Vostok-1, the first manned spaceship, landed empty, as Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made an early exit via parachute and touched down a few kilometers away. AFP/Getty Images The “space race ...

Historian Jeff Shesol recalls the early days of the U.S. space program, when rockets often blew up in test launchings, and no one was sure John Glenn would make it through America's first orbital ...

The rockets were designated as M-13, where "M" stood for "Mina" (mine in Russian), and "13" represented the caliber (132mm) of the rockets. The rockets were simple, unguided, and stabilised with a ...

Early in the morning of October 22, 1946, Soviet soldiers showed up at the homes of top technical workers and informed them that they would be deported to work at various Soviet industrial ministries.