beeping]

This next photograph is Frank Rubio.

One of the best things about space

is playing with your food and water, frankly.

And when you get a bubble of water in front of you,

it just makes you realize how different

the weightless environment is.

We've gone beyond the days of just building a space station

that we're spending huge amounts of time now in space.

We're using it as a microgravity laboratory

and science that's becoming more and more valuable

by the day as we realize what you can do in weightlessness.

[electronic beeping]

So, fast forward to today.

And looking to the future with Artemis Two not far away now,

the first crew to return to lunar orbit for over 50 years,

is a little bit of a space race starting again though,

because Russia isn't part of that partnership,

neither is China.

Other nations, such as India,

having a very dynamic space program landing a rover

on the south pole of the moon.

In this new era of space exploration

as we move outside of low Earth orbit once more,

it's gonna be a very exciting five to 10 years ahead.

[bright music]