--- title: The history of space exploration — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The history of space exploration», a lesson of the space course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: For thousands of years people could only look up; in the last 80 years we have sent machines, animals and people into space. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/29-the-history-of-space-exploration/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Space](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/) / The history of space exploration # The history of space exploration Lesson 29 of the space course of Mova's primary school: 15 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/space/29-the-history-of-space-exploration/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/29-the-history-of-space-exploration/0/) — For thousands of years people could only look up; in the last 80 years we have sent machines, animals and people into space. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/29-the-history-of-space-exploration/1/) — The space age began in a race between the Soviet Union and the USA: the Soviets launched the first satellite and the first person, and the Americans first landed people on the Moon. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/29-the-history-of-space-exploration/2/) — Space history has dark pages too: the first rocket to reach space was a wartime weapon built partly by prisoners, the dog Laika never came home, and two Shuttle crews died. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/29-the-history-of-space-exploration/5/) — The first rocket to reach space was a German V-2 in 1944, a weapon built partly by forced labourers and prisoners, thousands of whom died. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/29-the-history-of-space-exploration/6/) — On 4 October 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite (a machine people put in orbit round Earth), a metal ball that beeped radio signals as it orbited. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/29-the-history-of-space-exploration/7/) — In November 1957 a dog called Laika became the first animal to orbit Earth, but she died within hours because there was no way to bring her back. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/29-the-history-of-space-exploration/8/) — Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space on 12 April 1961, and Valentina Tereshkova the first woman in 1963, both from the Soviet Union. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/29-the-history-of-space-exploration/9/) — On 20 July 1969 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon during Apollo 11, while Michael Collins orbited above. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/29-the-history-of-space-exploration/10/) — Between 1969 and 1972 twelve astronauts, all American men, walked on the Moon, and no one has walked there since. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/29-the-history-of-space-exploration/11/) — Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, launched in 1977, flew past the giant planets, and Voyager 2 is still the only spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/29-the-history-of-space-exploration/12/) — NASA's Space Shuttles flew from 1981 to 2011, but two were lost with their crews, Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003; after 2011 Russian Soyuz capsules, and later SpaceX capsules, kept taking crews to the space station. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/29-the-history-of-space-exploration/14/) — Helen Sharman became the first Briton in space in 1991, and Tim Peake the first British ESA astronaut to visit the space station in 2015-2016. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/29-the-history-of-space-exploration/15/) — Andy Thomas flew in 1996 as the first Australian-born NASA astronaut. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/29-the-history-of-space-exploration/16/) — NASA has landed rovers on Mars since 1997, and Perseverance, landing in 2021, brought the helicopter Ingenuity, which made the first powered flights on another planet. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/29-the-history-of-space-exploration/17/) — In December 2015 a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster landed upright back on Earth after a launch to orbit, and reused boosters are now routine. - ← previous: [How we know: measuring the sky](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/28-how-we-know-measuring-the-sky/) - next →: [What comes next: the Moon, Mars and beyond](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/30-what-comes-next-the-moon-mars-and-beyond/) - ↑ back to [Space](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/)