Félicette, a Parisian stray, became the first—and only—cat
in space. The black-and-white feline traveled 98 miles into
space for 13 minutes before her capsule safely parachuted
to Earth.
The mission, part of the French space program, trained
14 cats to monitor their neurological and physiological
responses to spaceflight.
CAMILLE BOHANNON
Technical rendition of Atlantis docked to the Kristall module
of the Russian Mir Space Station.
On June 29, 1995 the shuttle Atlantis docked with the Mir station
for the first time. This also marked the first in orbit docking of a
NASA spacecraft since the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission of July,
1975.
NASA’s Shuttle-Mir program continued for 11 missions and was
a crucial step towards the construction of the International Space
Station now in orbit.
On June 16, 1963, aboard Vostok 6, Soviet Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to travel into space. After
48 orbits and 71 hours, she returned to earth, having spent more
time in space than all U.S. astronauts combined to that date.
Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova was born to a peasant family
in Maslennikovo, Russia, in 1937. She began work at a textile
factory when she was 18, and at age 22 she made her first
parachute jump under the auspices of a local aviation club.
Her enthusiasm for skydiving brought her to the attention of the
Soviet space program, which sought to put a woman in space in
the early 1960s as a means of achieving another “space first”
before the United States.
![[object Object]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/RIAN_archive_159271_Nikita_Khrushchev%2C_Valentina_Tereshkova%2C_Pavel_Popovich_and_Yury_Gagarin_at_Lenin_Mausoleum.jpg)
Tereshkova, and Nikita Khrushchev at Lenin’s Mausoleum
on 22 June 1963.
Tereshkova (87) in 2024.
The original series ran from September 8, 1966 to June 3,
1969 on NBC.
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey had its
world theatrical premiere on April 2, 1968.
Kubrick, whose 1964 Cold War satire Dr. Strangelove had been
popular with audiences and critics alike, was intrigued by
science fiction but felt the genre rarely produced interesting
films.
He became determined to make one, using the sci-fi story The
Sentinel as source material and enlisting its author, Arthur C.
Clarke, as his co-writer.
The film does feature a coherent plot, involving two scientists
and a highly-intelligent computer sent to investigate a mysterious
event near Jupiter, but several scenes—including the film’s now-legendary opening, which seems to depict hominids learning to
use tools after the appearance of a mysterious monolith—are
surreal and highly open to interpretation.
Filming required the construction of a giant centrifuge to serve
as the spaceship’s interior and numerous expensive visual
effects, including a groundbreaking psychedelic sequence near
the end of the film so complex that staff referred to it as the
“Manhattan Project.” Kubrick is said to have removed over 15
minutes from the final cut, which nonetheless ran well over
2 hours.
